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Zoho became ubiquitous in 2026. Zoho’s trademark business software also includes management solution ManageEngine, enterprise automation and integration software Qntrl and online course launching software TrainerCentral. Today these brands together serve over 1 million customers and more than 150 million users around the globe. And those customers have plenty to say about the service Zoho provides. “‘Partnership’ is a word that gets frequently used in business,” says David Fauser, VP of Sales, Marketing and Strategy for CIMCO Refrigeration. The company specializes in engineering, manufacturing and construction of sustainable thermal solutions and runs their US operations out of South Carolina. “With Zoho, I can say that they have always genuinely felt like a true partner,” Fauser adds. Zoho does more than just deliver software, he explains. The company acts like a collaborator. Zoho helps Fauser’s team think through challenges, adapt to change and improve operations. “That level of customer focus and long-term perspective is what has made our relationship endure over eight years,” Fauser adds. What Other Customers Say To commemorate its 30th anniversary, Zoho asked customers some forward thinking questions about the year ahead. Where do they see their businesses, business technology in general and AI specifically heading in 2026? And what advice might they offer other entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses up and running? You may find some answers surprising. What Do You Most Look Forward To? Zoho begins with an ice breaker. And the responses prove telling. What are you looking forward to the most in 2026 when it comes to your business? LaVerne Cox, CEO, Evergreen Investments LaVerne Cox, CEO of Evergreen Investments, gives a fairly straightforward answer. The Duluth, Ga.-based real estate service provider offers a plethora of services for owner occupants and real estate investors. The company provides brokerage services to help clients obtain income producing properties. It also handles investment sales of residential real estate. Finally, it offers property management services to help clients optimize their real estate investment and refinance services when needed. “In 2026, we are rolling out a web and mobile customer application that will connect our customers to our service operations within our Zoho One applications, which we use to manage our brands,” Cox explains. Zoho offers full automation through Zoho Creator and a payment portal through Zoho Payments. These and other services allow you to run much of your business directly through Zoho. “We hope to also roll out a new brand offering in Summer 2026,” Cox adds. Jessica Miller, Director of Compliance and Systems, Island Practice Management How Can Zoho’s Technology Transform Your Business? Many current Zoho clients use a substantial amount of the Zoho platform to run and automate their businesses. Take Island Practice Management, a company supporting mental health and wellness practitioners and based in Port Jefferson Station, NY. The company offers a huge variety of services to full and part-time mental health and wellness businesses. These services include everything from logo development and website creation to appointment and call management. They also include a full array of billing services, office rental and supply services. On the technical side, Island Practice Management uses Zoho tools to provide its growing set of offerings. “We have already seen how impactful the right technology can be,” says Jessica Miller, Director of Compliance and Systems at Island Practice Management. “We use a large portion of the Zoho platform, and the way the tools integrate with one another has made a huge difference for us.” she adds. This year, the company plans to expand its consulting services using AI to help clinicians create documentation faster. They used a Creator app they made and documentation became a breeze. “As someone who has worked as a therapist for most of my adult life, I have always loved the clinical work and honestly disliked the documentation,” Miller explains. “AI has helped reduce that burden so clinicians can spend more time focused on clients while keeping human judgment at the center of care,” she adds. And what about the results? “With that said, the documentation generated by AI isn’t perfect, but it is a great starting point,” Miller says. And Speaking of AI… Zoho also asked clients more broadly how they see AI and other technology evolving to better serve small businesses in 2026. Clients clearly feel the most useful evolutions involve AI in a supportive role in small businesses rather than replacing human creativity and judgment. Surge Web Design based in Boise, Idaho provides its clients with responsive web design, copywriting services for websites and even SEO and logo design. Natalie Hansen, Co-Founder and President, Surge Web Design Natalie Hansen, Co-Founder and President of Surge Web Design, sees AI as becoming more useful and less intimidating. “I hope that small businesses can learn to use AI as a tool, not to replace people, but to help us do our job better and give better service,” Hansen explains. Hansen observes that for a small team or even a solopreneur, AI can help organize data, create task lists, and even brainstorm ideas. This can prove helpful when you lack other team members with whom to collaborate. Other clients suggest AI’s limits will define how it evolves and how small businesses and entrepreneurs use it. LaVerne Cox of Evergreen Investments, for example, believes AI still needs human intervention. “AI automations and agents have proven their inability to work without the necessity of seasoned professionals who can handle more complex protocols and rationalizations,” says Cox. On the other hand, she believes these limitations will lead to AI development that ultimately becomes much more useful to small businesses. “I think this deepening of understanding will allow the tools to engage more remotely without as many human interactions, but I also believe it will never replace the complexities provided by human beings within the strategy or creation process,” Cox explains. Elea Lopez, Project Lead, Parametrics Medical What’s In It For Me? Still other Zoho customers believe the main factor developers need to keep in mind remains whether new tools actually make life easier for customers. Parametrics Medical provides biologic implants, allograft tissue and regenerative medicine for the medical industry and is located in Leander, Texas. The company uses Zoho Analytics dashboards and automation services across departments. Elea Lopez, Project Lead for the company, says she’s impressed with new AI developments but hopes developers stay focused on the right issues. “For an AI company to say they have the most advanced AI is cool, but what does that do for me and my business?” Lopez asks. “Does the most advanced AI make my day-to-day tasks easier or is it just good at making conversation?” she adds. “Does it actually reduce the amount of work I have to carry out or does it add extra work because I have to go back and check what it did, then correct it?” Zoho began introducing AI across much of its business software in 2025. Zoho Analytics and Zoho Creator, the company’s main automation tool, now both include AI features. But Zoho has also always put customers first when developing those tools. “Vendors don’t need our help, businesses do, which is why delivering customer value has, for 30 years, been Zoho Corporation’s North Star,” explains Sridhar Vembu, Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zoho Corporation. “Before any innovation, strategy, or guiding principle becomes a product, pivot, or policy, it must first affirm the question, ‘Will this help businesses?’” Vembu adds. Zoho believes this philosophy more than any other factor has led to the company’s success and continued growth. What Development in Small Business Software Would You Most Like To See? In keeping with the company’s customer centric approach, Zoho also asked small businesses another important question. What evolution would they most want to see in small business software? Miller insists her greatest wish involves small businesses being put first for a change. “I would like to see more software built with small businesses in mind from the start,” Miller explains. “Too often, technology is designed for large organizations that have dedicated teams for IT, operations, and compliance, and small businesses are expected to adapt themselves to systems that were never built for their reality.” She then spells out what such software would look like. “For small businesses, software needs to be intuitive, flexible, and integrated without requiring constant customization or outside support,” Miller says. “The ability to start with something usable out of the box, and then grow into more advanced features over time, makes a huge difference when teams are small and time is limited.” “I’d love to see software become simpler and more intuitive,” Hansen agrees. “Many small business tools promise to save time, but end up creating more complexity with overlapping features,” she adds. “I’d like to see platforms that communicate better with each other, require less setup, and are designed around how small businesses actually operate, not how large corporations do – but still be able to scale with you.” What Worries You The Most About AI and Technology Development In The Future? Zoho also asked customers what they are most cautious about in 2026 when it comes to technology and AI. Not surprisingly, security