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Postpartum depression is often framed as a private struggle that unfolds at home or in the doctor’s office. But for millions of working parents, its effects also show up quietly at work—through missed deadlines, sudden disengagement, or a colleague who no longer seems like themselves. Too often, these changes are misunderstood as performance issues rather than signs of a common and treatable mental health condition. To better understand what employers, managers, and coworkers often miss—and how workplaces can respond more thoughtfully—I spoke with Andrea Clark, deputy CEO of Postpartum Support International, a global nonprofit focused on supporting families and raisin…

The most innovative retailers in 2025 used technology not to chase trends, but to solve real problems. As tariffs squeezed margins and labor costs climbed, companies scrambled to adapt. Shopify opened its platform to agentic AI shoppers, letting customers purchase directly within ChatGPT. Amazon launched Lens Live to turn smartphones into instant product scanners. Rebel scaled its re-commerce platform into new categories, processing over 70,000 returned products weekly and keeping 25 million pounds of goods out of landfills. Others doubled down on heritage and experience. J.Crew proved nostalgia sells when paired with a carefully curated archive. Printemps brought…

The world of public relations has always been about making a splash. And in an age of more and more media clutter, breakthrough ideas have never been more important. To create that can’t-miss-it buzz, this year’s most innovative PR firms paired an A-list Hollywood actor with an A-list Hollywood director, staged a surprise pop-event in a major urban transportation hub, enlisted some of the biggest stars from the booming world of women’s sports, and employed some creative grammar to stir up social media chatter. Giant Spoon created a campaign for the emerging electric vehicle brand Lucid that was essentially a short action film, directed by James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari…

Traditional economic development tends to focus on investments made and jobs created. For this year’s group of Most Innovative Companies—or in many cases, foundations or governments, in this case—the key performance indicator isn’t dollars spent, but connections made. Growth comes not from directing resources, but finding a better way to nurture what you already have. Governments found creative ways to unleash the potential of their residents, workers, and civil servants. The state of New Mexico, for example, made a first-in-the-nation move to subsidize childcare for all, giving working parents and families a leg up. In Illinois, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of…

The way we consume culture has fractured into millions of pieces and the far corners of the internet. But media companies are finding creative ways to keep capturing market share. For publishing imprint Bloom Books, that means capitalizing on TikTok’s rise by turning #BookTok’s viral hits into paperback bestsellers. For Webtoon, it’s doubling down on a dynamic fast-metabolism format with five-minute-long “episodes” that bring comic books to life. The satiric newspaper The Onion is channeling its best quality—humor—into a new revenue stream by opening its own ad agency, while the New York Times is cranking out vertical video reels meant to be viewed on smartphones. Li…

In some ways, the attention game for brands is only getting tougher. The increased pace of the cultural cycle and the tidal wave of slop hitting our feeds have added a layer of suspicion to any brand work. Is it real? How do you know? These are big, existential questions. This year, 20 companies, ranging from brands to agencies, are answering them from the perspective of marketers looking to build real connections with real people. The companies here are not only working to embed into and engage with culture, but they’re doing it in ways that reinforce the role of humans in that dynamic. It includes Dick’s Sporting Goods launching its own internal film studio to …

If you’re one of the legion of iPhone fans who can’t wait for the next major software update and all the new features it will bring, there’s some good news. Apple has revealed when you’ll be able to get a look at the iPhone’s next operating system, iOS 27—and you won’t have to wait much longer. Here’s what you need to know. Apple announces the dates for WWDC26 Apple has revealed when it will hold its next Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The conference, affectionately referred to as “dub-dub” by Apple employees, is one of Apple’s two major events throughout the year, and one of the tech industry’s most important. WWDC is an annual week-long event where A…

