The toolbox weighed somewhere between eighty and a hundred and twenty pounds. It was handmade — dark wooden slats bound together by tiny nails and strips of brass, with big latches that looked like they belonged on a giant’s lunchbox. Inside the lid, a silk lining with...

I was at a marketing conference last year. Decent lineup, packed room. The presenter—sharp slides, great energy, one-hour slot—spent the first twenty minutes explaining why you should “position your product based on what makes it different, not what makes it similar.”The...

The cable snapped. The crowd screamed.It was 1854, and a man named Elisha Otis was standing on an open elevator platform, 50 feet above a crowd at the New York Crystal Palace. He’d asked an assistant to sever the only rope holding him in the air. With an axe.For three...