ranked high up on the list of concerns. “While the promise of making our days more efficient through AI is great in theory, we have to consider what could go wrong,” Lopez says. “What if there is a data leak? What if the data we feed into AI programs is twisted and convoluted? What if it is used against us by an opposing company?” she asks. “When new technology comes around, it is easy to think it will change the way we do everything,” Lopez concludes. “But I think most businesses aren’t looking to change everything, just to make what they have more efficient in key areas without sacrificing security.” Zoho remains committed to security as it has throughout its entire history. Product security, data security and operational security at Zoho are ensured through the company’s globally recognized compliance certifications and its emphasis on privacy. What Advice Could Zoho Customers Offer Solopreneurs and Small Business Owners? Zoho also asked customers for advice they might offer other entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses up and running in 2026. “My biggest piece of advice is to start, even if you do not have everything figured out,” says Miller. “When we launched Island Practice Management, none of us had formal business training,” she adds. ”We were mental health professionals building on what we had learned running Island Psychiatry, and a lot of our learning happened along the way.” “Curiosity, flexibility, and a willingness to take thoughtful risks mattered far more than having a perfect plan,” Miller says. “Investing in the right software early was also important for us, but just as important was taking the time to really understand it.” “One of the most helpful lessons we learned was that you should not try to fit yourself into a piece of software,” she explains. “You need software that fits your business. Having that mindset has helped us avoid chasing tools that look good on paper but do not support our real workflows.” And Zoho certainly fits the bill in this respect. Quebec-based global security company GardaWorld Security Systems and Technology relies on Zoho’s ability to adapt to a company’s growth while offering maximum flexibility. “As our business has evolved over the past 10 years through further acquisitions, organizational restructures and new operating models, Zoho has continued to scale with us rather than forcing us into rigid frameworks,” says Brandon Lennix, Director of Commercial Operations. Become a Zoho Customer Today As Zoho celebrates 30 years of success and growth and crosses the threshold of 1 million customers worldwide, it also recognizes some of its most recent customer additions. These include Rapid Response Monitoring and Synergy HomeCare in the U.S.; and Mercedes-Benz India, Force Motors, Joyalukkas and Union Bank of India in South Asia. Also included are Flora Food Group, Handl Tyrol and Atout France in Europe; Al-Ahli Saudi FC and Al Qadsiah FC in the Middle East; Grupo Gonher in Latin America; and Creditas and Editora Globo in Brazil. These customers and more come to Zoho because of the way the company’s unique philosophy sets it apart. “Being bootstrapped, private, and built entirely in-house makes Zoho an outlier among competitors,” says Vembu. For more on how Zoho’s solutions can help your small business grow, visit the Zoho website or contact their sales team. This article, "Zoho Users Discuss The Future As Company Reaches 1 Million Customers" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s commitment to putting data centres in space boosts fortunes of smaller playersView the full article

There’s a pigeon pitcher on the dining table. A large burl wood button mounted on the wall as art. A doormat in the shape of an apple. Emma Chamberlain, one of Gen Z’s most influential tastemakers, has designed a 100-piece collection for West Elm that spans furniture, textiles, and decor. It’s full of elegant pieces including a velvet sofa, a round wooden dining table, and cabinets wrapped in cream lacquer. But woven into this lush aesthetic are kitschy little details meant to feel like thrift shop finds. It’s a collaboration that offers a glimpse into what today’s twenty-somethings are looking for as they outfit their first homes. Three years ago, when Chamberlain was 21, she opened her Los Angeles home to Architectural Digest, and West Elm’s team took note. The space had elements of the West Elm aesthetic—nods toward mid-century and Scandinavian style—but the house was also distinct. There were unexpected pieces, like a chandelier made of acrylic chain links, and a groovy 1970s inspired mirror. It was hard to simply categorize whether the look was minimalist or maximalist, futuristic or retro. “My approach to home decorating is inherently eclectic,” Chamberlain tells Fast Company. “Rather than choosing pieces based on what should go together, I choose what feels right to me, mixing styles and eras to create a space that feels unique.” When Day Kornbluth, West Elm’s President, saw the pictures of Chamberlain’s house, she immediately wanted to collaborate with her. She felt that Chamberlain’s aesthetic would appeal to a new generation of consumers who are just beginning to create their homes. But on a personal level, she wanted to get a glimpse into Chamberlain’s personal creative process, to see how she arrives at a look that feels so fresh. “For many tastemakers in our culture, the home is a secret obsession,” Kornbluth. “They have a private, creative process to create their spaces. As a home brand, we have this enormous privilege of getting a glimpse into how our collaborators create.” West Elm reached out, and Chamberlain said yes. This came as as surprise to Kornbluth, since Chamberlain’s life is packed. She first rose to prominence as a YouTube creator in her mid-teens, building a following on the strength of her candid, self-deprecating persona. She has since expanded into fashion—becoming a recurring presence at Paris Fashion Week and a face of Louis Vuitton—and launched Chamberlain Coffee, a thriving business. Home, though, had always been a quieter personal pursuit, but one she has been itching to explore. “It turns out, she had a lot to say about the home,” Kornbluth says. The design process was collaborative to a degree that surprised even the West Elm team. Chamberlain sat on every piece of furniture before signing off on it. She was interested in both the beauty and the functionality of the pieces. “Furniture isn’t only about aesthetics. More than anything, it’s about function,” Chamberlain says. “Everything should serve a purpose. Even the pitcher that looks like a pigeon? You can actually pour things out of it.” Together, West Elm’s design team worked with Chamberlain to create a modular sofa in a ticking-stripe fabric that can expand or contract depending on your square footage. A floor pouf has a hidden side pocket for the remote—a detail that came from Chamberlain’s annoyance at never having a place to store a remote. A telephone bench, nodding to the entryway furniture of another era, serves the same purpose it always did: sit down, take off your shoes, put your key somewhere. The lacquer wrapped 6-drawer dresser has a raised compartment along its back edge to corral skincare and makeup brushes. But sprinkled among these practical pieces are quirky vintage-inspired pieces that bring Chamberlain joy. There’s the pigeon paraphernalia, the button motif that appears in everything from coasters to wall art, and apple-shaped throw pillows and doormats. The aesthetic reads a little like a thrifting, which makes sense for Gen Z, which has grown up on Depop and Salvation Army finds. The tension between the rigorously functional and kitschy is part of the secret to Chamberlain’s distinct look. The collection also charts something larger for West Elm. The brand has spent two decades as a kind of gateway to mid-century modern living—accessible price points, clean lines, the language of Ray and Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen translated for Brooklyn apartments and suburban starter homes. Kornbluth has been thinking about how to evolve that DNA without abandoning it. The Chamberlain collaboration, she says, isn’t a departure so much as an expression of where mid-century has gone for a new generation. “There are things we would never have done if we weren’t doing them with Emma,” she says. “But they feel right for West Elm too.” What makes it feel right is a shared philosophy about what home is for. “Your home should be a place to express yourself and experiment stylistically and creatively,” Kornbluth says. “We don’t want to be a brand that tells you what you shouldn’t do. Our energy is: your home is going to be good if it feels like you.” That philosophy has a particular resonance right now, because it encapsulates how Gen Z thinks about design. Kornbluth says that many on the West Elm team are in their twenties, and Chamberlain’s approach resonated strongly with them. “They’re not interested in having the home or look that is like everyone else,” Kornbluth says. “They’ve grown up with access to so much visual information on the internet. You might worry that they would get lost in all of this, but in fact, they just seem to know themselves better. And as a result, they’re clear and brave in their choices.” Chamberlain puts it more simply. “The most timeless thing you can do is choose pieces that bring you joy,” she says. “Something funny will stand the test of time more than something trendy. You’d be surprised how you can style something kind of ridiculous and make it look intentional. It’s like fashion. You can wear almost anything. If