What's on Your Mind?

Gary Vaynerchuk prides himself on being ahead of the curve. As the chairman of communications company VaynerX and the cofounder of Resy, not to mention an angel investor in brands like Twitter, Facebook, Uber, and Venmo, he knows a thing or two about trends in business. And in a new interview with CBS Mornings, he shared what he thinks is to blame for consumer burnout: not advertisers, social media, or even consumers themselves—but modern parenting. “I think that parenting needs to be called out of the last 40 years,” Vaynerchuk said. “I believe that the burnout, the insecurity, all the stuff we talk about, I believe the reason we’re buying more stuff is, we’re using …

Ikea plans to open even more new stores this year. On Wednesday, the Swedish furniture retailer released its 2025 Annual Summary, which included plans to open four new locations. Ikea previously announced plans to open six new stores, bringing the new total for openings slated in 2026 to 10. The latest batch of locations includes stores in Chicago, Fort Collins, Los Angeles, and Tulsa. The six previously announced Ikea locations include: Huntsville, Alabama; University Park in Dallas; Phoenix; Rockwall in Dallas; the Chantilly/Dulles area in the Washington region; and Houston-Webster, Texas. Per the announcement, Ikea had a successful 2025, despite a challenging …

For the past decade I have volunteered at St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Kensington, for those not from Philly, has long had a reputation for potent but affordable street drugs. Interstate 95 and the Market-Frankford elevated commuter train line provide easy access to the neighborhood for buyers and sellers, and abandoned buildings offer havens for drug use and other illicit activity. St. Francis Inn Ministries, which was founded by two Franciscan friars in 1979, serves sit-down breakfast and dinner for thousands of people each year, many of whom suffer from poverty, homelessness, and substance use disorder. It also…

The Nancy Guthrie investigation is now in its third week, which means it was only a matter of time before the case piqued the interest of online armchair detectives. Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on Feb. 1. In the weeks since, the street outside her home in Tucson, Arizona, has become a destination for true-crime livestreamers. Online sleuths have dissected the publicly available details of the ongoing case while spreading far-fetched conspiracy theories. Some have filmed themselves driving through Guthrie’s neighborhood. The hashtag #nancyguthrie currently has more than 16,000 posts on TikTok, where users an…

The deadline to claim the early-bird rate for Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators is quickly approaching—Friday, February 20, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. This marks the eighth year Fast Company will be recognizing companies and organizations from around the world that most effectively empower employees at all levels to improve processes, create new products, or invent whole new ways of doing business. In addition to ranking the world’s Best Workplaces for Innovators, we will also recognize companies in 19 categories, including a brand new category that focuses on “skilled labor”—companies that depend heavily on talented employees with the kinds of incre…

In today’s AI race, breakthroughs are no longer measured in years—or even months—but in weeks. The release of Opus 4.6 just over two weeks ago was a major moment for its maker, Anthropic, delivering state-of-the-art performance in a number of fields. But within a week, Chinese competitor Z.ai had released its own Opus-like model, GLM-5. (There’s no suggestion that GLM-5 uses or borrows from Opus in any way.) Many on social media called it a cut-price Opus alternative. But Z.ai’s lead didn’t last long, either. Just as Anthropic had been undercut by GLM-5’s release, GLM-5 was quickly downloaded, compressed, and re-released in a version that could run locally w…

The AI boom began with ChatGPT and chatbots. Now chatbots are starting to “grow arms and legs,” as developers say, meaning they can use digital tools and work independently on a human’s behalf. The open-source platform OpenClaw is notable because it lets people build agents with far more autonomy than those offered by big tech. OpenClaw agents can control a browser, send emails, do multi-step planning, and pursue persistent goals. Users often interact with them through iMessage or Discord, with the agent hosted locally on a Mac mini. One user’s agent reportedly negotiated with several car dealerships and shaved four grand off a car’s price while its owner was in a mee…