Taking stock of the once red-hot agtech sector, analysts have called 2025 a “transition year,” a polite way of saying crop prices slid, Bayer traded near a 20-year low, John Deere reported less than half of its 2023 income, and almost two dozen startups in once-frothy areas like indoor farming, drones, and insect-based ingredients collapsed. It was enough for a managing director of ag giant Syngenta’s VC arm to jokingly “thank God” it had avoided investing in alt-protein, carbon credits, and vertical farming—though he allowed that the downturn offered “good lessons” for smart entrepreneurs eyeing “a second wave.” Fast Company’s 2026 list of the most innovative companies …

Three years (plus) after the arrival of ChatGPT, chatbots are morphing into AI agents. As generative AI models have improved and become able to reason in real time, the major AI labs, starting with Anthropic, have begun to shift their research focus from models that compose and comprehend text to ones that reason, use tools, and work autonomously. The first kind of agent that matured to the point of having real-world impact was an agent that can write, test, and document computer code. Coding agents, powered by language models, can understand plain language, which has democratized software development and made “vibe coding” possible. Products like Lovable and Bolt al…

Beyond the not insignificant work of designing buildings, it can often seem that architects are also tasked with solving some of the biggest problems in the world. From reducing the environmental impact of buildings to increasing access to affordable spaces to fighting climate change to rebuilding what climate change has damaged, the architect’s work can verge on the infinite. For the architecture companies honored in Fast Company’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies awards, this mission creep is part of the appeal. All 10 honorees on this year’s architecture list have made societal challenges and systems-scale shortcomings into side projects of their more straightforward…

Over the past year, tech companies invested hundreds of billions in the new data centers needed to power rapidly increasing demand for the technology. The investment is motivated in part by confidence that major AI labs such as those at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google will continue to wring more intelligence out of their models. Indeed, fears have receded that the AI labs’ go-to strategy of supersizing models, training data, and computing power was no longer yielding large leaps in intelligence. Instead, the cadence of bigger and better models has accelerated, in part because AI coding tools are playing an increasing role in building new models. That’s certainly true a…

Innovation isn’t a spark—it’s a sustained pursuit. Meet Google, Proximity Media, Google, Reddit, Unwell and Tubi—the teams turning bold vision into daily discipline, redefining what it takes to lead, create, and stay ahead. View the full article

Work stress has become one of the most common challenges in modern life. According to recent national reports, nearly seven in ten employees say work is a major source of stress, putting us right back where we were in the early months of the pandemic. No matter where you work—at a desk in an office, from your kitchen table, or bouncing between the two—the pressure to perform has never been higher. Burnout has reached a six-year high despite the fact that most of us are doing everything we can think of to get rid of stress. We sign up for wellness webinars. We shuffle schedules. We tell ourselves we’ll rest “as soon as things slow down.” But instead of helping, those …

Video game maker Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, announced on Tuesday it is laying off 1,000 employees, or about 20% of its workforce. (In 2023, Epic cut 830 jobs or 16% of its workforce at that time, per Variety.) “I’m sorry we’re here again,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said in a note to Epic employees, which the company posted on X. “The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we’re spending significantly more than we’re making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded.” “This layoff, together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable …

During a lunch with my friend Kurt at the Chicago Club—one of those quietly elegant institutions where history sits comfortably in the room—I arrived with a question. It was one that could only be asked by someone trying to understand the United States from outside its horizon. Kurt’s surname carries enough S’s and K’s to suggest Eastern European roots. I am Brazilian, the grandson of Italians, Portuguese, Ukrainians, and with some Indigenous blood. Our grandparents crossed oceans from similar places, yet our lives unfolded inside different societies. I asked him: If our families had boarded different ships—mine arriving at Ellis Island and his in Brazil—would we …