you wear it with confidence, people think it’s cool.” View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. If you want a glimpse of the future of business, I recommend spending a few hours with Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur, investor, and host of the The Diary of a CEO podcast. I did just that earlier this month, when I interviewed Bartlett alongside PwC partners at a series of Daily Decode sessions the professional services firm hosted at South by Southwest (SXSW). Bartlett’s observations and experiences are worth clocking because he is, in many ways, a leading indicator of where business is going: He is an AI power user and promotes its widespread use at the companies he’s founded. He’s young (33 years old), and he’s influencing a new generation of leaders: The Diary of a CEO was Spotify’s No. 1 business and tech podcast last year. Here are three insights that stood out from my conversations with Bartlett: 1. He’s hiring “agent maxxers.” Bartlett says that as more labor can be handled by AI agents—software that can autonomously perform tasks—he sees work at his companies increasingly shifting to specialists, such as a chief financial officer with irreplaceable domain and company knowledge who can direct an agent to supplement their job. He calls these people “agent maxxers”—those who truly understand the technology. “I’m not [hiring] anyone in between,” he says, noting that he recently spoke with a promising candidate who said she’d not used Claude Code—nor had she built anything with agents. She didn’t get the job. 2. Obvious pain paralysis is the new Innovator’s Dilemma. Bartlett suggests that many companies have “obvious pain paralysis”—a tendency to try to address or lessen the pain in front of them, deferring decisions when the upside is vague and distant. He points to return-to-office policies as an example: Leaders didn’t bring folks back to the office for fear that people would quit and because management couldn’t articulate or quantify the benefits. He says he sees the same thing happening with AI and urges executives to think expansively about the possibilities: “In moments of great transition, you have to take bold, decisive action and make difficult decisions now or [face] more difficult decisions later,” he says. “We’re all in that position, including me.” Bartlett’s assessment feels like a 2026 take on Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma, which chronicled how successful companies failed because they focused on addressing the issues of today while failing to foresee new technologies that would make them obsolete. The lesson of both: disrupt before you get disrupted. 3. He’s creating a culture of “pushing on paper walls.” One way Bartlett makes sure that his companies stay nimble (and perhaps avoid disruption) is to institutionalize challenging the status quo. He calls this “pushing on paper walls” or questioning whether a constraint, or wall, is real or flimsy like paper. If a vendor says a project will take six weeks, Bartlett’s team is encouraged to ask for a tighter turnaround; internal processes are constantly evaluated to see if they can be done quicker or smarter. His companies use their communications channels to celebrate the dismantling of paper walls. “When you open up Slack, and you see the intern or the CFO going, ‘I found a paper wall today,’ [you] can imagine what that breeds in an organization in terms of culture,” he says. From his perch as an entrepreneur, creator, and millennial, Bartlett certainly has the flexibility to experiment and provide a window into the future of business. But his worldview—a landscape that’s AI-centric, fast-moving, and disruptive—isn’t radical. It’s the new normal. How are you preparing for what’s next? How are you future-proofing your company? Do you have a version of “agent maxxers” or “paper walls” that you celebrate? Send your ideas to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll publish the best examples in a future newsletter. Read more: secrets of the most successful podcasters TBNP built a media empire by tapping into the ”internet’s dive bar” The making of ”Acquired,” the tech podcast sensation Inside “Call Her Daddy” podcaster Alex Cooper’s next move View the full article

British embassy official expelled from Moscow as Putin increases pressure on foreign missionsView the full article

In a 1944 issue of Arts & Architecture magazine, the architect and designer Charles Eames sounded an alarm. “It has been estimated that one million five hundred thousand houses each year for a period of 10 years will be needed to relieve the urgent housing problem of this country,” he wrote. “The enormity of such a need cannot even be partially satisfied by building techniques as we have known and used them in the past. Large scale industry would seem to be the only logical means by which we can achieve an enterprise of such proportion.” Throughout their careers, Charles and Ray Eames explored how industrial production could impact home building, most famously through their own Pacific Palisades residence, also known as Case Study #8. But a fully factory built house was their elusive white whale. Now it’s finally becoming a reality through a collaboration between the Eames Office, a non-profit organization dedicated to stewarding and extending the couple’s work, and Kettal, a Spanish manufacturer of furniture and prefabricated pavilions. At Milan Design Week, the two organizations are debuting The Eames Pavilions, a modular construction system based on the designers’ philosophy of efficient, flexible, and adaptable architecture. A four meter square indoor pavilion, which is roughly 170 square feet, will start at 45,000 Euros (about $52,000) and is expected to go on sale worldwide in late 2026. An outdoor version of the same size starts at 60,000 Euros (about $69,000) with an estimated availability in 2027. Customers can combine modules to create larger pavilions and it’s possible to stack them to two stories, too. For the Milan installation, on view at the Triennale Museum from April 21 to May 10, 2026, Kettal and the Eames Office will show two of the myriad configurations that the system can produce. The first is a double-height iteration, which looks a lot like the Case Study #8. It has a black-painted metal frame, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, zig-zag trusses, chicken wire–reinforced windows, and vivid wall panels in primary colors. (The price tag for this specific build? $145,000 Euros, or about $167,000.) The second is a single module featuring wall panels adorned with geometric shapes the Eameses liked. While not a one-to-one replica of any previous Eames house, the kit of parts represents an amalgamation of the designers’ core ideas around materiality, structure, and proportion and, importantly, channels the captivating spirit of their residential projects. “The Eames house and their other houses, were meant to be the beginning of something that would turn into a system or into a series, but they were experiments,” says Eckart Maise, author of the forthcoming book The Eames Houses and a design consultant who worked closely on the product’s development. “Charles and Ray were very clear in their intent to mass produce.” The housing crisis is even worse now than when Charles wrote his Arts & Architecture article. According to Zillow, the housing deficit has grown to 4.7 million units in 2025. Could an Eames prefab offer a solution? A long road to mass production The Eames Office has been exploring an answer to this question for years. In 2021, the Eames Office attempted to revive a never-built 1951 wood-framed prefab Charles & Ray developed with Kwikset (Kwikset went out of business before construction could begin), but learned that the regional business model of most prefab housing companies limited the scale at which they could work. So instead, they shifted gears and focused on manufacturers with an international reach who could fabricate metal framing, which is more practical than carpentry for mass distribution. This led Maise to Kettal. Thirty percent of the company’s business comes from an indoor-outdoor modular pavilion system, which it has produced for a decade. The company had the infrastructure in place to manufacture, distribute, and install the pavilions worldwide. Fortunately, Antonio Navarro, Kettal’s creative director, was also interested in exploring an Eamesian design. “It’s difficult not to fall in love with the solutions, the atmosphere that they created, the lighting,” Navarro says. “It’s the kind of architecture that we need for the future because it’s ecological, it’s easy to assemble, it’s easy to transport, and it’s easy to manufacture.” Maise and Kettal spent three years researching and developing the Eames Pavilion System. They began by visiting the Case Study #8 and took measurements, color samples, and material studies. Getting the details right, all the way down to window profiles, would be “important to keep the magic” of Charles and Ray’s spaces, Maise says. They also combed the archives for information on the houses the duo designed for Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza (also known as Case Study #9), the actor Billy Wilder (Maise uncovered an unpublished design concept for the house), and Max De Pree, the son of Herman Miller founder D.J. De Pree. Across the houses, Maise noticed how Charles & Ray established modules and extended floorplans based on the dimensions of those modules. “It gave us the security to say it’s an open system and you can build many different things because across those five or six designs, you realize how