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Market research can be a slow, fragmented, and difficult process, often involving tedious internet searches, questionable data sources, and time-consuming manual synthesis. This makes it a great candidate for some assistance from AI. What’s more, an update to a popular feature on ChatGPT has made it even better at doing this kind of work. Imagine that you have a potential business idea but still need to validate how viable it actually is, identify primary competitors in your market, and develop an ideal customer persona. Instead of spending hours collating data, explains Dan McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland, you can use Deep Re…

Below, coauthors Blythe Harris and Mallory May share five key insights from their new book, Daily Creative: The 5-Minute Habit to Rewire Your Brain. Harris is an artist and entrepreneur, and for many years was the cofounder and chief creative officer of Stella & Dot. Today, she runs Daily Creative with her partner, May, where they focus on creativity as a daily wellness practice—not an artistic achievement. What’s the big idea? Creativity is a natural human capacity that grows stronger with use. When we treat creativity as a small daily practice rather than a high-stakes performance, it becomes a powerful tool for well-being, flexibility, and feeling more a…

For many people, the COVID-19 pandemic feels like a distant memory. In reality, the SARS‑CoV‑2 coronavirus is still spreading widely across the globe and continues to evolve into new variants. Sometimes these variants are no more dangerous than the previous ones. Yet each newly discovered variant also has the potential to be more harmful than the last, which is why health organizations worldwide monitor emerging variants. Currently, health officials are tracking a new Covid-19 variant called BA.3.2, also known as “Cicada.” Here’s what you need to know about it. What is BA.3.2 ‘Cicada’? BA.3.2 “Cicada” is an offshoot of a COVID-19 variant that has been circ…

Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, has proposed a delay to the state’s landmark 2019 climate law, saying its goals would be too costly and could worsen already-expensive utility bills. But a coalition of climate, labor, and community groups counters that there are serious costs to not meeting the law’s climate goals—like more expensive energy bills, lost jobs, and health impacts caused by pollution. Delaying the law would cost New Yorkers nearly $9,000 on their energy bills per household over five years, due to the loss of billions of dollars in energy credits or rebates, according to an analysis from NY Renews. The proposed rollbacks would mean roughly 1…

When the art collective Meow Wolf opened the doors of its very first immersive exhibition, House of Eternal Return, on March 18, 2016, it had roughly 100 employees, less than $1,000 in its corporate bank account, and a dream. Ten years later, the company employs more than 1,000 people, operates five permanent exhibitions (with two more on the way), and has welcomed more than 13 million visitors. Meow Wolf’s early history reads like a tale of cosmic fortune: In 2008, a group of New Mexico-based artists got sick of the local art establishment; founded their own collective to host parties, rock shows, and art installations; and eventually parlayed that experience into a se…

It might not seem like the maker of lawn and garden products and a skincare and cosmetics company have much in common. But both ScottsMiracle-Gro and Clinique have recognized that people are likely to seek out advice online these days, which is why they’re meeting consumers where they are with educational resources. “We’re using a lot of agentic AI to help people in any given market,” said John Sass, senior vice president and chief creative officer at ScottsMiracle-Gro, speaking at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “We have 158 years of experience; we can help you learn how to grow, whether you’re in Miami or Austin or Columbus, Ohio.” Recognizing this opportunity f…

Antonio Bustamante has kept a watercolor of labor leader César Chavez for more than 35 years, hanging it on the wall of his law office in Yuma, Arizona. As a young man, he was moved by Chavez and helped organize workers before joining his security team. Like many others, Bustamante must now wrestle with reconciling the man he adored with the allegations Chavez groomed and sexually abused women and young girls. “I’m trying to figure out how emotionally and intellectually I’ll be able to understand my perception of him as an extremely good man,” Bustamante said, his voice heavy with emotion, “compared to these things that are said he did.” Chavez built a national reputat…

For many tweens of the 2000s, Club Penguin was the place to be. Players created penguin avatars, dressed them up, and roamed a virtual world of igloos, ski lodges, and mini-games. There were puffles, Tamagotchi-like pets to care for, and bustling servers where you could chat with friends, surf through a mine, or lob a virtual snowball at a stranger. At its peak, the game drew hundreds of millions of users and offered an early taste of social media for a generation of kids. Disaster struck in 2017, when Disney, which owned the platform, shut it down, citing declining popularity and falling revenue. The company pointed users to a new game, Club Penguin Island, but that, to…

