The hospital consulted with the Ferrari F1 pit crew team to improve its ICU handover process. After all, who better to copy than a team replacing four tires and filling a tank of gas in a matter of seconds? The hospital eventually created its equivalent of a pit crew ‘lollipop man’ – the individual who only waves a driver through after making sure everyone else on the team has put the tires on. After changing its protocol, the hospital’s error rate dropped from 30% to 10%.
All Threads
Greggs has focused on occasions to expand its customer base. Although traditionally a breakfast bakery, extended opening hours means the evening (post 4pm) is now the business’s fastest-growing meal time. It even won a licence to open its Leicester Square branch until 2am on weekends. And with sales up by 20% in 2023, the ambition to ‘mean more to more people’ is certainly paying off.
Before his fame and as a young student in New York, Tom Ford visited the townhouse of a fellow designer Halston. “I copied everything, the long, low grey couches, everything, from Halston’s apartment for the Gucci store design.” Ford loved the actual Halston place so much that he bought it in 2019.
In the 1980s, regulations meant Guinness could no longer say it was good for you. So the brand responded in style.
In 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then managing director of the Guinness Breweries, became involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe – the golden plover or the red grouse. He realised that there was no book to settle the argument, and knew that there must have been lots of other questions debated nightly among the public. So he created the Guinness World Records.
As bleak as it sounds, suicide is a question of ease and not just motivation. In the US, suicide rates are highest in the states where gun ownership is highest (and largely where gun control laws are weakest).
The pandemic was supposed to kill off gyms: who would want to pay when there were so many free alternatives at home? Yet 5 years on, gym memberships are at a record level (at least in the UK).
When business travellers were asked which hotel facilities were most important in their choice of hotel, 70% said the gym. But in reality, only 17% use the gym when they stay.
The brand was born online, but Gymshark is now heavily investing in physical marketing; recently opening its flagship store on Regent Street in London, and routinely hosting live events where hundreds of fans exercise together.
Reuben Mattus coined the name “Häagen-Dazs” to make the (American) brand sound more Danish. Interestingly letters like “ä” and digraphs like “zs” do not actually exist in Danish.
Halo Top was started by an ex-lawyer who, in his own words, “just wanted to eat an entire pint of ice cream and not hate himself for it.”
Americans say they need a 30%-50% raise to feel happy, regardless of their income. People making $50k need about 75k, and people making $200k need 350k.
Want to get into Harvard? Make sure your parents went there. Legacy students have a 33% chance of winning a place vs 6% for the rest. (Alternatively, become an elite athlete and your chance of getting in goes up to 86%).
At Heathrow airport, 80% of noise complaints come from just 10 people.
In 1944 two researchers, Heider and Simmel, showed people some basic animated shapes and asked them to describe what they saw. The abstract shapes soon became a story. Viewers saw characters with emotions, motivations, and purpose. They personified the inanimate figures using words like “escaped,” “slammed,” “danced,” or “kissed” to describe their actions. They depicted them with tempers; as cowardly, or as viciously conspiring. If you ever needed proof that humans are meaning making creatures, this is it.