open they thought in their configurations,” Maise says. Adapting an icon The Kettal-manufactured system, which ships flat, has similar DNA to the Eameses’ architecture but, “it’s really important to understand that the Pavilion is not a facsimile of the Eames House,” Maise says. Still, the options for customization will be recognizable to fans of the couple’s work. For example, buyers can choose a roofline that’s flush with the walls, just like Case Study #8, or a roof with deep eaves for shading, which nods to the overhang at the Wilder house. For the exterior walls, the combinations could include solid walls, glass, and panels reinforced with X-braces, details borrowed from Case Study #8, or a solid panel adorned with two triangles, just like the Entenza house. Interior finishes like wood paneling and draperies also reference the details the Eameses used across their residential projects. Today’s materials and manufacturing process have improved since the Eameses designed their homes. Meanwhile, building codes across the globe have become much more rigorous for energy efficiency, seismic activity, and wind tolerances. Because of this, Kettal is integrating modern materials and products into the pavilions including aluminum windows with performance glass for thermal insulation instead of single-pane glazing, lightweight concrete panels instead of poured-in-place elements, and aluminum alloy framing which has the same resistance as steel. The Eames Office and Kettal see opportunities for the Pavilion System to serve as Accessory Dwelling Units, backyard pavilions, pool houses, or even a single-family home. But first, it needs to test how the pavilion performs outdoors and prove that it meets the most rigorous building codes and technical requirements around the world. Additionally, creating meeting rooms or private offices in open-plan workspaces represents a “huge potential,” Maise says. (Kettal already sells its indoor products to customers like Tesla, Apple, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Salesforce.) “It’s exciting to make the magic of [Charles & Ray’s] architecture available as a product,” says Maise, who previously collaborated with the Eames Office on furniture when he was the chief design officer at Vitra. “When you walk into an interior, you walk in with all your senses. It’s different from an object.” View the full article

A section of The President's executive order on mortgage credit called for eliminating requirements for loan officer registration, a process industry experts say has never been considered a burden. View the full article

A federal appeals court ruled mortgages in REMIC trusts may qualify as ERISA plan assets, reviving fiduciary duty claims against Onity in a case brought by a union pension fund. View the full article

The gas station convenience chain Buc-ee’s is known for selling a slew of logo-ed merch to its devoted brand fans. And increasingly, it’s also known for aggressive trademark enforcement, suing competitors, apparel brands, and small businesses over logos, mascots, and even names it argues are too close to its signature smiling beaver. Most recently, Buc-ee’s, which has locations across the South, has gone after Ohio chain Mickey’s for its mascot logo, a cartoon moose, a move greeted with some skepticism. After all, as one skeptical commentator noted: “A beaver is not a moose.” Fair enough. But as the Texas-based chain grows, such lawsuits—often focused on cartoon animals, circular badge designs, and “-ee’s”-style naming—have become a defining feature of the company’s expansion, and a notable step beyond routine trademark protection against obvious copycats. “I would say this strategy is not typical,” says Darius Gambino, an intellectual property lawyer and partner in Philadelphia-based firm Saul Ewing. “Most times we see brands go after things that are more exact matches for their mark or their logo.” Buc-ee’s has been willing to go after cartoon chickens, ducks, dogs, even an alligator, in an approach that’s “a little bit outside the norm,” he adds. (Saul Ewing has no current or past involvement in litigation with Buc-ee’s.) The Buc-ee’s legal campaign over its intellectual property dates back more than a decade, but has accelerated in recent years as the company, founded in 1982, has grown into a national roadside phenomenon. Early disputes tended to focus on direct competitors—gas stations and convenience stores whose logos or branding, Buc-ee’s argued, too closely resembled its beaver mascot or overall visual identity. The company consistently invoked the “likelihood of confusion” standard in trademark law, which hinges on a seemingly simple question: Might a consumer mistakenly confuse the alleged imitator with the real thing? These claims emphasize similarities in layout, expression, and color schemes rather than exact duplication. By the mid-2020s, Buc-ee’s enforcement broadened both in scope and frequency. The company filed a wave of lawsuits against businesses well outside the traditional gas station space, including apparel brands, independent retailers, and reportedly at least one dog park. In these cases, Buc-ee’s argued that even stylized or humorous takes on a beaver—or other cartoon animals presented in a similar format—could dilute its brand. At the same time, it began targeting not just imagery but naming conventions, challenging businesses whose names echoed its distinctive “-ee’s” construction. As Buc-ee’s has expanded into new regions, this assertiveness has followed. The upshot is a deliberate, sustained strategy: protect a highly recognizable brand identity at all costs, even if critics argue the targets are often small businesses with only tangential similarities. It’s been effective. In most instances, Gambino notes, the litigation has settled with the Buc-ee’s target making branding changes. And in plenty of cases, the infringement was actually hard to dispute. Others seem less clear cut, but may be risky to fight. “If you’re looking at this landscape now and how aggressive Buc-ee’s is being,” Gambino says, a smaller business might err on the side of caution in staying away from potential branding overlaps. To critics, that raises questions about the line between brand protection and brand bullying. The Mickey’s moose dispute is a case in point. The 42-location chain dates back to 1982 and uses a cartoon moose logo, reportedly trademarked in 2020. While it’s looking to the right, like Buc-ee, and the colors are similar, the illustration style is arguably different. And, you know, it’s a moose. “We’ve been challenged by an out-of-state corporation, questioning the very identity and symbols that have been developed by our family since I was that kid on a milk crate years ago,” the CEO of Mickey’s declared in a statement. “We intend to move forward as the Mickey’s you’ve always known … We aren’t going anywhere.” (Buc-ee’s did not respond to an inquiry from Fast Company, but in a statement to Cleveland.com about the Mickey’s suit its general counsel said: “Buc-ee’s will not stand idly by while others infringe upon its intellectual property rights it has worked tirelessly to build and protect.”) Buc-ee’s might be unusual in its willingness to pursue infringement claims beyond the obvious (or even beyond the mascot’s species), but for now that approach’s success speaks for itself, Gambino suggests. “I think that’s a great strategy to keep people away from your brand,” he says. “Having trademarks is like building a fence. The more fences that you have around your brand or around your property, the better off you are.” In fact, he suspects big brands in the restaurant and convenience store spaces, among others, might be keeping an eye on Buc-ee’s and its trademark battles with an eye toward getting a little more aggressive too. That said, Gambino adds, many of the Buc-ee’s trademark squabbles have been mismatches: a big and profitable chain going after smaller players, largely resulting in settlements rather than actual judgments. The wisdom of the strategy could change if an opponent really wants to hash out the parameters of the Buc-ee’s trademarks. “The more you do this,” he says, “the more you might run into somebody who has the means or the will to fight with you about it.” View the full article

