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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. The famous computer scientist Bill Joy once said, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” If you want to build something on the bleeding edge, you must have an open ecosystem that can pull in as many ideas as possible, skills and talents that exist beyond the four walls of your office building. This is the ethos of open source, the idea that the world is open …

When Michael White struck out on his own after stints at DoorDash and Square, his plan was to help tech employees access the value of their equity while their companies were still private. But as White and his cofounder Gautam Gupta enabled workers to get a line of credit, they found that most people were using it to finance a home purchase. “It makes sense,” White says. “That’s a big reason people seek liquidity—or that’s one of the first things that people do if they have an exit. So it really led us to dive deeper into that and ultimately pivot.” In 2024, White and Gupta relaunched their company Multiply Mortgage as an employee benefit that helps aspiring home…

The chronicle of the polygonal failure known as the Cybertruck continues as Tesla issues a new physical recall that covers all 2024 and 2025 models built between November 13, 2023 and February 27, 2024. In the announcement, Elon Musk’s company says that “the stainless steel panel of the cantrail assembly may delaminate at the adhesive joint, which may cause the panel to separate from the vehicle.” The cantrail is the portion of the roof that joins the pillars that form the vehicle’s roof structure. Tesla adds that, “if the cantrail panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase the risk of injury or…

A U.S. influencer has united Australia—and much of the world—in outrage after filming and filming herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother and posting the clip online. The Montana-based content creator, known as “Sam Jones”, calls herself a “wildlife biologist and environmental scientist” on her now-private Instagram account. In a since-deleted video, shot in Australia, Jones is seen grabbing a baby wombat from its mother near a remote road at night. She runs back to her vehicle, holding the animal up to the camera, as the mother wombat runs after them. “I caught a baby wombat,” Jones exclaimed in the video. The animal appeared to be distressed in the clip…

The 2001 Tilda Swinton film The Deep End features a scene that has stuck with me for nearly 25 years, even though I’ve forgotten almost everything else about the movie. Swinton’s character is being blackmailed for $50,000 and is given 24 hours to come up with the cash. Although her character is shown to live a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, she spends a stressful day on the phone trying to find the money—and she misses the deadline. As a budding money nerd, I wondered what I would do in her situation. I had some go-to sources of cash for smaller financial emergencies, but there was a limit to how much I could gather quickly. The thing is, everyone has a lim…

Keeping our inboxes organized often feels like an overwhelming task. If you’re fortunate, yours contains only messages from people you wish to communicate with. Realistically, though, most are cluttered with newsletters, receipts, social media digests, and more. These emails aren’t necessarily spam, but they complicate the process of quickly sifting through to find the messages we want to see. This week, Apple introduced a feature to the Mac that aims to help cut through inbox clutter by automatically organizing messages into smart categories. The feature is new in the Mail app in macOS 15.4 and comes several months after Apple debuted the feature on the iPhone i…

Gucci announced Thursday that the Balenciaga artistic director Demna will take over the creative direction of the Italian luxury fashion house, starting in July. Gucci and its French parent Kering said in a statement that Demna “has redefined modern luxury, earning global recognition and cementing his authority on the industry.” Demna, who goes by one name, has been at Kering-owned Balenciaga for a decade. He brings with him the title of artistic director. “I am truly excited to join the Gucci family,” he said in a statement. “It is an honor to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired.” Demna showed his latest and last Balenciaga ready-to-wear…

Quiet is out and the “swicy” trend has calmed down. Now our taste buds are screaming for “crunch,” gritty textures, and noisy flavor experiences. Last year, noiseless squishy gummies and sweet-and-spicy, or “swicy” flavoring, were the breakout food innovations that took over the snack aisle. Remember the peelable mango gummy candy that went viral on TikTok? In 2025, food trend watchers, with a little help from TikTokers, have identified our top cravings. They include crispy foods, bold flavor mashups, and edible aquatic plants. The crunchier the better “‘Crunch’ is one of the trends that I’m excited about,” says Alyssa Vescio, Whole Foods Market’s senior …

