What's on Your Mind?

The call comes on a Tuesday morning. Taiwan Strait tensions have escalated overnight. Markets are already moving. Your CFO is on one line, your General Counsel on another. By the time you’ve hung up, your head of communications is in the doorway. Most CEOs have planned and prepared for this moment. In my work running a global communications firm, I’ve been part of the war-gaming sessions. But I’d contend that most leaders aren’t ready for it. Not because they haven’t been paying attention to geopolitics—they have. But because their teams have been assessing the Taiwan risk through a single lens: geoeconomic exposure. The financial model has been stress-tested. The…

“I would like to introduce our Principal Auctioneer for the Broad Arrow sale today, Lydia Fenet at the Amelia.” As I walk up the steps to the podium to take my place next to the auction reader, I look out at a packed room of over a thousand people sitting and standing around the room. 10, 9, 8. Adrenaline floods my body. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. 7, 6, 5. Shoulders back. Chin up. Eyes forward. I listen as the reader finishes the last minute sale announcement and gives a brief description of the first car we will be selling. 4, 3. As he is finishing the description I open the binder that holds all the auction information in front of me, glancing at th…

When I launched TaskRabbit in 2008, I thought entrepreneurship was about persistence. The narrative in Silicon Valley was simple. If you believe in an idea strongly enough and push hard enough, success eventually follows. Years later, after building TaskRabbit into one of the companies that helped define the early gig economy, I started hosting a podcast called “Breaking Precedent.” I wanted to talk with founders, investors, and innovators who had changed the rules in their industries. What I expected to hear were stories about grit and determination. What I actually heard were stories about something else entirely. Again and again, the most pivotal moments in the…

AI is already transforming how organizations operate, compete, and create value, and adoption is accelerating across industries. Businesses that are experimenting with AI and learning how to move from initial ideas to deployment are building the infrastructure to deliver value both now and in the future. Those that are waiting—for the technology to mature, for conditions to stabilize, for someone else to figure it out first—risk finding that a competitor has upended their market before they’ve even begun adapting to this new era. Given the current chaos in global markets and geopolitics, the temptation to avoid change and pursue a defensive strategy is strong. But it …

Google’s sustainability webpage once specifically mentioned the company’s goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, and included a subpage titled “operating sustainably.” But that pledge has disappeared from the main page, which now highlights the company’s commitment to artificial intelligence. The subpage was renamed “our operations.” Google maintains that it is still aiming for a 2030 goal, though executives have acknowledged that the growth of AI makes it challenging. Still, the change to the sustainability page is an example of how tech companies are being a bit quieter about their climate goals as they expand their use of AI. The explosive growth of…

In the Cow Hollow neighborhood of San Francisco, at the corner of Union and Webster Streets, sits a small gift shop that many visitors might stroll past. The Andon Market doesn’t have the widest assortment of products, favoring the open spaces you’d be more likely to find in an Apple store. And on its opening day, the store’s manager neglected to schedule any workers to open the doors. That kind of mistake would embarrass most founders. Andon Market’s founder felt no shame. It found, the founder felt nothing at all. The store was conceived and launched by artificial intelligence. Welcome to the Bay Area’s first AI-run store, selling everything from artisanal choco…

When women don’t talk money, they lose it—Emma Grede says it’s time to break the silence. View the full article

“We’re all on the same page.” You’ve said it. Your team has said it. And somewhere between that meeting and getting the work done, things went wrong. Steve, the CEO of a fast-growth financial startup, thought his leadership team was perfectly aligned. After months of planning, they all agree on one goal: becoming AI-centric. But that illusion of alignment fell apart the moment Steve brought me in. Operations thought “AI-first” meant efficiency—eliminating as many jobs as possible. Marketing saw it as a cool slogan, not a real change in how they worked. Product Management thought AI should inform decisions, but not replace human judgment. The executive…

Lauren Sánchez Bezos is great at being happy, so much so she is encouraging other to pursue unapologetic happiness too. But, unsurprisingly, those without private jets aren’t buying it. Over the weekend, The New York Times published a profile on Jeff Bezos’s new wife, Sánchez Bezos, offering a glimpse into the powerful couple’s daily life. Their mornings, for example, start of at their $230 million compound in Florida, where the couple crafts a gratitude list before kicking off their day. The story also dissects the couple’s dynamic—regular exercise and leaning on each other for advice—a blueprint for reaching happiness while enjoying the perks of wealth. As the …

More than a thousand movie stars, writers, directors, and other Hollywood professionals announced their “unequivocal opposition” to the proposed Paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery in an open letter published Monday. A large swath of the movie industry, including Denis Villeneuve, Kristen Stewart, J.J. Abrams, and Joaquin Phoenix came out forcefully against the $111 billion deal that would consolidate two legacy studios into one, arguing that it further reduce jobs and movies in an already downsized Hollywood. “The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in th…

