Michigan software company founder Richard Sheridan just wants everyone to be happy. But is that a real business strategy?

If you ask Richard Sheridan what dooms a shoddy piece of software to failure, he’ll drop a somewhat graphic comparison: that of an organ transplant gone wrong. “As soon as it gets injected into an organizational structure,” the 61-year-old tech entrepreneur says emphatically, “it’s rejected.”

Why? Because it simply doesn’t “delight” users. “How many times do people, when they touch a new piece of technology, think to themselves, ‘Did they ever actually watch anyone use this?’” he asks.

The same thinking has led the co-founder of Michigan-based software firm Menlo Innovations to the most unusual of management styles — a workplace where hiring, firing and promotions are all carried out by consensus of the whole team. Sheridan has been on a years long mission to promote, within his own business and among many others, what he believes is the single most important factor in any company: joy.

MLB and the NBA are paying lobbyists to help them oppose sports gambling laws … unless they include a payout to the leagues.

As New Jersey’s legislature considered a bill legalizing sports betting last June, Bryan Seeley, the current deputy general counsel for Major League Baseball issued a written statement opposing the proposed law. His first three arguments involved inadequate oversight for professional sports leagues like MLB over the data used by sportsbooks and the types of bets placed. But it was the fourth argument that has since emerged as a lightning rod in the debate over sports betting laws.

MLB asked legislators for the inclusion of an “integrity fee,” insisting that it will now have to devote more resources to ensuring games remain untainted, and so, should be compensated with between 0.25 percent and 1 percent of all handle — the amount of money accepted in wagers — from the state’s sportsbooks, where gamblers place bets.

The Kumbh festival in India, which drew 150 million visitors this year, is notorious for people going missing. Organizers finally have a fix. 

It’s the largest religious gathering in the world. Every six years, millions of Hindus from across India and beyond travel to the north Indian city of Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad) in the state of Uttar Pradesh to bathe in the river Ganges, considered holy in the religion.

This unique festival, popularly known as the Kumbh, drew its biggest-ever audience this year, with more than 150 million visitors — for comparison, 2.4 million Hajj pilgrims visited Saudi Arabia in 2018. But the Kumbh has long been notorious for people going missing in the crush of humanity. Luckily, most of those who go missing today are now being found. While as many as 40,000 people have gone missing in a day during the rush of the Kumbh, nobody has been permanently lost since 2013.