Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. At Summit events, unlikely pairings of innovative yet seemingly disconnected people regularly take the stage. In the past, Summit attendees have heard Kendrick Lamar and Quentin Tarantino discuss their creative processes; investor Brad Gerstner do a deep dive into Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s background and upbringing; and Al Gore and actor and entrepreneur Jaden Smith unite over their work combating the climate crisis. This signature feature of Summit events will be no different at Summit Detroit this June 5–8. “Summit becomes the conduit for all of these amazing intersections to happen,” says Summit CEO J…

Burnout is a pervasive issue that can be damaging to individuals and costly to organizations. As Fast Company has reported previously, 82% of workers feel at risk for burnout and could be costing companies an average of $21,000 per year in lost productivity. And while there’s no shortage of advice about how to prevent burnout, prevention isn’t always a level playing field. Here are some situations that may leave you more prone to burnout than others: 1. If you’re in the wrong work environment Kandi Wiens, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the university’s master’s in medical education program, says that some people may be more at risk for b…

The tech industry is often cautious about tying layoffs to performance, even if it might play a role in who gets dismissed during widespread job cuts. But this year has signaled a noticeable shift in how some of the biggest players in tech approach layoffs: Earlier this year, Meta cut more than 3,000 employees in a move that the company framed as “non-regrettable attrition.” The number of Amazon employees on performance improvement plans reportedly surged in recent years, leading up to layoffs—and Microsoft has allegedly cut thousands of employees who were classified as “low performers.” Now Microsoft is giving low performers the option to accept a payout and leave the c…

Most companies operate like one-sided cubes—what the world sees is curated and polished, but the rest remains hidden, even to the people inside. Strategy becomes surface-level. Teams chase goals without grounding. Leaders lead without alignment. In a world growing more complex and emotionally disoriented, that’s not just unsustainable—it’s dangerous. It’s time for a Strategy Renaissance. We need to move beyond sterile planning cycles and rediscover the human heart of strategy. In this new era of work, meaning isn’t a bonus feature—it’s your sharpest edge. The Great Divide Between Strategy and Meaning We have long treated strategy as the realm of numbers a…

Neri Karra Sillaman is an adviser and speaker who was recently recognized on the Thinkers50 “Radar” list for 2024 as one of the top 30 emerging management thinkers. She is an adjunct professor and entrepreneurship expert at the University of Oxford, and founder of Neri Karra, a global luxury leather goods brand that has been manufacturing for leading Italian labels for over 25 years. A former child refugee, she brings a powerful perspective on resilience, cultural innovation, and ethical business to her work. Her insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, and Fortune. What’s the big idea? It’s no coincidence that immigrant-led business…

It’s been a pretty wild year in the world of advertising and brand work. Amid broader industry shifts, there has been some incredible brand work created this year across many different platforms, film, experiences, and more. But as we bring 2025 to a close, I wanted to take a more targeted look at some of the best commercials of this year. I’ve tried to adhere to criteria that includes level of difficulty, creative inventiveness, risk, and sheer entertainment. Despite how much great work is out there, sadly, most advertising can be generously categorized as cultural wallpaper. But these select few pieces of brand weren’t a waste of time—they made me laugh, think…

As the 2025 Major League Baseball season gets into full swing, you’d expect the league to use its marketing muscle to hype the heroics of its biggest stars. But its anime-style ad campaign takes that idea to a new level. “Heroes of the Game” mixes the on-field superpowers of players like Shohei Ohtani, Paul Skenes, Julio Rodríguez, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge with the pop cultural artistry of anime hits like One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist. Created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, the league also partnered with Passion Pictures and Echelle Studios in Japan, as well as acclaimed animation director Hiroshi Shimizu, to make the work. The first ad features a whol…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking at the Bank of America Housing Symposium in June 2025, Toll Brothers CEO Doug Yearley—who has since stepped down—acknowledged that parts of Arizona, Florida, and Texas were dealing with spec inventory “overhangs” that he said would eventually “clean up [over time] because the builders are starting fewer spec homes in the softer market, and I think that will naturally work its way out.” At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, when nearly everything homebuilders were building was flying off the shelves, there were only 32,000 unsold completed ne…