Sandisk Corporation has announced plans for a secondary public offering. The data storage company will open up 5,821,135 common stock shares (Nasdaq:SNDK) at $545 a pop. The shares are currently owned by Western Digital Corporation (WDC), Sandisk’s former parent company. Sandisk separated from WDC nearly a year ago to the date, and subsequently joined the S&P 500 in November. Now, WDC is furthering that split. It will be left with 1,691,884 shares of common stock, but it plans to get rid of those as well. WDC intends to complete a debt-for-equity exchange with J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and BofA Securities—both of which will act as selling stockhol…

As Big Tech faces criticism for the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, companies have said the technology will actually help solve climate change. But those claims often lack scientific evidence, a new report finds. And when touting the climate benefits of AI, tech companies conflate “traditional AI” with the more environmentally harmful generative AI, a form of “bait-and-switch” that amounts to greenwashing. The report, commissioned by a group of environmental organizations including Beyond Fossil Fuels, Friends of the Earth, and Stand.earth, analyzed 154 statements from tech companies, including those from Google and Microsoft, which purported tha…

Shares of Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE: FVRR) are dropping significantly this morning after the freelance marketplace platform reported its Q4 2025 financial results. While the company reported modest revenue growth, its 2026 outlook sent the stock plunging, even as Fiverr executives put a positive spin on the impact of artificial intelligence on its business. Here’s what you need to know. Revenue increases, but outlook sends investors fleeing On Wednesday morning, Fiverr reported its fourth-quarter 2025 results. And those results, for the most part, were mixed. The company saw modest growth in total revenue, which rose to $107.2 million in the quarter…

The future looks green for Mike’s Red Tacos. The San Diego-based taco restaurant currently has only two locations, but it has caught the attention of the restaurant investors who made Dave’s Hot Chicken a scorching success. This week, the restaurant announced that it has secured franchise development agreements for more than 200 new locations around the country. Mike’s Red Tacos was founded as a food truck in 2021 by Mike Touma, followed by a brick-and-mortar location in 2022. The brand is gaining a fast-growing following on social media following—and now it’s primed for nationwide expansion. Fast casual with a taco twist Mike’s Red Tacos specializes in…

Corey duBrowa spent much of his career advising some of the world’s most scrutinized leaders—from Marc Benioff at Salesforce to Sundar Pichai at Google. Now, as CEO of global communications firm Burson, he’s helping executives navigate a charged marketplace shaped by AI disruption, ICE activity, and nonstop reputational risk. He explains why reputation remains one of the most powerful (and most misunderstood) assets in business, and how leaders should decide whether, when, and how to speak up. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast…

If you’re tuning in to the Milan Cortina Olympics, you may be one of many spectators who’s suddenly invested in the sport of curling. You’re in good company: Swedish designer Gustaf Westman, best known for his chunky homeware, has become so fascinated by the event that he used it as inspiration for his latest design. Curling centers on an object called a “curling stone.” Using its gooseneck handle, competitors slide the round, 44-pound stone down an ice shuffleboard toward a target zone. Westman’s “curling bowl,” which he debuted on Instagram on February 10, reimagines the object as a snack bowl. The stone’s handle has been cleverly converted into the perfect slot fo…

In early February, the 22-year-old design brand Areaware announced it will close on May 1 citing tariffs and “mounting pressures on the home goods industry” in a letter posted to its Instagram account. “Every product we’ve made has been an act of optimism—a belief that good design can make our world a little better,” the letter said. “Lately though, our world has been making that difficult for us to do.” It’s been a challenging few months for good design brands. In December, Food52, the parent company of Schoolhouse and Dansk, declared bankruptcy; earlier in February, it was stripped for parts and sold at auction. While Areaware and Food52 don’t share the exact same …

I’ll admit it: I still secretly prefer cooking on a gas stove despite knowing that I’m breathing in benzene and adding to methane emissions. What can I say, I like the tactile control of an open flame. But recently I tested an induction range that made my gas stove seem antiquated. Charlie, from the Bay Area-based startup Copper, offers a high-end range that can do everything I expect from my current stove—and more. The appliance, which started to roll out nationally last year, has been called “the Tesla of induction stoves” by The New York Times and lauded by chefs including Christopher Kimball. I wanted to try it out as a home cook with only basic skills. An…