American healthcare faces a persistent paradox: We have extraordinary medical technology, yet patients often spend years navigating a system that treats symptoms before identifying the underlying cause of disease. This dynamic is especially pronounced for children with neurological conditions such as epilepsy, developmental delay, and intellectual disability. Many families endure years of hospitalizations, emergency room visits, specialist referrals, and inconclusive tests before receiving a definitive diagnosis. Clinicians often refer to this prolonged journey as the “diagnostic odyssey.” It is emotionally draining for families and deeply frustrating for physicians t…

Early this year, rapper and recording executive Gucci Mane was reportedly held at gunpoint and robbed at a music studio in Dallas, Texas. Now, a motive for the crime (and the alleged culprits) have been revealed: A rapper signed to Gucci Mane’s label wanted out of his contract. Rapper Pooh Shiesty, whose real name is Lontrell Williams Jr., has been signed to Gucci Mane’s record label 1017 Records since 2020. According to a criminal affidavit written by FBI agent Brittany Garcia, Williams was unhappy with his record deal and invited Gucci Mane, legal name Radric Davis, to a meeting to discuss the terms of his contract. The not-so-perfect crime According to the a…

HarperCollins Publishers and AI-powered animation studio Toonstar have announced a multi-year partnership to co-produce original YouTube series based on HarperCollins titles. It marks the second announcement this week from the book publishing giant regarding a partnership with an AI-centered company. On Monday, HarperCollins division Harlequin said it entered a multi-year agreement to co-produce 40 animated micro-dramas with AI entertainment company Dashverse. Inspired by Harlequin Romance titles, the collaboration launches in April, beginning with an adaptation of A Fairy-Tail Ending by Catherine Mann. The deals highlight how book publishers are turning to …

Whether intentionally or not, companies build walls. Different business units use metrics that may not align with those of others. And, if it’s an international organization, data-sharing regulations can add extra borders between teams, preventing efficient collaboration. Early in the days of generative AI, I asked a chief information officer (CIO) how many data scientists they had. Most are lucky to have one or two, but he answered 800. He didn’t know exactly what they did though, because they spanned multiple business units that didn’t work together. We helped them establish an AI Center of Excellence (CoE), where groups share knowledge. The result? Several data…

It’s a good day for America’s largest health insurance stocks. The biggest players in America’s private, for-profit health insurance system, including UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE: UNH), Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM), and CVS Health Corporation (NYSE: CVS), are all seeing their share prices rise after the The President administration announced it will backtrack on earlier proposals and increase Medicare insurer payments significantly more than expected. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Monday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that manages America’s government-funded health programs, including M…

Some leadership lessons only come the hard way. Brené Brown reflects on the skills she wishes she had built sooner—and why they matter more than ever. View the full article

Economists and academics are still not clear on how, exactly, AI will change the jobs that are most vulnerable to its advances. Some jobs may disappear altogether, while others will simply evolve and be augmented by AI. But new research from Goldman Sachs this week indicates that the workers whose jobs are hit hardest by AI will find it particularly difficult to secure a new job—and suffer real economic setbacks in the aftermath. Drawing on four decades of federal data—which captured the lives of over 20,000 Americans from the 1950s to 1980s—the report found that the workers who were most impacted by technological shifts struggled to recover and took a month lon…

At its factory in Illinois, Rivian will soon use more than 100 retired EV batteries in an on-site power system that will help it save money on electric bills. The electric automaker is one of the first customers of Redwood Materials’s new energy storage business, which takes old or discarded EV batteries—in this case, from Rivian’s own vehicles—and deploys them in a second life on the grid. By making it possible to charge when there’s excess energy available and the cost of electricity is low, the project “can generate significant cost savings that directly contributes to a reduction in the cost of our vehicles,” says Andrew Peterman, who runs Rivian’s advanced en…