Job interviews are the fortune cookies of hiring—vague and often misleading. But companies keep using them, despite research suggesting that typical job interviews are mostly unreliable predictors of future job performance, because they give hiring managers the illusion of insight, and a convenient way to validate gut instinct with zero data. It’s not that all interviews are useless; some formats, like structured behavioral interviews with scoring rubrics, including AI-based scoring algorithms that match responses to actual outcomes and future performance, can be moderately predictive. But the typical unstructured interview? Oftentimes, it conveys the illusion of pred…

Meta’s Messenger has a new logo set in Facebook blue. The instant messaging app dropped the multicolor gradient used in its previous logo for a solid blue that matches the shade used by Meta’s flagship app. Some small, subtle refinements were also made to the lightning-bolt shape inside the Messenger logo’s word-bubble mark. Secondary versions of the logo appear in black or white. “We often refine our designs to enhance the look and feel of our products,” a Meta spokesperson tells Fast Company. “In this spirit, you’ll find that we’ve updated the Messenger color palette.” Online, some suggested the change was made because of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comment t…

Flashes, a photo-sharing app that’s linked to X-alternative Bluesky, launched in beta this week before disappearing from the test store due to what its developer said was technical difficulties. Flashes developer Sebastian Vogelsang said in a Bluesky post that Apple’s engineering team is working on a fix. Apple didn’t immediately respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment. Flashes, which was revealed last month, supports photo posts of up to four images and videos up to one minute long. Items posted on Flashes will also appear on Bluesky. Comments from Bluesky users on the posts will appear back on Flashes. Flashes could be attractive to users who want to …

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. AI and energy are two of the most critical forces shaping the future of our planet—and their relationship is impossible to ignore today. From the significant power consumption of data centers to the growing energy requirements of AI-driven applications, the rapid adoption of AI is driving a surge in global energy demand that is outpacing the growth of renewable energy source…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. For Generation Z, real estate is more than just settling down—it’s about staying connected, empowered, and mobile. Born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s, they are the first fully digital generation, raised on smartphones, cloud-based everything, and on-demand convenience. Gen Z’s influence on the housing market is rooted in their expectations. They bring a consumer mindset to renting …

In June 2024, a team of divers sank a curious assortment of 24 sculptures off the northern coast of Bali. The sculptures look like works of art—and in many ways they are. But they are also memorial reefs that turn cremated ashes into structures that regenerate marine life. Over the past three years, a British startup called Resting Reef has been working to revamp the death care industry. Instead of keeping ashes inside an urn (which often ends up gathering dust on a shelf) or scattering ashes at sea (a fleeting gesture that leaves no lasting trace), you can have Resting Reef integrate them into an underwater memorial that can double as an artificial reef. Now, the…

If you’ve got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it — checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X. It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing. If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time: Delete apps An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time …

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in North Carolina rejected a proposal to unionize, becoming the latest group of the company’s employees to side against union representation. About three-quarters of employees at an Amazon fulfillment center in Garner, a town located near Raleigh, voted against joining a grassroots labor organization called Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, the National Labor Relations Board announced Saturday. The federal labor agency said 2,447 workers cast ballots against union representation while 829 voted in favor of joining the independent union, which is made up of former and current Amazon workers. The NLRB had said …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists have developed an economic model called Zillow’s Market Heat Index, which measures the competitiveness of housing markets across the U.S. This model analyzes factors such as home price changes, inventory levels, days on market, and buyer demand to generate a score indicating whether a market is hot (favoring sellers) or cool (favoring buyers). A higher score indicates a hotter metro-level housing market where sellers have more power. A lower score indicates a colder metro-level housing market where buyers have more power. Accord…