If you’re sick of paying for subscription services, Tesla has some bad news for you. The EV maker announced Wednesday that going forward, its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software will only be available as a monthly subscription – not a one-time payment. Tesla CEO Elon Musk broke the news on X, the social media platform he owns, noting that the shift will happen on February 14. “FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter,” Musk wrote, offering no details about how that change would affect the software’s pricing. While the price of access to Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode has fluctuated over time, the current one-time purchase price for the software …

For years, the customer experience playbook has been treated like a technology problem. Add another tool. Deploy another bot. Automate another workflow. And yet here we are, heading into 2026 with customer satisfaction in freefall. Forrester’s 2025 CX Index shows scores hitting a new low for the fourth consecutive year. This isn’t a failure of ambition or innovation. It’s a failure of how we define success. Leaders have been optimizing for activity instead of outcomes. In the rush to scale digital engagement, many organizations fell into a bit of a containment trap, measuring success by how many customer interactions never reach a human. On paper, it looks efficient. In…

Timothée Chalamet drew widespread condemnation when he implied that opera is a dying artform, and said that “no one cares” about the medium anymore. It was a dumb thing to say. And it’s also wrong. Opera, like most performing arts, is still recovering from the pandemic. But the industry as a whole is actually growing–dramatically. Globally, opera is worth $3.4 billion, and is expected to grow to $5.33 billion over the next few years. First-time attendance has more than tripled since 2021, as more young people head to the opera house. And opera’s resurgence is part of a bigger trend; in multiple ways and across age groups and formats, people are turnin…

A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians. The study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes two smaller ones that detected evidence of infection in previously undiagnosed farmworkers. In those studies, several of the infected workers remembered having symptoms of H5N1 bird flu, while none of the veterinarians in the new paper recalled any such symptoms. The new study is more evidence that the official U.S. tally of confirmed human bird flu infections — 68 in the last year — is likely a significant undercount, said Dr. Gregory Gray, an infectious disease researcher at the University o…

Years ago, I asked my born-organized sister how she managed to keep her place looking so nice all the time. She gave me an odd look and replied, “I put things away when I’m done with them.” I’m reminded of this infuriating conversation whenever I read most introductory budgeting advice. Money experts will assure their audience that creating a successful budget is simple. “Just track your income and spending and make sure the second number is lower than the first,” they say, often with a tone that makes it sound like they’re worried about your ability to tie your own shoes. But most people need to know how to do these supposedly simple things. And just as my siste…

One of the wonderful things about watching AppleTV’s Severance is seeing the variety of “employee appreciation events” they throw. Each one worse than the last, but they provide wonderful satire of the flat attempts many companies make to demonstrate to their employees that they are valued. The truth is that employee appreciation is not shown by any event. It turns out that if you want the people who work in an organization to feel appreciated, you need to show that they are respected and valued every day. Managers should not wait for special occasions to say nice things about their employees’ performance. Instead, leaders need to be looking for chances to complim…

SoundCloud is facing backlash after creators took to social media to complain upon discovering that the music-sharing platform uses uploaded music to train its AI systems. According to SoundCloud’s terms of use, unless a separate agreement states otherwise, users “explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services.” These terms appear to have been added to SoundCloud’s website in February 2024. Futurism was the first to report on artists’ concerns. Musical duo The Flight brought attention to the terms thi…

Tonight will be the perfect evening to stay up late in the United States, because the moon is going to put on a spectacular show. In the wee hours of the morning, night owls can witness a full blood moon, supermoon, “worm” moon, and a total lunar eclipse. In addition to Americans, parts of Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and Africa can also get in on the action. Let’s take a deeper look at what that means and how you can see the spectacle: The March 2025 full moon is many things According to NASA, in the 1930s the Maine Farmers’ Almanac started publishing names for the full moons based on Native American traditions. This took off and became the pre…

