Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Like every company in the world, Pantone thinks you really need AI help to do your job. Unlike most companies, however, the people who created the esperanto of color matching might have actually developed something useful. Today, Pantone is announcing a generative AI model that can automatically create a color palette. It was trained in-house on six decades of proprietary color research papers and articles, which is now available in Pantone Connect’s extension for Adobe apps. I don’t know if designers will be into the idea of chatting with an AI to find their new product’s color palette, but according to Pantone, many are eagerly waiting for such a helper. “We observe…

Jon Dale’s love affair with birds began when he was about 10 and traded his BB gun for a pair of binoculars. Within a year, he’d counted 150 species flitting through the trees that circled his family’s home in Harlingen, Texas. The town sits in the Rio Grande Valley, at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi flyways, and also hosts many native fliers, making it a birder’s paradise. Dale delighted in spotting green jays, merlins, and altamira orioles. But as he grew older and learned more about the region’s biodiversity, he knew he should be seeing so many more species. Treks to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which spans 2,088 acres near the border with Me…

At least half of the people I coach identify delegation as an area that they’d like to improve. Delegating can be a real challenge because—let’s face it—it’s tough to let go of control. Many of us believe that if we want something done right, we have to do it ourselves. Plus, it takes effort to explain the task, trust someone else to do it, and then follow up. Sometimes, it feels like it’s just easier to do it ourselves rather than invest the time in teaching someone else. But in the long run, this mindset can lead to burnout and missed opportunities for growing and developing our team members. So, while delegating may feel like a hurdle, it’s a crucial skill fo…

Each business has its unique challenges, but one commonality today is that AI is poised to disrupt almost every business everywhere. Organizations aren’t the only ones rapidly shifting to adopt AI—attackers are too, and they’re doing it faster. The implications of this AI arms race are alarming for legitimate businesses around the world. Security teams must rapidly evolve their cyber strategy to meet these new threats, moving away from a reactive posture that detects and then responds after an incident happens. To outpace attackers, organizations will need to be preemptive instead—deterring, neutralizing, and preventing threats before they happen. HOW AI IS CHANG…

Whenever there’s economic uncertainty, it’s easy to worry that your position is at risk. But what if the worst has happened: Your company has done a big layoff—and you and your team weren’t on the list? Of course, you and your direct reports may both fear that more cuts are on the horizon. And yet, there’s work to be done. How do you support your team, keep them productive and also find the opportunities in the middle of such a big disruption, especially when you may face the need to ‘do more with less’? We work with executive clients—Alisa Cohn as an executive coach and Dorie Clark as a keynote speaker and consultant—and have seen this increasingly as layoffs st…

Paris Hilton’s been an entrepreneur, a reality TV star, a DJ, an author, a model, a singer, and an activist. But she says school felt like torture. “Sitting still under fluorescent lights surrounded by beige walls made me feel trapped instead of inspired,” she tells Fast Company via email. “Traditional environments were too flat, too uniform, and too quiet to support the way I think.” It wasn’t until after being diagnosed with ADHD in her late 20s that Hilton began to understand how to hone her energy and creativity — and how the physical spaces where she worked impacted her ability to focus. “Over the years, I’ve learned that when a space feels alive, so do …

AI is quickly moving beyond rote tasks and into the realm of bigger-picture decisions that once relied only on human judgment. As companies treat AI as a thinking partner, the technology also introduces new risks. But the efficiency gains are hard to ignore, and companies are going head first into adoption. “It’s very much like a chief of staff or a senior adviser,” says Stacy Spikes, CEO of cinema subscription service MoviePass. To Spikes, AI platforms are a second or third set of eyes, helping him approach vendors or handle tricky people-to-people situations. He says he treats AI as a sounding board, not a decider. “I’m not letting it make the decision for me, …

This year delivered whiplash: geopolitics, tariffs, and technology all shifting at once. And heading into 2026, the disruption isn’t easing up. Bob Safian distills hard-won lessons from his Rapid Response podcast this year on how to lead when the ground won’t stop moving—featuring standout moments from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela, Meta’s Clara Shih, LinkedIn’s Aneesh Raman, Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson, and the NWSL’s Jessica Berman, with practical takeaways for turning uncertainty into advantage. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. F…

More than 60,000 federal workers were dismissed during the first two months of the The President administration with more staff reductions expected in the coming months. Many are mid-career employees who have worked for the government for a decade or more, making it more challenging for them to make the case that their skills are transferrable to the private sector. “It’s an identity shift,” says Arianny Mercedes, founder of Revamped, a New York City-based career consultancy. For many of these professionals, their roles weren’t just jobs; they were commitments to public service, she says. “When someone’s identity is deeply tied to government service, being laid off or…

If the football games, boxing matches, and comedy specials weren’t indication enough that Netflix is making a bold move for the live television market, here’s another: Beginning in 2026, it will air live baseball for the first time. Major League Baseball announced a new three-year media rights agreement on Wednesday with NBC, ESPN, and Netflix that could see baseball fans channel surfing to find their games. The shakeups in the agreement mostly see NBC and its parent company, NBCUniversal, commanding a larger share of baseball coverage, picking up several key games and events previously aired by ESPN, including “Sunday Night Baseball.” And, for the first time in …

Google has built a massive business selling ads that appear around search results: In its 2024 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported roughly $198 billion under “Google Search & Other,” its largest profit segment and more than half of its parent company Alphabet’s total revenue. But search is undergoing a foundational shift toward accessing the web’s information with the help of powerful AI models, and nobody has yet found a winning model for placing ads around AI search results. At the same time, new generative AI models can now handle much of the cognitive efforts users typically expend to arrive at their intended web cont…