For consumer packaged goods, the path from product idea to store shelves runs directly through the center of Unilever‘s new North American headquarters, and not just because the company makes market-saturating products like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and TRESemmé shampoo. This new headquarters space was designed specifically to put the entire process of product creation on display in its office, from ideation to development to marketing to retailing. Spread across 111,000 square feet in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey, Unilever’s newly opened headquarters is centered around an accessible spine of rooms and facilities that are optimized for bringing new products to market. The…

Recently, I made myself a promise: I would not buy any more Lego for at least a year. That plan has quickly been foiled. Lego’s first-ever Peanuts set is just too good, too iconic, too beautiful (plus, my son loves Snoopy and Woodstock.) This perfect brick rendition—with the classic red doghouse and even the campfire and marshmallows to toast—is too cool pass up. Lego’s addiction to licensed intellectual property—the company now sells 25 IP-based themes out of 45 total, often burying the open-ended, creativity-first sets that built the brand—is still a problem, but this Snoopy’s Doghouse set proves exactly why these licenses work so extraordinarily well to burn your c…

What really holds people back from stepping up as allies in support of their marginalized colleagues? For example, why don’t more men say something when they see a colleague or a customer make a sexist remark about a female co-worker? Our research, published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, suggests that people often hesitate to intervene when co-workers are mistreated because they themselves feel disempowered in their organizations and experience distrust and polarization. Our findings run counter to the common assumption that people don’t step up to support marginalized colleagues because they don’t care or are unmotivated. Not seei…

Do women board members make a company more innovative or risk-averse? The answer is both, according to our recent study. It all depends on how the company performs relative to its goals. Professors Małgorzata Smulowitz, Didier Cossin and I examined 524 S&P 1500 companies from 1999 to 2016, measuring innovation through patent activity. Patents reflect both creative output and risk-taking. They require significant investment in novel ideas that might fail, disclosure of proprietary information and substantial legal costs. In short, patents represent genuine bets on the future. Our findings revealed a striking pattern. When companies performed poorly in relation …

If you’re a manager today, your job may well be changing. That is, if it hasn’t already. As companies continue to compress their org charts and axe layers of middle management, a new role is emerging: the “supermanager.” Leaders are finding themselves responsible for significantly more direct reports and broader responsibilities. And in many industries, the trend shows no sign of slowing. A Gallup survey published in January, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that the average number of reports managers have increased from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025. The share of managers overseeing 25 or more employees has also grown in the past year, wi…

Rob Shaver is a 49-year-old retail worker who recently had a streak of running at least 1 mile every day for three years. He’s also been living with Stage 4 bone and lung cancer for more than 20 years. Shaver’s commitment to living in spite of illness is chronicled in the short film The Life We Have, which uses his life as a lens through which to examine questions at the heart of the human experience: What gives life meaning when time feels fragile? How do we keep moving forward when suffering feels endless? Though profoundly sad, the film, directed by Sam Price-Waldman, is also thoughtfully inspiring. We see Shaver on his good days, running and spending time w…

I’ve worked remotely since 2006 (way before it was common). However, my days were filled with calls to colleagues and DMs to chat about everything from work to what we had planned for the weekend. Now I’m a solopreneur. I have occasional calls with clients, but they’re rare. Most of my days are spent working alone. In many ways, this is great since I have the freedom to work however and whenever I want. But staying motivated when it’s just me requires being really thoughtful about how I work. According to a 2025 report by Leapers, nearly half of self-employed professionals feel lonely occasionally or some of the time. One in five feels lonely or isolated often o…

The business world’s most exclusive club has always been the boardroom. For decades, it has operated as a roped-off circle of experience, where pattern recognition, war stories, and collective gut instinct guided the biggest decisions. But the most recent quarterly earnings calls and 2026 spending projections across industries from tech to finance make it clear: That era is ending. As business complexity explodes and competitive cycles compress, those old methods are showing their limits. Artificial intelligence is exposing blind spots, surfacing inconvenient truths, and rewriting how boards govern, challenge, and lead. The transformation goes beyond adding new to…