What's on Your Mind?

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. A year ago, our company made a bold move. We put up a million dollars in prize money for any of our team members—no matter their role—who came up with transformative ways of using AI to serve our clients. As a health marketing agency, we saw it as our version of the renowned XPRIZE, hoping that this initiative would truly spark meaningful change and inspire us to think bigger for our clients. …

In HBO’s hit show Succession, patriarch Logan Roy pitted his children against each other for the top spot of leading his media conglomerate. Those who’ve seen the show will know how it ends, but what if he took a different route? What if he established a collaborative, multi-generational leadership team to guide Waystar RoyCo into the future? Granted, it would have made for far less dramatic tension (and probably fewer award wins) for the show. But for Roy’s shareholders, it would’ve been a smarter move in a rapidly changing media industry. Succession planning is a non-negotiable principle for any thriving organization, yet it’s also one of the hardest to get right. …

As national Democrats search for a unifying theme ahead of the fall’s midterm elections, a California proposal to levy a hefty tax on billionaires is turning some of the party’s leading figures into adversaries just when Democrats can least afford division from within. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders traveled to Los Angeles on Wednesday to campaign for the tax proposal, which has Silicon Valley in an uproar, with tech titans threatening to leave the state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is among its outspoken opponents, warning that it could leave government finances in crisis and put the state at a competitive disadvantage nationally. At an evening rally near downtown, Sande…

Carroll Tower, a 194-apartment public housing development in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1974. For more than 50 years, residents there relied on electric baseboards for heating and their own window air conditioners, if they had them, in the summers. But now, the entire building has been retrofitted with a modern HVAC system: 277 heat pumps from Gradient, a San Francisco-based climate tech startup, will heat and cool the property. The heat pumps were installed as part of a $1.25 million public-private project between the Providence Housing Authority, Gradient, the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, energy consulting firm Abode Energy Management…

Her voice cracking with emotion as she stood under the fluorescent lights, Janice Blanock asked her local legislators in southwestern Pennsylvania to take a moment and leaf through the photos of her son that she’d handed them. “There’s really nothing different that I can say to you that I haven’t said already over the last several months,” she told supervisors for the tiny township of Cecil outside Pittsburgh. “I can, however, share these photographs. These are just a few of the many pictures we have of our son Luke, from the time he became ill until before he died.” The supervisors were gathered to vote on a zoning ordinance amendment that would greatly increase …

AI isn’t all about automating core business functions at Fortune 500 companies. Small and medium-sized businesses can also use AI to optimize, economize, and in some cases compete more effectively against much larger rivals. An Austin, Texas–based vegan cheese-maker called Rebel Cheese used it to level the playing field against a larger supplier. Specifically, the company developed a small system of AI tools to help it claw back overcharges from a major shipping carrier. The company is perhaps best known for winning a $750,000 investment from Mark Cuban, money it used to grow Rebel Cheese into what it says is now a $20 million business. Cuban recently spoke about …

If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question won’t be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with “analog intelligence,” to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. “We’re inviting people to have a day without AI,” Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicura’s wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each pr…

It’s the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the “postmark” on a piece of mail—warning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something. If you’re the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means you’ll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail. While the way mail is postmarked hasn’t undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works. B…

Living in Los Angeles and paying $1,000 a month for rent seems like a fantasy for many cash-strapped tenants, or a rental figure from decades ago. But a new proposal from architecture and design firm Gensler and the Pew Charitable Trust underscores the idea that more affordable urban living can be found in old, vacant office buildings. The analysis, which was initiated and funded by Pew and nonprofit Arnold Ventures, looks at the potential of a new kind of building conversion in Houston and Los Angeles, two U.S cities where this type of conversion would currently be legal. The aim is to build a better version of single-room occupancy units, or SROs, that have pr…

When Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe crossed the finish line at the London Marathon on April 26, an Adidas attendant was waiting on the sidelines to collect his shoes. The attendant wrote Sawe’s record-breaking time, 1:59.30, on the side of the shoes, waited for him to take some photos with them, and then whisked them off to Adidas’s archives in Herzogenaurach, Germany. In that moment, the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 became the fastest shoe in the world. Sabastian Sawe Sawe was the first person to ever run a sub-two-hour marathon in an official race, followed closely by Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, who finished with a time of 1:59.41. Fellow Ethiopian Tigist Assefa set…

For global companies, Africa’s promise has long been tempered by a persistent operational myth: that the continent is not ready for complex business. The reality is different, however. The barrier isn’t a lack of demand, but the inability of traditional global systems to handle Africa’s unique financial landscape. Nearly 400 million African adults remain on the fringes of the formal financial system, yet digital adoption is exploding. The conversation has decisively shifted from basic financial access to a more critical question: How can multinationals efficiently manage their core operations like paying suppliers, collecting revenue, and moving money across borders, …

In 2024, Amazon introduced its AI-powered HR assistant, which helps managers with performance reviews and workforce planning. Similarly, Tesla deployed AI personas to assist in real-time production monitoring and supply chain optimization. These advancements showcase how AI personas are becoming essential in business operations, streamlining processes, and enhancing decision-making. As artificial intelligence evolves, we’re witnessing two interrelated phenomena shaping our future: AI personas and agentic AI. These developments bring both opportunities and challenges. Understanding AI Personas AI personas are collections of digital elements that combine to form …