Ten years ago, I published ​Deep Work​. It was my second mainstream hardcover idea book. The previous title, ​So Good They Can’t Ignore You​, hadn’t sold as well as we hoped, so the expectations were lower for this follow-up. This turned out to be freeing, as it allowed me to write Deep Work largely for myself – exploring the conceptual edges of the issues surrounding distraction that interested me most. I was fascinated, for example, by the economic reality that so many knowledge work organizations systematically undervalued focus, and was convinced that this provided a massive opportunity for those willing to correct for this mistake. In this way, I saw myself as articulating something like Moneyball for the cubicle class. I also firmly believed that the act of thinking was at the core of the post-Paleolithic human experience; the source of our greatest ideas, satisfactions, and even moments of transcendence. This mixture of the economic and philosophical was different from the typical book in this genre at the time. Readers probably expected that I would open on a breathless tale of an overworked executive, then regurgitate some stats about interruptions, before proceeding with long lists of tips calibrated to be practical, but also not too challenging, presented in a conversational tone and accompanied by clearly manipulated case studies. But Deep Work was much weirder and more intense than that. Re-reading it recently, I was struck by how many of my stories had nothing to do with the knowledge sector at all. I quoted philosophers of religion and a blacksmith who forged swords with ancient techniques. I profiled a memory champion and discussed chavruta, the Jewish practice of studying Talmud or Torah in pairs. Rather than opening the book on a frustrated executive, I focused on Carl Jung’s efforts to break free from Sigmund Freud’s capriciousness. It was a direct look at the sources and ideas that most resonated with me. This idiosyncratic approach seemed to reveal something fundamentally true about the problematic state of work at that time, as the book soon found an audience, going on to sell more than two million copies in over forty-five languages. (In its wake, So Good They Can’t Ignore You finally found its groove as well, quietly selling more than half a million copies, providing me with a dash of retrospective vindication.) All of this led me recently to ask a natural follow-up question: How have things changed since that book first came out in 2016? I tackled this query in ​a long-form essay​ I published in the New York Times over the weekend. My answer wasn’t optimistic: “The problems I focused on in Deep Work, and in my writing since, have been getting steadily worse. In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all, regardless of how much space we can find in our schedules for these efforts.” Distractions in the workplace intensified over the past decade with the addition of instant messaging tools like Slack and low-friction digital meeting programs like Zoom. Outside of work, social media, which was generally still admired when Deep Work came out, has morphed into an addictive TikTok-ified slurry of optimized brain rot. Meanwhile, new AI tools offer quick-fix short-cuts to whatever intellectually engaging work activities remain. None of this is great news. So, what should we do? The obvious short answer is to read ​Deep Work.​ (Or, if you already have, buy some copies for people you know who need to hear its message!) But that’s only a small step toward our larger goal of a world in which we once again respect the act of cognition. In my Times piece, I suggest a louder response: we launch a revolution in defense of thinking. I go on to suggest multiple concrete actions that such a revolution can include, such as: Stop consuming social media (which is, if we are being honest, digital junk food and something adults largely need to eliminate from a healthy content diet). Keep your phone plugged in and charging when at home instead of on your person. Push Congress to follow Australia’s lead and ban social media for kids. Build work cultures in which phones and laptops stay out of meetings, and find collaboration strategies that don’t require constant messaging. Stop vague demands to “use AI” and instead carefully integrate these tools where they actually make us smarter, not just busier. But more important than any specific suggestion is the larger spirit of revolution. “I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles,” I write in the conclusion of my Times op-ed. “It’s time to move past fretting about our slide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something about it.” The post In Defense of Thinking appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

UK imposes £390,000 penalty on European operation for payments to video streaming service OkkoView the full article

The promise of AI was always that it would handle certain kinds of work so we could focus on others. It was going to free our time, reduce friction, and let us concentrate on what requires human judgment and creativity. That promise assumed we would divide the labor wisely. That we would hand off the operational drag—the scheduling, formatting, and summarizing that eats the day before we’ve had a chance to think. We would keep the cognitive friction—the hard work of wrestling with ambiguity, forming a point of view, and figuring out the right approach. The work where your value is actually made. Instead we handed over the thinking first. Because cognitive friction is the effort you most want relief from, and AI makes it so easy to skip. ChatGPT became the fastest-adopted platform in history, appealing directly to our instinct for instant gratification. We did not divide the labor. We outsourced it. The cost is becoming clear. When we outsource the cognitive struggle, we erode our capacity to think. At work, it shows up as “workslop”: polished output with no real thinking behind it. More than 40% of workers have already encountered it. At the individual level, the pattern is even more troubling. A recent study of 1.5 million AI conversations mapped what this looks like in practice. First, users ask: “What should I do?” Then they accept the answer with minimal pushback. Then they come back and do it again. And then, often too late, comes the regret: “I should have listened to my intuition.” This is not a single moment of poor judgment. It is a pattern that compounds. Each cycle makes the next one more likely, and over time, it does not just reduce the quality of output. It atrophies the judgment that made the person valuable in the first place. This is a division-of-labor problem. And it is one that economics has been grappling with since Adam Smith broached the topic in his revolutionary 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations. He showed that 10 workers in a pin factory, each handling one step, could produce around 48,000 pins a day, while one worker doing every step might not finish a single pin. But Karl Marx observed something that Smith’s efficiency model did not account for: When you divide labor, workers can lose connection to what they produce. They make parts of things and never see the whole. As he wrote in his seminal 1867 work, Das Kapital, they become “appendages of the machine.” Smith showed what division of labor produces. Marx showed what it can cost. What makes this 21st-century moment different is that for the first time, the labor being divided is not physical. It is cognitive. In an industrial economy, alienation was a real cost. Workers lost connection to what they made, to the meaning and wholeness of their work. But they still had labor to sell. Their hands, their skill, and their physical effort were still needed. In a knowledge economy, the thinking is the labor. Lose connection to it, and you do not just feel alienated from the product—you lose the capacity to produce it at all. There is a comfort in letting the machine handle the thinking, while you still feel like you are working, or at least going through the motions. But cognitive friction is where the substance behind the motions is actually made. Skip it, and the output carries none of you. None of your judgment, your instinct, the context that only you can bring. That is the work that is uniquely ours, and it is not work we should be relieved of. The alternative path, where artificial intelligence does give us agency, is within reach. But it takes intention and discipline. The temptation is always to let these eloquent thinking machines go further, to let them think through the implications before you have had a chance to form your own view. Giving in to it threatens to distance you further from your own thoughts—your most valuable asset. If the division is working, you should notice something changing in your day. Not more output, but faster clarity. More time spent on the thinking that actually matters. The industrial age measured productivity in units per hour. In the knowledge economy, the measure that matters is the time to insight (TTI): how quickly you arrive at the understanding that moves things forward. If you feel, instead, like an appendage to the machine—disconnected from what you produce—the division is working against you. Division of labor creates efficiency. It does not have to produce alienation from your own thinking. Done right, it creates the space for human ingenuity. The machine handles the operational drag. And I get to sit here, wrestling with what this all means and what we should do about it. View the full article

French company’s debut debt financing follows rising demand for alternatives to US groups View the full article