As the Super Bowl clock ticked just below three minutes left in the game, Eagles wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith picked up the giant Gatorade cooler, snuck behind head coach Nick Sirianni on the sideline, and hit him with the traditional shower celebration. It was probably one of the best ads of the Super Bowl, and it wasn’t even a commercial. And yet, it still told a story about how close the ties are between this brand and one of the most significant moments in sports. This year, Gatorade celebrates its 60th anniversary since Dr. James Cade first concocted his formula to keep the Florida Gators football team hydrated. Gatorade chief brand of…

Shares of semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) rose 6% Wednesday on news the company is issuing a $6 billion stock buyback, which represents about 3.3% of the company’s current market value, according to data from Bloomberg. The $6 billion stock buyback authorization comes in addition to a $4 billion existing buyback, for a total of $10 billion in share repurchases, CNBC reported. The news comes after AMD announced a multi-year $10 billion AI partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, focused on developing advanced AI infrastructure and technology, i…

KitchenAid just unveiled its “color of the year,” a retro, comforting Butter yellow. While most people are aware of Pantone’s color of the year program (hello, Mocha Mousse), fewer might be clued in to the fact that the beloved appliance company KitchenAid has been running its own version of the concept since 2017. Each year, KitchenAid picks a trendy new hue to outfit a line of its iconic stand mixers. In 2023, the pick was an electric pink Hibiscus, followed by a powdery Blue Salt in 2024. Now the company is all-in on its nostalgic buttery hue. The new mixer retails online for $499.99. [Photo: KitchenAid] A team of analysts from KitchenAid’s parent company, …

I’m a writer, not a programmer, so until recently a lot of the hype around ChatGPT’s abitilies as a coding tool went over my head. But then I realized generative AI’s programming powers can be helpful for more than just coders. It can also help anyone else dabble in code to get things done. In my case, that means creating new browser bookmarklets. These are special kinds of bookmarks that use JavaScript to modify or act on web content, and they’ve always been an underrated web browsing superpower. For years, I’ve used bookmarklets to speed up web videos, remove page clutter, and quickly search my favorite sites, but I’ve always been limited to whatever example cod…

The European Commission is coming for “SkinnyTok.” EU regulators are investigating a recent wave of social media videos that promote extreme thinness and “tough-love” weight loss advice, assessing whether TikTok is doing enough to protect children online, per Politico. France’s minister for digital media, Clara Chappaz, recently reported #SkinnyTok to both the French media regulator Arcom and the EU. “These videos promote extreme thinness. Protecting minors online is one of my priorities,” the minister said in a TikTok video posted Friday. Arcom told Politico it is collaborating with the European Commission to examine the trend “given the public health…

Technology workers in Kenya have held a vigil for a colleague who died in unclear circumstances after she was unable to travel to her home in Nigeria for two years. Ladi Anzaki Olubunmi, a content moderator for TikTok employed by the subcontractor Teleperformance Kenya, died last week and her decomposing body was discovered in her house after three days. It was unclear what caused her death, but colleagues say she had complained of fatigue and was “desperate to go back home.” Teleperformance Kenya told the Associated Press on Wednesday that they didn’t deny Olubunmi her leave to go home. Her family in Nigeria says she only traveled once since coming to Kenya t…

It can be difficult to assert yourself during a negotiation. You may feel emotional about the process, especially if you are countering a lower offer than you expected or are nervous about being up against a seasoned negotiator. Or perhaps you’re uncomfortable with the idea of selling yourself to a potential employer or partner. Whatever the case may be, your approach to negotiations could be working against you. The best way to make sure you don’t botch a negotiation is to prepare for it in advance, writes Lydia Fenet, a leading charity auctioneer and expert in selling and negotiations. That can involve using friends and family to practice how a negotiation may unfo…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Taking the first step towards a new future for your organization can be a daunting effort—but for professional services organizations, the time is now. With 70% of organizations planning to track office attendance in 2025, the corporate real estate landscape is primed for potential. Leaders must fully capitalize on the seismic shifts in the new standard of in-office work and use their spaces to …