I’ve been using Claude Cowork extensively over the past month and a half. And not coincidentally, I’ve been more productive than I ever have in that same period. The shift to working agentically is something so profound, you really can’t understand it until you experience it for yourself. Just one example: As the operator of a business selling AI training courses online, email marketing is an important component of getting the word out about them. But much of the work is rote: segmenting my email list, creating templates, writing largely similar drafts, and scheduling them in my email provider—a piece of software I look forward to using about as much as a visit to the…

Social media has fundamentally rewritten the rules of beauty. Trends that once took years to trickle from runway to consumer now emerge, peak, and drive real-world consultations within weeks. Consumers scroll past filler trends and noninvasive procedures during their lunch breaks and book appointments before dinner. The trend-to-treatment pipeline has never moved faster, and the stakes have never been higher. There’s a fundamental mismatch at the heart of the system: Aesthetic inspiration is social and collective, but aesthetic results are deeply personal. What works for one face, skin type, or bone structure won’t always work for another. Yet, consumers routinely mak…

More than 78% of companies are using AI at work. Much of its use has centered on hiring and recruiting. But AI’s influence is quickly seeping into other parts of doing business. For HR teams that are strapped for resources and with burgeoning demands on their time, AI is significantly reducing the burden of administrative work: More than 90% are already using AI to screen résumés, using the tech to communicate with or evaluate applicants. But now employers are experimenting with plenty of other use cases for AI tools. Fast Company reached out to a number of tech companies to find out how they are deploying AI beyond hiring and recruiting. As one human resourc…

With a new season of mass layoffs upon us, it seems corporate America has found a new scapegoat. When Amazon recently disclosed that upcoming layoffs would impact 14,000 corporate jobs, the tech giant said the cuts would help make Amazon leaner. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” HR leader Beth Galetti said in a memo. (Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has since clarified that the layoffs are driven by culture, not AI or the bottom line.) Other tech companies like Microsoft have trimmed headcount this year to the tune of over 15,000 layoffs, a…

Precision agriculture uses tools and technologies such as GPS and sensors to monitor, measure, and respond to changes within a farm field in real time. This includes using artificial intelligence technologies for tasks such as helping farmers apply pesticides only where and when they are needed. However, precision agriculture has not been widely implemented in many rural areas of the United States. We study smart communities, environmental health sciences, and health policy and community health, and we participated in a research project on AI and pesticide use in a rural Georgia agricultural community. Our team, led by Georgia Southern University and the City …

People often take walking for granted. We just move, one step after another, without ever thinking about what it takes to make that happen. Yet every single step is an extraordinary act of coordination, driven by precise timing between spinal cord, brain, nerves, muscles, and joints. Historically, people have used stopwatches, cameras, or trained eyes to assess walking and its deficits. However, recent technological advances such as motion capture, wearable sensors, and data science methods can record and quantify characteristics of step-by-step movement. We are researchers who study biomechanics and human performance. We and other researchers are increasingly app…

Hurricanes are America’s most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. Since 1980, these powerful tropical storms have done more than US$1.5 trillion in damage and killed more than 7,000 people. The No. 1 cause of the damages and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge. Storm surge is the rise in the ocean’s water level, caused by a combination of powerful winds pushing water toward the coastline and reduced air pressure within the hurricane compared to the pressure outside of it. In addition to these factors, waves breaking close to the coast cause the sea level to increase near the coastline, a phenomeno…

Imagine starting a new job where your onboarding feels personalized just for you, with an AI assistant guiding you through training, introducing you to teammates, and checking in on how you’re settling in. That level of personalization in the workplace isn’t just a concept for the future – it’s already here and happening more rapidly than many HR departments anticipate. AI is transforming HR in the workplace. In 2026, AI won’t just take over repetitive tasks, but it will fundamentally change how companies hire, onboard, coach, and retain employees. The result is HR teams that are more strategic, data-driven, and more human than ever. After more than a decade worki…

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many executives think that bringing employees back to the office is the secret to restoring productivity. But they’re wrong. That’s not what’s happening in those newly populated offices. Instead, your employees are more likely to be joining video calls from company desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones while doing work they could have done at home. Only now they’re paying $20 to commute and eating sad desk salads to get through the day. The timing couldn’t be more ironic. A new wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates arrive just as companies pour millions into AI initiatives designed to automate work, eliminate roles, an…

A question I often get when I train editorial teams on the use of AI is, “Is using AI cheating?” Although it’s a yes or no question, it’s obviously not a yes or no answer. The short answer is sometimes, but the key to figuring out the long answer is using the tools with an open mind. If you’re a professional in a field like journalism, you’ll generally be able to tell when it’s speeding up drudgery and when your judgment and expertise are most needed. However, the recent viral story in New York magazine about how colleges and universities are struggling with rampant, unauthorized AI use from students got me thinking about what’s happening much earlier in the pipel…

In the past several years, the trend of “going direct” in public relations has gotten trendy. Broadly, the idea is that certain companies—mainly tech startups—stand a better chance of advancing their own narratives by sidestepping traditional PR and media altogether. Instead, the company founder, fellow executives, and partners would post content to the internet and social media to directly communicate with their customers. There’s naturally been a lot of consternation in the media and PR industries about how effective this kind of approach is, the real value of traditional PR, and whether a company can really chart their own path without some kind of third-party vali…

Over the last five years, artificial intelligence has shifted from a fringe interest to one of the most important drivers of global economic growth. So important has the technology become that the United Nations Security Council held its first open debate on artificial intelligence last month. While little of substance was achieved, a General Assembly resolution authorizing the creation of an independent scientific panel on AI may have a more enduring impact. One of the core questions this panel will seek to answer is how AI can support sustainable economic development without entrenching inequality. The potential dangers here have deep historical parallels. AI runs o…