McDonald’s drinks menu is growing to soon include new flavors, dirty sodas, and eventually energy drinks. The fast food chain is adding new menu options later this year like a Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer, a Dirty Dr Pepper, and a Mango Pineapple Refresher, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. McDonald’s confirmed to Fast Company that crafted sodas and new Refreshers will be introduced nationwide beginning next month. “Our fans’ love for McDonald’s beverages runs deep, from rallying for the return of Hi-C Orange Lavaburst to coining the iconic ‘Spicy Sprite,'” McDonald’s US tells Fast Company. “Next month, we…

A few years ago, I started noticing a pattern. Every time a major publication or LinkedIn thread took on AI in hiring, the framing was almost always the same: hype on one side, existential alarm on the other. The talent leaders I actually talk to have more nuanced opinions than that, but those narratives still shape the conversation in ways that hold organizations back from building the hiring processes their people and candidates actually deserve. After spending the last decade building AI-powered hiring tools and working alongside the talent teams implementing them, I’ve had a front-row seat to the gap between what people assume about AI in hiring and what actua…

A California company has recalled more than 3.1 million bottles of lubricating eye drops because it had not properly tested—and thus could not prove—whether the products were sterile. These products are sold under several names at major retailers across the country. The company, K.C. Pharmaceuticals, initiated the recall on March 3, 2026. I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist who has assessed risks of poor-quality manufacturing practices and lax oversight for prescription drugs, eye drops, dietary supplements, and nutritional products in the United States for many years. This recall is very large, potentially affecting over a million people. Using nonsteri…

Artificial intelligence is rapidly learning to autonomously design and run biological experiments, but the systems intended to govern those capabilities are struggling to keep pace. AI company OpenAI and biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks announced in February 2026 that OpenAI’s flagship model GPT-5 had autonomously designed and run 36,000 biological experiments. It did this through a robotic cloud laboratory, a facility where automated equipment controlled remotely by computers carries out experiments. The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans set the goal, and the machines did much of …

The gravy train is picking up steam again at Hardee’s. The Southern-inspired fast food chain has been quietly reopening locations across the Southeast after an explosive legal battle with a franchisee had led to dozens of store closures late last year. Newly reopened Hardee’s restaurants in at least three states—Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri—are being described in job listings as “now corporate owned,” according to recent ads posted on Indeed.com and SimplyHired. They share addresses with Hardee’s restaurants formerly operated by franchisee ARC Burger, whose 77 locations shuttered in December 2025. Some of the listings are marked as “urgent.” …

Issa Rae is a Hollywood success story. Her web series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl launched her career in the early 2010s, leading to her HBO series Insecure and now her production company Hoorae Media. Through all her projects, Rae has been praised for her authentic portrayal of Black women’s lives—but at a recent panel, Rae said that the entertainment industry is no longer interested in celebrating diversity. Shifting tides in the film industry While speaking at TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood Summit last Wednesday, April 8, Rae pointed out a troubling trend she’s seeing on the production side of Hollywood. “I’m seeing it. Just blatantly. Peopl…

It’s about to get a bit easier to find a Trader Joe’s near you. The grocer just announced it will open 18 new stores across 12 states, including multiple locations in a handful of states, over the next several months. Trader Joe’s announced the new locations with a series of “Coming Soon!” announcements. Currently, the chain is in 42 states, leaving only a handful of states, including Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, without a Trader Joe’s store. The latest cluster of openings will include locations in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, U…

In operating reviews and boardrooms, I keep seeing the same pattern: leadership asks for rigor, teams deliver the numbers, and promising AI efforts get judged as underperforming before the organization has actually learned what it takes to make them real. Then someone pulls the plug, scales back the investment, or lets the initiative quietly expire. Sometimes they’re right. But often, they’ve just used the wrong test. The problem isn’t that leaders care about measurement. Strong measurement discipline is exactly what separates organizations that scale AI from those that accumulate pilots. The problem is that many leaders are applying a mature-business scorecard to…

Steam cleaning should be a low-risk activity, but that hasn’t been the case for some owners of Bissell’s Steam Shot products. Michigan-based Bissell Homecare has recalled about 1.7 million of its Steam Shot OmniReach and Steam Shot Omni Steam Cleaners with attachments. The recall follows reports of the attachments coming undone and creating a burn hazard, according to an announcement from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Another 96,000 or so units sold in Canada have also been recalled. Of the 206 reports of malfunctioning products, 161 accounts have included notice of minor burn injuries. In one case, someone reported a second…