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Airports around the world tend to fall somewhere between the beautifully designed and artfully efficient (think Changi, in Singapore) and the messy and chaotic (sorry, Newark Liberty). But a newly redesigned airport in Noto, Japan, a seaside town 300 miles northwest of Tokyo, offers another option with its whimsically themed Pokémon attraction. From July 7 of this year through September 2029, the hub will be known as the “Noto Satoyama Pokémon With You Airport.” The interiors will be adorned with murals, illustrations, and sculptural installations of the media franchise’s adorable and beloved characters. The hope is that the playful redesign will boost tourism to the …

In this era of AI-powered rapid change, what defines innovation at the world’s most cutting-edge companies? Fast Company’s executive editor, Amy Farley, and editorial director, Jill Bernstein, two architects of the annual Most Innovative Companies list, take you inside the ideas and approaches that earned MIC recognition for 2026. In this interactive session, they break down the trends behind this year’s most forward-thinking organizations and share practical strategies that leaders at all levels can apply right now. Whether you’re refining your roadmap or scanning the horizon for what’s next, you’ll gain actionable insights and valuable new perspectives. View the ful…

Most teams respond to communication problems by adding more meetings. Another weekly check-in to keep everyone aligned. Another “quick sync” because the email thread got messy. Another call because half the team left the last one with different interpretations of what had just been decided. The meeting load grows. The communication problem stays. That is because what looks like a communication problem is usually something deeper. It shows up as surprises that should not have been surprises. As decisions relitigated by people who were never comfortable with the outcome. As confusion about who owns what. As uncertainty that everyone feels and nobody names. In ot…

Bitwarden, the maker of a popular free password manager and other security solutions, is quietly making changes. In February, longtime CEO Michael Crandell moved to an advisory role, according to LinkedIn, with no announcement from the company. His replacement, Michael Sullivan, former CEO of both Acquia and Insightsoftware, touts his experience with “all facets of mergers and acquisitions” on his own LinkedIn page, including experience working with leading private equity firms. CFO Stephen Morrison also left Bitwarden in April, replaced by former InVision CEO Michael Shenkman. Both Crandell and Morrison joined the company in 2019. Kyle Spearrin, who started Bitwa…

If you’ve been in the corporate world long enough, you might have seen technical specialists hit a career ceiling. They’re brilliant at what they do, but they can struggle to advance to leadership positions. That’s because management requires a different type of thinking: less task-oriented, more focused on the big picture. This is a mindset that’s common in successful company founders, who employ knowledge, experience, and intuition to maximize value creation within the given context. And it’s a mindset that’s increasingly relevant today. For instance, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs survey from 2025 names analytical thinking as the top core skill emplo…

You are on a street. You see stone buildings, gas lamps, some men in long coats. Is this somewhere in Europe? Probably. But, when? That is the question that WenWare adds to the formula of GeoGuessr, a popular game that shows Google Maps locations all over the Earth and asks players to guess where it is. The free browser-based WenWare drops you inside an AI-generated historical panorama, completely navigable in virtual reality, and gives you 60 seconds to do two things: pinpoint the location on a world map and adjust a timeline slider to the correct year. The person behind the project goes by @underpaid_mom on X. With no real name, no company, the game was created…

Many local government leaders across the country know the types of street designs that reduce the number of severe crashes, but they keep delaying the changes because they’re waiting for money. Waiting for a big federal grant. Waiting for a full reconstruction project. Waiting for the perfect, permanent solution. But while Americans wait, people keep getting hurt. There’s a better way, and it doesn’t require tearing up a single road. Road diets repurpose space that already exists. By narrowing or reducing car lanes on overly wide streets, cities can carve out protected bike lanes, pedestrian refuges, and calmer traffic conditions—without major reconstruction. But…

Below, Laura Vanderkam shares five key insights from her new book, Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance. Laura is the author of several time management books and the host of the Before Breakfast podcast. She is also the host of the Best of Both Worlds podcast, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. What’s the big idea? What if you’re not actually “too busy,” but just missing the secret to making your time work for you? By tracking your hours, embracing small steps, and saying yes to what excites you, you can turn everyday life into something far more intentional and a lot more fun. Listen to…

A few weeks ago, I was reconnecting with a former colleague from my higher education days, and we started talking about our current work. At one point, she paused and said, “I love the path you’ve taken, but if you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said you’d definitely end up a dean somewhere.” Honestly, there was a time I thought so, too. For years, that path felt not only plausible, but likely. I loved universities: the intellectual intensity, the sense of mission, the complicated human systems. I was drawn to institutional leadership and to the challenge of helping organizations navigate moments of conflict, ambiguity, and change. I understood academia int…

Jared Kugel, founder and CEO of the e-commerce site Tire Agent, began his entrepreneurial journey with a bad idea. Kugel had been working for his family’s tire distribution business for more than a decade when, in 2017, he pitched a venture capitalist on creating a search engine for tire and wheel products. To his surprise, the VC liked it so much that the firm offered him $100,000 in seed funding and a spot at its New York City-based tech incubator, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. Despite having no tech experience, Kugel accepted the offer and quickly adopted the industry’s “fail fast” mentality. Midway through the program, one of the firm’s partners as…

