They say the company Zappos is harder to get into than Harvard. Zappos may sell shoes, but its mission is to deliver WOW through a fun-focused company culture, making it one of the most coveted places to work in America. At the centre is CEO Tony Hsieh, obsessed with the hunt for happiness and driven by increasingly bold - and strange - ideas about how to find it.

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The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated contraption that it would take more than one inventor, with more than one good idea, to make it work. Each of these inventors, including the notorious Isaac Singer, wanted the credit (and the fortune that came with it) for themselves. And so began the sewing machine war: a mire of backstabbing, stealing and misogyny.

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Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science... only he loved "fritterin' away" his time building machines to play chess, solve Rubik's cubes and beat the house at roulette.

If Shannon had worked more diligently - instead of juggling, riding a unicycle and abandoning project after project - would he have made an even greater contribution to human knowledge? Maybe... and maybe not. Are restlessness and "fritterin'" important parts of a rich and creative life?

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