Big news from last week: A massive cyberattack brought down parts of the Internet. Easy-to-hijack “smart” devices crashed some of the world's biggest online platforms. More than anything, it was a failure of imagination. Security flaws were widely known, but nobody imagined using smart devices for this kind of unified cyberattack. As Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems said, "Not thinking it's possible is a failure of imagination." At THINK, we always try to envision the impossible. Enjoy our reads of the week: Can Hackathons give credit unions the financial edge? For Bank of the West, hackathons are less about finding talent and more about finding ideas, Rosenbaum says. "Our relationship with accelerators, venture capital forms, and hackathons are all about what a bank like us does to make sure we're picking up new trends and ideas, and feeding them back into our organization." How should credit unions stress their local connections? "You can re-humanize the branch experience by creating a sense of place, using environmental branding elements that leverage a sense of community. With the age-old barriers to switching rapidly evaporating, ensuring long term with customers can only be achieved by cultivating and maintaining a strong emotional connection. That's why it's a smart strategy to tie your branches to the local communities they serve." Another sign that members favor experiences over material possessions: "Consumers are increasingly seeking things to enhance their lives, creating memories and experiences, as opposed to buying material things they can show off." If your employees are stupid, that's your fault. "Learning is not just intellectual but emotional, contextual, social and ethical. It happens best when people are given the opportunity to deal with new experiences and perspectives."