Google Maps is one of the most valuable digital marketing tools available to your business, particularly if you’re using the Google Local Pack. The Google Local Pack displays top-ranked business listings in a user’s local area. So, when searching for “hairstylists near me” or “Italian food in my area,” a user sees their local best-ranked and reviewed listings for salons or Italian restaurants at the very top of the search results page, along with a map. These listings occupy a valuable space on the search results page, as the first items many users see and appear higher than traditional results. In fact, many users will click on one of those listings without scrol…

If you’re job searching right now, it can feel like your efforts and outcomes aren’t lining up. The job search is changing, and competition isn’t easing. The result: nearly 80% of job seekers say they feel unprepared to find a new job this year. At the same time, two-thirds of recruiters say it’s become harder to find qualified talent over the last year. This tension has become a defining feature of the job hunt. There’s no denying that AI is reshaping how work gets done, and in the new year, both recruiters and job seekers are planning to use the technology to gain a competitive edge. The good news is that the fundamentals of what makes for a good hire haven’t change…

Back in the 1930s, Robert W. Woodruff, president of the Coca-Cola Co., would carry a red swatch in his wallet. Of course, it wasn’t just any red. It was Coca-Cola red. And so anywhere he went and encountered his brand—painted on a wall, wrapping a refrigerator—he would pull out the little swatch to check that it matched. Woodruff understood the importance of Coca-Cola’s brand equity as it expanded globally—a challenge that has only grown since, now that Coca-Cola sells 2.2 billion servings a day across 200 countries, 150 languages, and 30 million points of sale. But where Woodruff used a swatch, Coca-Cola’s design team has spent the past four years dreaming up a modern op…

I’ve always been somewhat ritualistic, shaped by my Midwestern upbringing in a modest immigrant family. I remember my parents calculating the mileage of our ‘82 Honda Civic in a notepad after every fill-up, the same car I eventually inherited in high school. Or saving every receipt on vacation to audit our daily spending down to the dollar. In every sense, they were amazing parents, and their rituals instilled in me a desire to be intentional about how I lived my life. As human beings in a world of constant distraction, time is the most precious resource we have. As a CEO, managing that resource is one of the most important skills you can master. And it’s no picnic. I…

Everyone has their individual bad memories of the pandemic, but one collective nightmare of the early days of that miserable period is the struggle to find toilet paper at the local store. Now, tariffs are bringing concerns about a toilet paper shortage back to the forefront. Suzano SA is the world’s largest exporter of pulp, the raw material for products like toilet paper. And the company tells Bloomberg it has seen shipments decline from Brazil to the U.S. due to tariffs and worries the shipping disruptions could get worse. It is, to be clear, much too early to know what the impact of pulp shipping disruptions will be. The company said shipments were down 20% in…

A smooth retail experience depends on efficient shipping and hassle-free purchases, two elements that can create significant cost implications for retailers. These honorees in the commerce category are developing infrastructure that can make more efficient use of freight trucks, streamline theft detection, and ease the checkout process in warehouse club environments. Flock Freight For reducing inefficiency in truckloads When it comes to freight trucks, wasted space is wasted money. Flock Freight estimates that the equivalent of one in three trucks runs empty because of inefficient deck-space utilization. The Certified B Corporation has built on its patented Shared Tru…

Apple is considering reworking its Safari web browser across its devices to place a greater emphasis on AI-powered search engines, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The disclosure came from Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, during his testimony Wednesday in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Alphabet. Cue was speaking about the two companies’ $20 billion-a-year deal that makes Google the default search engine on Apple’s browsers. The Apple executive said he expects AI search providers—like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity—to eventually replace standard sources like Google. Apple has already seen a decline in Safari searches for the first t…

Chili’s Grill & Bar turned 50 this year. But as a new generation of diners is learning, it’s still got it. Thanks to a series of well-timed marketing efforts—and at least one viral hit appetizer—diners are flocking to the restaurants, which just posted a same-store sales increase of more than 30 percent in its last fiscal quarter. Traffic is up more than 20 percent. Kevin Hochman, CEO of Chili’s parent Brinker International, credits some of this success to operational adjustments: better kitchen technology, better cook training, and a recent dishwasher-listening tour in which the often invisible, but absolutely vital, employees who clean the chain’s dishes were as…

Planning to hit the road this holiday season? Or maybe just thinking about an extended drive of some sort for sometime in the new year? The next time you’ve got a driving adventure ahead of you, today’s Cool Tools discovery is exactly the new virtual companion you need. It’s a truly cool app I encountered recently that enhances your standard navigation setup and offers some really smart extras that’ll make whatever trip you’re taking infinitely more interesting—and enjoyable. Lemme show ya what it’s all about. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sor…

LinkedIn just released its 2025 Grad Guide highlighting the fastest-growing cities, industries, and job titles for new workers with and without a bachelor’s degree. A variety of industries and professions made the list. However, the new data offers a few surprises when it comes to what grads and non-grads are pursuing most often, with many non-grads heading into careers that once required college degrees—and many graduates in fields that don’t. When it comes to where young professionals are moving post-college, the Sun Belt states, including Tucson, Dallas, Tulsa, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, are turning into hot locations for new graduates to get to work. Entry-l…

When we talk about decarbonizing industries, footwear doesn’t often steal the spotlight. Yet behind every pair of sneakers or boots is a complex web of supply chains, raw materials, energy consumption, and logistics. While our shoes leave physical footprints, they also leave behind a much larger, often invisible carbon and waste footprint. The footwear industry is estimated to be responsible for hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO₂e emissions each year—that’s more than the emissions of some entire countries. And it’s a sector undergoing massive transformation, fueled by a perfect storm of shifting regulation, growing consumer demand for transparency, and the ur…