About an hour after the men’s college basketball season ended in Indianapolis with a Michigan Wolverines’ championship on April 6, the team’s coaching staff was already working hard at trying to win the next one. The transfer portal—a digital compliance tool and database to systematically manage the transfer process for student-athletes—opened for Division I men’s basketball players on midnight after the title game, and it set off a firestorm of entries with players seeking massive paydays. However, the public doesn’t actually know for certain who is getting how much money. And in today’s disinformation economy, it’s become a haven for fake news to take the mantle…

Conflict, while uncomfortable, is a fact of life. However, few of us deal with it well–either we avoid it until it swells into resentment, or it explodes creating damage we often fail to repair. In her new book, Anchored, Aligned and Accountable: A Framework For Transcending B*llshit and Transforming Our Lives and Work, (foreword by Brené Brown) leadership coach Aiko Bethea lays out a framework for transforming conflict into personal growth. For Fast Company, Brené Brown sat down with Aiko Bethea to discuss the cornerstones of the framework and how applying it can change our lives. Brené Brown: Your Anchored, Aligned and Accountable Framework, has completely shi…

This week, Starbucks unveiled plans to open an office in Nashville, in a bid to establish a home base in the Southeast. The coffee giant is investing $100 million in this expansion and plans to staff the new office with thousands of workers within the next five years. But according to a new Bloomberg report, Starbucks has had little success coaxing employees to relocate from the company’s headquarters in Seattle. Starbucks eventually plans to have about 2,000 employees based in Nashville. In a letter to employees that was also posted publicly, chief partner officer Sara Kelly disclosed that the Nashville office would be staffed with some new hires—but that certain te…

Two years ago, Josephine Timperman arrived at college with a plan. She declared a major in business analytics, figuring she’d learn niche skills that would stand out on a resume and help land a good job after college. But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. “Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI,” said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio. A few weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use her undergraduate studies to build critical thinking and interpersonal ski…

If you’ve been avoiding giving feedback to someone on your team, you’re not alone. You’re in good company. Well . . . common company, at least. Most managers aren’t avoiding feedback because they don’t care. It’s because it feels awkward and uncomfortable, and they’re hoping things will somehow get better on their own. Spoiler alert: they almost never do. I’ve seen this from multiple angles—as an employee, a manager, an employment lawyer, and someone who spent years in HR—and the cost of avoiding feedback is almost always higher than the cost of the conversation you didn’t want to have. What Happens When You Keep Waiting On the legal side, this patter…

You graduated, moved back home, submitted dozens, maybe hundreds, of job applications and finally landed one—that you’re probably overqualified for. Welcome to the life of a recent college graduate. According to ZipRecruiter’s recent graduate report—which surveyed 1,500 college grads from 2025 and 1,500 rising graduates—the current job market is changing how a new wave of young adults are studying, working and living. And despite obstacles, they remain hopeful about reaching their professional goals in the near future. New grads face intense competition today than in past years, as entry-level opportunities shrink and artificial intelligence reshapes the job …

Many commentators have called March’s California jury verdict, finding Meta and Google liable for designing addictive platforms that harm children, social media’s “big tobacco moment.” The comparison is apt, but not quite in the way most people mean it. The tobacco litigation story is usually told triumphantly, with a malicious industry that was held accountable, victims that were vindicated, and a dangerous product that is now regulated. What that story leaves out is directly relevant to what happens next with social media. The tobacco litigation succeeded not because cigarettes were addictive, but because the industry had committed fraud. For decades, tobacco companie…

Generative AI has made it possible for individuals to perform tasks that once required entire teams. Today, a single marketer can produce campaign assets, analyze data, and generate content at scale. A product manager can prototype, test, and iterate without relying on engineering; and developers can ship reams of high-quality code written by machines. The result is the rise of the “superpowered individual” who can do the work of many. It’s tempting to extrapolate from this that human collaboration is becoming obsolete. If AI can replicate or augment the cognitive contributions of multiple individuals, why bother with the friction of teamwork at all? In our work w…

Congrats! You got your first job! While you may have had temporary jobs while going to school, you might be feeling a variety of emotions, including excitement as well as some anxiety at the prospect of a first full-time job. While being hired means your employer believes that you already have the basic technical skills and academic knowledge to succeed, emotional intelligence will make the difference between thriving and surviving. Emotional intelligence is commonly described as your ability to recognize and understand your own emotions while also having an understanding of other people’s emotions. This is critical in your first job as it determines how well others will…