Chances are, you’re working hard, hustling along, and doing your best to stay ahead of things. But when you strive for success, you can risk burnout by concentrating on a limited definition of success. It’s possible, however, to reduce the likelihood you’ll burn out and ensure you stay energized by redefining what you’re trying to accomplish and how you’re making the effort. Burnout is especially prevalent. According to Gallup, three out of four employees experience burnout. If you experience it, you’re likely to have more sick days, feel less confident, and be looking for another job. In addition, if you’re feeling burned out, you may also experience exhaustion or de…

You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room to command it, but these three habits might be quietly costing you credibility without you even realizing it. From the words you choose to how you walk through the door, here’s what to change so your ideas actually land. View the full article

A case of mistaken identity can cost you, especially if it involves Kim Kardashian. When Kim Kardashian shared a photo of a Texas death row inmate on Instagram to raise questions about his conviction for double murder, there was only one problem: She had the wrong man. With his execution date nearing in early 2024, Kardashian posted on Instagram and Facebook to raise awareness about Ivan Cantu, who was convicted of killing his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée. The image she posted unfortunately featured a different Ivan Cantu – one very much not behind bars and living in Westchester, New York. Her social media team had mistakenly identified that Cantu, who worked …

Martha Stewart just launched a new startup called Hint—an “always-on, AI-native home management platform” set to launch this summer. The venture was born out of a conversation Stewart had with Kyle Rush, her neighbor and an AI engineer. The two wanted to create software that can help identify and solve pesky home repairs, as well as reduce expenses. After Stewart partnered with Rush and home-services executive Yih-Han Ma, Hint was born. “The first thing you do is give us your address,” Ma explained to Fortune. Then, Hint pulls publicly available data on the property. Users can upload further information, like inspection reports and insurance policies, to give Hint…

Leadership is no longer linear. Among the founders I meet, there’s a clear shift: Younger entrepreneurs are starting earlier, building faster, and often working across multiple ventures at once. More than half of Gen Z has a side hustle. Entrepreneurship is beginning to look less like a single trajectory and more like a portfolio. But this generation isn’t just building businesses. They’re building dynamic careers with intent. There is a growing expectation that entrepreneurs integrate social and environmental impact into core business decisions. Nearly a third of Gen Z is interested in serving on nonprofit boards or advisory groups. The line between building a …

Stress is built into every leader’s work life. But sometimes it’s even more intense. Just as airlines say to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others, executives need to take care of their physical and mental health to effectively lead the team and the company. There’s no one way to do it right, and solutions are as individual as the leaders themselves. That said, there are some buckets that well-being solutions fall into, such as exercise, sleep, and healthful eating. But how those are carried out can vary. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members what they do to maintain physical and mental health, especially during a crunch time. What they shared can …

Bill Lawrence, the showrunner behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking, explains his creative process, from finding the emotional core of a story to surviving writer’s block, writing through a pandemic, and building shows that can make you laugh one second and gut-punch you the next. View the full article

We are facing our generation’s digital divide: the AI Acumen Gap. According to our latest Brand Expectations Index, trust in AI is not a baseline; it’s a spectrum defined by professional proximity and generational sentiment. On one side, you have knowledge workers and younger generations who use these tools daily and largely trust the trajectory of big tech and AI startups. Within the general population and older generations, however, only a small fraction trusts AI companies, while nearly half view the technology as a harbinger of a more dangerous future. This divide creates a communication paradox. If you speak to everyone, you resonate with no one. To survive this …

Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old mayor of New York City, who campaigned on making the city more affordable, is facing one of the hardest tests of leadership: delivering on ambitious promises despite facing a challenging landscape. After inheriting a $12 billion gap in the budget—the largest since the Great Recession—Mamdani just released his $124.7 billion budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year. It includes important measures like funding for childcare, worker protections, and greater access to mental health care. It also includes some entirely new investments that focus on creating more affordable housing opportunities for low-income New Yorkers. In a video post…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. A look at the AI landscape for small businesses So much of the conversation around the great AI transformation of business has centered on enterprises, meaning companies with more than 500 employees. That makes sense: For AI and cloud companies, landing a large enterprise customer can mean securing a significant stream of recurring revenue. But if we’re really talking about AI reinventing work and making everyone more productive, small and medium-sized businesses should be a much bigge…

Ian Yang saw a business opportunity sitting on the table of a restaurant. In the darkness of the room, a small portable light meant to make it easier to read a menu jumped out to him as just the kind of product his lighting company, Gantri, should be making. The challenge was that these common restaurant lights are all wireless. “They’re very dim, they’re very small, they’re not really fully fledged, like residential full-power products,” Yang says. But, he thought, they could be. That instinct led to three new wireless lighting product lines being released this week by Gantri, alongside a new digital manufacturing platform that will make it easier for other d…

For high school senior Aliyah Pack, getting distracted during school is the norm. Kids in her Pennsylvania school district use iPads starting in kindergarten, switch to Chromebooks in second grade and get their own MacBooks in eighth grade. Aliyah has ADHD, and finds it difficult to concentrate when she’s learning from a screen. She’ll watch Netflix in class on her school laptop, hiding her earbuds behind her long, curly hair. “It’s very hard to get into the mindset of being in school,” Aliyah said. Aliyah’s mother saw her grades were falling and asked the school to take away her laptop. But she was told that wasn’t possible. Across the country, parents are voicing co…