Most Western executives think their exposure to China begins and ends with the question of whether they buy from or sell to Chinese companies. They are wrong. China’s capacity for innovation, its manufacturing dominance, and its geopolitical influence are changing the competitive landscape that all businesses operate in. Even when Chinese companies aren’t swimming in your part of the ocean, the country’s policies and priorities have a direct impact on the water. The facts are undeniable. The research institute Rand Corp. estimates that Chinese AI models now operate at one-sixth to one-fourth the cost of comparable American systems, and a U.S. advisory commission warned this week that Chinese AI now dominates global open-source usage rankings. But artificial intelligence is only one expression of a broader shift. The same country that is closing the AI gap also manufactures over 80% of the world’s batteries, builds more commercial ship tonnage in a single year than America has since World War II, and is rapidly becoming the partner of choice for countries looking for an alternative to an increasingly unpredictable United States. These forces—innovation, industrial capacity, geopolitical realignment—are reshaping the operating environment for every company, including those that don’t trade with China at all. Business leaders who want to prepare their organizations for this changed world need to start by understanding these three fundamental forces and their effects. The innovation myth is dead For decades, the comfortable Western narrative held that China could manufacture but couldn’t innovate—that it could copy but never create. That narrative is false, and has been for a while. In AI, Chinese models have moved from trailing U.S. frontier systems by double digits on standard benchmarks to near-parity, and they deliver these results at a fraction of the cost. Lee Kai-fu, founder of the Beijing startup 01.AI, told Reuters the gap had narrowed to three months in some core technologies, and that China was now ahead in certain areas. Nature describes the Kimi K2 model by Moonshot AI as “another DeepSeek moment,” matching or surpassing some Western rivals on specific tasks. When it comes to electric vehicles, the transformation is even more vivid. BYD’s Yangwang U8 is an SUV that literally floats and can park sideways like a crab. The company’s Denza Z9GT model charges from 10% to 70% in five minutes and has a range of 800 kilometers. BYD sold over 417,000 vehicles overseas in 2024, aimed for 800,000 in 2025, and ended up selling more than a million. These aren’t cheap knockoffs. They are better products at lower prices. None of this means the old problems have disappeared. A report by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirms that effective remedies for trade-secret theft remain difficult in China. Academic misconduct is real enough that Beijing itself is now moving to punish universities that fail to sanction research fraud. But here’s the point most Western leaders miss: China is so vast that it doesn’t need the whole system to be world-class. If even 20% of its innovation economy is operating at the frontier, that’s a force larger than most countries’ entire output. And the trajectory is moving in one direction. The supply chain you don’t see Even executives who don’t buy from or sell to China are exposed to its industrial dominance in ways they may not understand. The United States produced around 10 ocean-going commercial vessels in 2024. China produced more than 1,000 and now controls the world’s largest merchant marine fleet. That is quite a gap, and it reflects something qualitative—control over the physical plumbing of global trade. And shipbuilding is just one example of a pattern playing out across critical infrastructure—from ports to cranes to telecommunications equipment. The dependency runs deeper than physical infrastructure. For 19 out of 20 important strategic minerals, China is the leading refiner, with an average market share of 70%. More than 90% of battery-storage applications rely on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that are almost exclusively supplied from China. Nearly all batteries used for power grids depend on China for at least one step in the supply chain. Even firms that think they are not exposed to China often discover that the vulnerability sits a tier or two upstream. This supply chain exposure is growing, thanks to a predictable, repeating pattern. Beijing identifies strategically important sectors and directs massive investments into these areas. Chinese manufacturers rush to compete, leading to overproduction. Global prices collapse, non-Chinese competitors can’t survive at those margins, and within a few years, China is the dominant—or only—supplier left. That is how solar went from a competitive global market to one in which China controls over 80% of every major manufacturing stage. Indeed, so extensive was Chinese investment that in August 2025, the Chinese government encouraged firms to reduce production and eliminate overcapacity, because China was on track to produce roughly twice the solar cells the world was forecast to buy in 2025. Geopolitical shifts The third force might be the hardest for many Western business leaders to absorb: the geopolitical center of gravity is moving. The current U.S. administration has directed withdrawal from 66 international organizations, following earlier exits from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In the resulting vacuum, countries are turning to China. Canada agreed to slash EV tariffs from 100% to 6.1%, with Prime Minister Mark Carney calling ties with China “more predictable.” When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Beijing in January, Reuters described a broader “pivot to China” that was gathering pace, with investors saying Beijing could offer “predictability and certainty” when the U.S. feels more uncertain. Meanwhile, China and Iran have built a yuan-denominated trading system that sidesteps the dollar entirely—one small piece of a de-dollarization trend with implications far beyond the oil market. Let’s be clear: This is a reluctant embrace, not an enthusiastic one. The Human Rights Watch organization documents China’s systematic denial of freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Another watchdog group, Freedom House, rates China 9 out of 100 for political rights and civil liberties, giving it a categorical “Not Free” status. Countries are being pushed into China’s arms, not jumping willingly. But perception shapes markets as much as principle does, and right now, China looks stable, predictable, and oriented toward long-term outcomes at a moment when America looks like none of these things. What a CEO Needs to Do None of these forces are within a CEO’s control. But what business leaders can do is develop strategies for navigating a world that these forces shape. Here are five things to do now. 1. Map your actual exposure. Most companies have no visibility beyond their tier-one suppliers. That means they literally cannot see where their China dependence lies. McKinsey & Co.’s supply chain risk survey found that 82% of companies were affected by the new U.S. tariffs in 2025—and many didn’t see it coming. Before you can make any strategic decision about China, you need to know where China already sits inside your business. If you can’t map it, that is the first problem to solve. 2. Use China’s own plans as forward intelligence. China’s policy announcements are the most underused source of competitive intelligence available to Western business leaders. The 2026–2030 five-year plan is not a vague aspiration document—it is a procurement directive that triggers mandatory coordination across every central ministry, provincial government, and state financial institution. 3. Diversify at the structural level. Build a portfolio of suppliers, not a dependency on one or two; build a portfolio of markets instead of betting on one geographical region. The point is not to eliminate exposure to China, but to be intentional about spreading the risk. The companies that have thrived globally—such as Apple, Nvidia, and the NBA—haven’t decoupled from China. They have diversified around it while remaining deeply engaged. 4. Protect what is yours, but don’t close the door. If you create intellectual property of any kind, the U.S. Trade Representative’s findings make clear that protection in China remains difficult. Treat IP security as a core operational discipline, not a legal afterthought. China is also tightening its own trade-secret regulations—which creates both additional protections and obligations. But protection isn’t a strategy if it becomes a reason to ignore innovation happening elsewhere. The companies that reflexively reject Chinese technology because it’s Chinese will find themselves paying more for less while competitors adopt what works regardless of origin. 5. Reject the binary. The world that is forming is not one of cleanly delineated blocs. It is a world of partial bifurcation, selective interdependence, shifting regulation, and overlapping spheres of interest. Your strategy needs to operate across that reality, not pretend that it will resolve itself into something simpler. The bottom line China is not an easy partner, a trustworthy actor on intellectual property, or a country whose values most Western business leaders share. But it is the largest manufacturing economy on earth, it’s innovating at speed, and it’s filling the space that America is vacating. You do not have to like it, but you do have to plan for it. View the full article