Igloo is recalling more than 1 million of its coolers sold across the U.S., Mexico and Canada due to a handle hazard that has resulted in a handful of fingertip injuries, including some amputations. The now-recalled “Igloo 90 Qt. Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers” have a tow handle can pinch users’ fingertips against the product — posing potential amputation and other crushing risks, according to a Thursday recall notice from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Igloo has received 12 injury reports in the U.S., the CPSC notes, which include fingertip amputations, bone fractures, and lacerations. There are no known injuries in Canada or Mexico. Consumers i…

It’s easy to get swept up in headlines predicting the end of the design industry as we know it. It’s true: AI tools can now generate in seconds what once took days for teams of designers. So it’s no longer a question of whether these tools will be used—but how, why, and by whom. If design as we know it is being automated, what remains? And what becomes more valuable? In the 1930s, cultural critic Walter Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction—photography, film, the printing press—was transforming not just how art was made, but how it was perceived. His concern wasn’t just about losing originality or craft; it was about losing aura—the sense of presence that comes fr…

In this episode of FC Explains, hosted by Josh Christensen, we break down why the 2024 WNBA Draft is being hailed as the moment that changed everything for women’s sports. From record-breaking viewership and unprecedented media attention to historic endorsement deals and social media buzz, this draft marked a new era for female athletes and the business of sports. View the full article

As a consultancy owner, I’ve been experimenting heavily with the headline AI applications for the better part of two years now. Our teams have tested it across dozens of products and use cases. Some experiments worked immediately. Others failed at first but succeeded six months later when the models improved. Some we’re still figuring out. The results keep evolving. A lot of leaders are obsessing over AI strategies right now. Detailed roadmaps, implementation plans, and resource allocation. I get it. Leadership wants clarity, stakeholders want commitments, and everyone wants to know the plan. But here’s the issue. Technology is moving way faster than tradition…

Today’s corporate job market presents serious challenges for recent college grads. In part, that’s because the job market is difficult for everyone. But it’s also because entry-level job seekers don’t have as much experience and must work harder to show why their skill set and background makes them a good fit for a role. I recently reached out to Katie Smith, who offers career guidance for young professionals on her site Get a Corporate Job. She encourages students to take the following steps to land their first full-time position—and others to come. 1. UNDERSTAND THE JOBS LISTED First, begin with a deep dive into the jobs that interest you. You may have a majo…

​​Recent breakthroughs in generative AI have centered largely on language and imagery—from chatbots that compose sonnets and analyze text to voice models that mimic human speech and tools that transform prompts into vivid artwork. But global chip giant Nvidia is now making a bolder claim: the next chapter of AI is about systems that take action in high-stakes, real-world scenarios. At the recent International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025) in Singapore, Nvidia unveiled more than 70 research papers showcasing advances in AI systems designed to perform complex tasks beyond the digital realm. Driving this shift are agentic and foundational AI mode…

Well over a decade on from its initial launch, it’s safe to say that Google Glass was not a success. While the product had some forward-thinking ideas, it’s generally not a good sign when your product leads to the coinage of a brand-new insult. The design was off-putting and the technology wasn’t ready—and neither was society. Today, things are a little different. Meta and Ray-Ban’s smart glasses are a hit, despite offering the same camera capabilities that turned so many off Google Glass in the first place. It helps, of course, that they just look like normal Ray-Bans. So for Google’s second swing at the product category, it’s focusing on design and functionality…

We don’t fully understand human biology. Not proteins, or cells or tissues—and certainly not how they all interact in the dynamic systems that make up our body. I believe AI is the answer to that problem. It offers the promise of a step-change in data analysis and eventually will understand our bodies’ processes at a fundamental level. It will “solve” biology. But it can’t be done by generalist large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. We’re going to need domain-specific agentic software that plans, acts, and adapts. The sort of AI that can support us across messy, multimodal workflows inherent to biological research. This is how we unlock the medicines and treat…