When a new song attributed to country singer Blaze Foley, “Together,” appeared on his Spotify profile last year, something didn’t seem right. For starters, Foley had been dead for more than two decades, and the cover art featured AI artwork of a man who wasn’t Foley, and the song wasn’t uploaded by Foley’s longtime distributor. Fake tracks have appeared on various artist profiles, including easy-listening act The Sweet Enoughs, and Australian bands Alpha Wolf and Thy Art Is Murder. Smaller artists are not safe either, with musician Catherine Brennan taking to TikTok saying “in the past two weeks I’ve had two albums released under my name that are not mine.” Spoti…

The best leaders share a few predictable habits: They’re curious, self-aware, and genuinely invested in their team’s growth. But there’s a big difference between simply having these traits, and developing new leaders to embody these traits as well. A 2022 study published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that when leaders visibly act with curiosity—by questioning, learning, and exploring—they signal to team members that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In turn, employees feel more confident speaking up, sharing ideas, and contributing meaningfully. In a new book, The Power of the Learning Mindset, autho…

When leadership trends become corporate wallpaper, they risk losing the very edge that made them useful in the first place. That’s where psychological safety risks finding itself today. It’s plastered on slide decks, plugged into engagement surveys, and whispered in HR circles as the answer to “Why don’t people speak up?” but it’s rarely connected to what happens after someone actually does speak up. This distinction between permission to speak and protection from consequences matters more than leaders often realize. Psychological safety tells you that people feel comfortable raising questions or concerns and that they believe they won’t be overtly sanctioned for …

Below, Dr. Sunita Sah shares five key insights from her new book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. Sah is a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. She teaches business and healthcare students at Cornell University and Cambridge University, and served as commissioner on the National Commission of Forensic Science. What’s the big idea? Learning how to defy is important, relevant, and meaningful for anyone who wants to speak up when it matters and to do the right thing in the moment. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Sah herself—in the Next Big Idea app, or buy the book. 1. We’re wired to comply. Soon aft…

Most people use AI like a search engine: type a question, get an answer. It’s an easy, well-understood use case for tools like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. But for solopreneurs, the real value is in setting up dedicated projects with a lot of background information about your business. Most AI tools let you create project workspaces where you can add context about who you are and what you do. You can attach relevant files, and keep the conversation focused on one specific idea or area of your business. I have 23 AI projects in Claude for everything from strategic planning to building a website. Some are used a few times per month, while others I rely on almost …

As I walked into a Sunset Boulevard venue this past February, Luka Dončić’s face greeted me, flashing across a wall of old-school televisions. The TV screens flickered between a surreal reel of images: Dončić’s mug, a NTSC rainbow effect, a Valentine sweetheart candy image with the words “too small,” and a graphic with the words “Lil Luka’s Heartbreak Factory: Level 1.” For the uninitiated, this scene probably makes no sense. But for superfans of Dončić, star player of the Los Angeles Lakers, the messages are like a secret code to a new kind of fandom. Luka Dončić In February, Dončić celebrated the launch of his new direct-to-fans media company, 77X, by transfo…

Over the course of his 50 years in the art world, Michael Hafftka’s figurative expressionist work has been exhibited at many of the world’s most prominent galleries. His paintings have hung at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Sauf Gallery in Paris. Now, his work is being presented in a more unusual place: on Hugging Face, the AI website. The New York–born artist, now 72, has uploaded roughly half his oeuvre to the platform. He did it on his own initiative after researching Hugging Face and recognizing it as a gathering place for AI work. The move functions as both an artistic gesture and an archival one. His path to AI is less surp…

Fashion resale company Poshmark just got its first app redesign in 15 years, and it’s taking a page out of Depop’s book of UI. The new look encompasses an updated algorithm, redesigned navigational tools, and a new, streamlined aesthetic. It comes as a pivotal moment for the second market, which, according to ThredUp’s 2025 Resale Report, is expected to reach $367 billion by 2029, growing 2.7 times faster than the overall global apparel market. The majority of this growth, the report notes, has been driven by young consumers—millennials, Gen Zers, and Gen Alpha shoppers who are familiar with buying products through apps or in-app features like TikTok Shop. And com…