When a global financial services firm sought Sam’s guidance, the problem seemed familiar. The firm had deployed AI tools across its business. Adoption was uneven, and the gap between teams was growing. In some corners of the organization, people were already using AI to draft client materials, summarize research, and speed up analysis. In others, they avoided it entirely: unsure what was permitted, worried about quality, or skeptical that leadership really meant it. Managers were fielding questions they weren’t equipped to answer. If my team uses AI, what changes in our standards? What happens to accountability? The leadership team quickly realized the problem wasn’t the technology. It was the people around it. The evidence is clear. BCG’s 2024 research finds top AI-performing companies invest 70% of their transformation resources in people and processes, not technology. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 finds that employee concern about AI-driven job loss has surged from 28% to 40% in two years—anxiety that impedes value creation unless leaders address it directly. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects 39% of core workforce skills will change by 2030. AI has not made human development less important. It has made it the primary lever for competitive advantage. Based on our work with senior executives—Jenny as an executive coach and leadership development expert, Sam as a global transformation leader who helps organizations redesign how they develop and deploy talent—we have identified four strategies for building the learning culture that makes AI investments work. 1. Make It Safe to Try The first capability is cultural, not technical. Mercer’s research finds that for innovation to succeed, employees must feel safe to experiment, ideate, and face potential failure. McKinsey’s research on psychological safety finds that a positive team climate is the single most critical driver of willingness to experiment. Yet McKinsey’s research found fewer than half of employees report one. That gap is where most AI adoption efforts quietly die. “Michael,” a senior marketing and sales leader Jenny worked with at a global consumer packaged goods company, worked with his team to define what good experimentation looked like, named the behaviors that signaled progress, and made clear that early mistakes were expected, not penalized. Within six months, voluntary AI tool usage across his team had increased by more than 40 percent, and managers who had previously avoided AI began openly sharing what they were testing in team meetings—modeling the curiosity the culture needed. “We can buy the best AI on the market,” he told Jenny. “But if our managers don’t know how to lead differently, the tools are just expensive noise.” Provide access to tools, focused training, and human–AI coaching at every level Model the right behaviors from the top: leaders who use AI openly and share what didn’t work give others permission to do the same Make AI fluency visible in promotion and talent decisions Treat adoption as a change management effort, not an IT rollout Pro tip: Run a “psychological safety audit” before your AI rollout. Ask managers: Do your team members feel safe admitting they don’t know how to use a new tool? If the honest answer is no, address the culture first. No training or tooling will overcome a team that’s afraid to try. 2. Build Capability That Matches the Work Once people are willing to try, the second barrier appears: they don’t know how to use AI well for their specific work. Generic training rarely closes this gap. The organizations making real progress have moved from one-size-fits-all workshops to role-based enablement: practical tools, prompt playbooks, communities of practice, and coaching anchored in the work they actually do. This was the friction Michael’s team encountered. Employees weren’t resistant—they were underprepared. They hadn’t been shown what “good” looked like for their role: how to draft a compliant client summary with AI, how to validate AI-generated segmentation analysis, or how to build a prompt that produced usable output. Without that guidance, the tool felt risky, not helpful. The 70-20-10 learning model holds that 70% of adult learning comes from on-the-job experience, 20% from coaching and social interaction, and only 10% from formal training. Yet most AI training programs default to exactly the kind of formal instruction—mandatory modules, certification courses—that the model says accounts for only 10% of how people actually learn. The most effective programs embed AI into real workflows first, then surround that experience with coaching and peer learning—using formal training as a foundation, not the primary event. Michael assigned “AI Coach” responsibilities across key projects and launched “AI Office Hours” so employees could experiment and learn together in real workflows rather than in isolation. AI Coaches became peer resources, not gatekeepers—colleagues who could demonstrate what a strong prompt looked like for a client brief or walk someone through validating AI-generated analysis before it went external. Within three months, the sessions had become standing fixtures, with attendance doubling as word spread that the learning was practical and immediately applicable. Employees who had been hesitant began bringing their own use cases, and the team’s output quality on AI-assisted work measurably improved. Pro tip: Start with the tasks your team already does repeatedly. Identify two or three high-frequency, low-risk workflows and build role-specific AI guidance around those. Competence built in context spreads faster than training delivered in a classroom. 3. Govern for Speed, Not Just Safety As AI usage expands, a governance gap opens. Managers start asking questions no one has answered: What data can we use? Who reviews AI-generated client materials? What happens if the output is wrong? Without clear answers, even willing employees hesitate. Effective leaders treat governance as the condition that makes adoption sustainable, not a constraint on it. McKinsey finds that companies investing in trust-enabling activities—codified ethics policies, clear data governance, consistent follow-through—are nearly twice as likely to see revenue growth exceeding 10%. Short policy documents outperform long compliance frameworks that no one reads. Michael built this in parallel with capability development. His team created a one-page “AI use framework” defining three zones: tasks where AI could be used independently, tasks requiring human review—aka human in the loop—before going external, and tasks that remained human-only. That clarity didn’t slow adoption. It accelerated it. Before the framework existed, managers were making individual judgment calls about what was safe to use—and defaulting to caution. Once the three zones were defined and shared, the cognitive load of every AI decision dropped significantly. Employees stopped asking for permission on routine tasks and started spending that energy on learning how to do them well. Adoption in the “use independently” zone nearly doubled in the quarter after the framework launched, and the volume of questions escalating to legal and compliance dropped by more than half. Pro tip: Build a one-page AI use framework before you launch any tools. Define three zones—use independently, use with review, human-only—specific enough for a manager to apply in a team meeting. Clarity about what’s allowed is the fastest way to remove the hesitation that stalls adoption. 4. Redesign the Division of Labor The fourth capability is the most consequential: defining clearly where AI creates value, what work belongs to humans, and how those boundaries translate into redesigned workflows and decision rights. Eighteen months into his initiative, Michael’s team had mapped the workflows where AI could draft, organize, and synthesize, and deliberately protected work that required human judgment: reading a retailer relationship, coaching a team through a difficult quarter, making a positioning call competitors couldn’t reverse-engineer. The division wasn’t about what AI could technically do. It was about what the business needed humans to own. The business case is clear. Over three years, BCG found AI leaders achieved 1.5x higher revenue growth and 1.6x greater shareholder returns. The differentiating factor wasn’t model sophistication—it was the deliberateness of work redesign. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 finds that 63% of C-suite leaders say redesigning work for AI will deliver the highest people-related ROI. Yet only one-third feel their workforce is ready to make it work. Pro tip: Map your team’s highest-frequency workflows before deciding where AI fits. For each, ask: Is this where speed and consistency are the primary value? Or where judgment and accountability matter most? Build the division of labor from that answer and revisit it every six months. AI Becomes Normal—and That Is the Point Eighteen months after Michael launched his people development initiative—in parallel with the technology deployment, not after it—his business unit was outperforming peers across every AI-linked productivity metric. Not because it had better software. Because it had better-prepared leaders. The leaders who drove that shift weren’t the ones who knew the most about AI. They were the ones who redesigned work, built trust, and helped people adapt. AI stopped being a special initiative and became part of the professional toolkit. Enabling a workforce to benefit from AI is not a software rollout. It is a leadership shift. The best leaders in the AI era are not waiting for the technology to prove itself. They are investing in the people who will make it matter. Continuous development is not a benefit you offer your people. It is the strategy. View the full article

