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Fast Company Review

Cost:
1 year: $9.97

Published: monthly

Web site:
www.fastcompany.com

Fast Company is a business magazine launched in November 1995 that is published almost monthly (10 issues per year). It reports on the creative aspects of business - innovation, design, social responsibility. Their focus areas are listed below (the share of their content in each area is in parenthesis):

Emerging Companies and Business Trends
Profiles of emerging companies (e.g. wind farms) or trends in business.
Environment
Building and selling eco-friendly products.
Advertising and Marketing
How to communicate your message to your customers more efficiently.
Design
Articles about the increasing influence of product design on business strategy.
Creativity and Innovation
New products and business ideas, such as green technology.
Technology
Consumer technology products and web sites that arebecoming more popular.

My Opinion

Fast Company is the most creative business magazine in the industry and does a good job in highlighting how innovation is changing the face of business. The magazine doesn't cover practical issues that owners and managers face regularly. It has more to do with the philosophy of business.

But Fast Company tends to get way too grandious when it comes to their ideals. The magazine makes you feel inadequate that you aren't saving the world in some way. It's one thing to promote the virtues of design and style. It's another thing to become self-absorbed. Take a look at the following pretentious, overly-artistic ultra-closeup pictures accompanying the list of articles:

Fast Company tends to evangelize business as the answer for all social problems. Check out the following article titles:

"Most would-be parents prefer boys, not girls. Is part of the trouble, dare we say, a branding problem--one that advertising could solve?"
"Fighting Internet Censorship With A Massive, Shepard Fairey-Designed Street Art Campaign"

My Recommendation

Fast Company has very little value to traders or investors. There may be some content that is slightly helpful - like their list of most innovative companies. The list will contain obvious companies (like Google, Toyota, and Target) but there will also be companies listed that you would be surprised to see - like Payless Shoes - that may enlighten you about the otherwise-unnoticed strategic strength of some companies which you thought of as mundane. I wouldn't recommend getting the magazine though, given that it has little investment value.

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Fast Company Review

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