Some of us old-timers fondly remember the satisfying clickity-clack of a physical smartphone keyboard. Back when email was king and multi-paragraph arguments on social networks were few and far between. Well, if you’re someone who longs for the days of firing off missives at breakneck speed, I’ve got good news: The physical keyboard is experiencing a renaissance, and it’s looking like it’s not just a nostalgic gimmick. Yes, hardware keyboards are officially making a comeback, and there are a few devices leading the charge that you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on. Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Now, Unihertz is no stranger to this market. The company already makes Android-based keyboard phones, such as the Titan 2. However, if you’re in the market for a new device, it’s best to hold your horses for the upcoming Titan 2 Elite. The company is promising an upgraded experience with a smooth-scrolling AMOLED screen and five years of guaranteed OS updates. Unihertz is currently running a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the Titan 2 Elite. Backers who pledge a little under $400 can get the phone as a reward. The company says it will ship in June. Clicks Communicator You might recognize the name: Clicks makes a reasonably popular keyboard case for Android phones and iPhones. But the Clicks Communicator will be the company’s first shot at making a complete phone of its own. Designed as a maybe-primary, maybe-companion, definitely-sleek device focused on messaging and productivity, it runs Android 16 and features a 4-inch AMOLED display perched above a classic QWERTY layout. The Clicks Communicator is available for reservation now and is scheduled to ship later this year. You can lock it in for an early-bird price of $399, after which it will jump to its standard $499 retail price. Minimal Phone Finally, for those who truly want to disconnect from the endless scroll, there’s the Minimal Phone. It pairs a full physical keyboard with a high-contrast e-ink display, the same kind of screen you’d find on an e-reader. This phone obviously isn’t built for watching videos, but it’s designed specifically to keep your focus intact while providing the essential tools you need. To wit, it runs Android under the hood and sports access to the Google Play store. It’s available right now, starting around $399 for the base model. View the full article

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Creating a marketing budget template for your social media marketing calendar is fundamental for effective resource management. Start by defining your marketing goals to guarantee they align with your business objectives. Next, outline your anticipated expenses, breaking them down into categories like content creation and advertising. It’s vital to allocate your budget wisely, establishing a review schedule to track performance. By monitoring and adjusting your budget regularly, you can optimize your spending and maximize campaign effectiveness. What comes next in this process? Key Takeaways Define clear marketing goals and objectives to guide budget allocation for social media efforts. Outline anticipated expenses by categorizing costs into content creation, advertising, and tools for tracking metrics. Allocate approximately 11% of the overall marketing budget specifically for social media initiatives. Establish a review schedule for monthly and quarterly assessments to monitor budget adherence and performance. Regularly adjust the budget based on spending patterns and insights from previous campaigns to optimize resource allocation. Define Your Marketing Goals and Objectives When you start defining your marketing goals and objectives, it’s crucial to align them with your overall business aims, guaranteeing that every effort contributes to your company’s success. Begin by clearly stating your goals, such as increasing brand awareness or boosting website traffic. Establish specific, measurable objectives—like achieving a 15% rise in social media engagement within the next quarter. Use historical data from past campaigns to inform these goals, pinpointing successful strategies and areas needing improvement. Set a timeline for each objective to maintain accountability and facilitate regular evaluations. Finally, verify your goals are realistic and achievable within the allocated budget, considering both industry benchmarks and your marketing budget plan. A well-structured marketing budget template can help track your progress effectively. Outline Anticipated Expenses Outlining anticipated expenses is a key step in developing an effective marketing budget for your social media efforts. Start by categorizing costs into strategic areas such as content creation, advertising, tools, and community management. This structured approach guarantees your marketing budget template covers all bases. Allocate about 11% of your total marketing budget to social media, typically ranging from $100 to $5,000 monthly, depending on your provider and campaign scope. Identify specific costs for content production, including images, videos, and text, alongside advertising expenses for each platform. Don’t forget to budget for software tools necessary for tracking metrics and analytics, crucial for measuring campaign effectiveness. Regularly review your marketing spend template to adjust for actual spending patterns and performance. Allocate Your Budget for Social Media To effectively allocate your budget for social media, start by clearly defining your overall marketing goals, as these will help direct how you distribute funds across various activities. Typically, allocate around 11% of your total marketing budget to social media, but adjust this based on your specific business needs. Review your current social media strategy to pinpoint which platforms and campaigns are most effective, allowing you to focus your spending. Consider the average costs for social media management, which can vary widely, from $100 to $5,000 per month. Utilize a marketing budget template Excel or a marketing budget sheet to keep track of your allocations, and set timeframes for monthly assessments and quarterly reviews to optimize your spending. Establish a Review Schedule Establishing a review schedule for your social media marketing budget is crucial, as it allows you to regularly assess financial allocations and make adjustments based on performance metrics. Monthly evaluations help you track spending against your marketing budget template social media marketing calendar, whereas quarterly in-depth reviews enable you to analyze overall performance and refine strategies. Here’s a simple table to guide you in setting up your review schedule: Review Frequency Purpose Monthly Track spending and trends Quarterly Analyze overall performance Specific Dates Maintain accountability Align with Milestones Improve budget relevance Monitor and Adjust Your Budget Regularly Monitoring and adjusting your budget regularly is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. Establish a monthly review process to compare your budget template for campaign advertising against actual spending. This allows you to identify spending patterns and make necessary adjustments based on performance. Utilizing an Excel monthly marketing budget template can help you track year-to-date and cumulative spending, making it easier to visualize your budget performance. Incorporate insights from past campaigns to inform future spending decisions and optimize your ROI. Flexibility in your budget lets you reallocate funds in the direction of successful campaigns or emerging opportunities, ensuring your strategy remains dynamic and responsive to market changes. Regular adjustments will help you stay on target and improve your overall marketing success. Frequently Asked Questions How to Make a Social Media Calendar Template? To make a social media calendar template, start by choosing a tool like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Organize your calendar by date, content type, and platform. Include sections for post details, scheduling, and performance metrics. Track engagement rates and reach to assess effectiveness. Consider using pre-made templates for efficiency and consistency. Regularly update your calendar to align with trends and audience preferences, ensuring your social media strategy remains relevant and effective. What Steps Does a Digital Marketer Need to Take to Develop a Social Media Calendar? To develop a social media calendar, you’ll first need to set clear goals that align with your marketing strategy. Next, outline your content themes and create a posting schedule that includes dates, links, and media types. Use a management tool for scheduling and monitoring posts. Incorporate metrics to track engagement and adjust your strategy accordingly. Finally, collaborate with your team to guarantee consistency and meet deadlines throughout the process. What Is the 70 20 10 Rule for Marketing Budget? The 70-20-10 rule for marketing budgets suggests you allocate 70% to proven strategies that deliver consistent results, 20% to emerging trends, and 10% to high-risk initiatives. This approach balances stability with growth potential. By focusing the majority on established efforts, you guarantee reliable performance, whereas the smaller allocations encourage exploration of new technologies and experimental tactics. This method helps you adapt to changes in the market and meet evolving customer preferences effectively. How Do You Keep Track of Social Media Budgets? To keep track of social media budgets, you should use a structured Excel template designed for budget management. Regularly monitor your spending against your budgeted amounts, adjusting as needed based on campaign performance. Incorporate year-to-date calculations to spot trends and prevent overspending. Collaborate with your marketing and finance teams for insights on spending patterns, ensuring your budget reflects the effectiveness of various platforms and content types for maximum ROI. Conclusion By following these five steps, you can create a solid marketing budget template for your social media calendar. Defining your goals, outlining expenses, and allocating your budget are essential for effective planning. Establishing a review schedule guarantees you stay on track, whereas regular monitoring allows you to adjust your strategy as needed. This structured approach not just optimizes your spending but additionally improves the overall effectiveness of your social media campaigns, driving better results for your business. Image via Google Gemini This article, "5 Steps to Create a Marketing Budget Template for Your Social Media Marketing Calendar" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article