What's on Your Mind?

“How did you get to where you are in your career?” My interest in this question dates back 45 years to when I was an MBA student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Whenever corporate executives were guest speakers at our classes, I would listen intently as they described what contributed to their career advancement. In the same vein, as I speak with leaders today, I always make a point of asking them what they consider to be the main drivers of their success. Over more than four decades, the two most common responses are: (1) “I worked hard” and (2) “I have several unique skill sets.” As I look back on my corporate career, including as chai…

Fast Company is delighted to make this article available to any student for free. Please request a copy by email. I was sitting on the steps of Duke Chapel at 2 a.m. in December 2023, the Gothic towers looming above me, a 210-foot reminder of everything I was about to walk away from. My phone was exploding with notifications: Y Combinator had just accepted us. ChatGPT had hit 100 million users in two months—faster than TikTok, faster than Instagram, faster than anything in human history. And I was about to break my single mother’s heart. The chapel bells rang twice, echoing across the empty quad. In six hours, I’d be dropping out of one of America’s best univ…

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the power of a group gasp. Years ago, at a Baltimore Ravens game, a film I’d helped create played across the stadium’s newly installed LED screens. In the climactic moment (a close-up shot as the kicker’s foot struck the ball) the entire crowd seemed to freeze, breath held, before erupting in a wave of energy that swept the stands. That’s because the shot was perfectly timed with the real kick-off that started the game. Picture 70,000 people rising to their feet in unison, their collective gasp creating a moment of pure electricity. That wasn’t chance. It was the result of designing an experience where story, environment, and aud…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on how generative AI and agents might radically change websites. I also look at the “circular” arrangements that are financing the AI boom, and at Blackrock’s big move into data centers. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. How AI and agent…

When we first started Little Spoon, our mission was clear: Make fresh, healthy food accessible at every age and stage of early childhood. But we quickly realized checking the proverbial boxes alone (nutritious: check, convenient: check) wasn’t enough. After all, parents are inundated with options—the decision fatigue surrounding parenting choices is overwhelming. What makes a brand stand apart isn’t utility; it’s the ability to understand and affirm who your customer is (and hopes to be). Parents want to feel emotionally supported, seen, and confident in their decisions, particularly within the vast excess of parenting advice in 2025: chock full of dated narrative…

Most American cities have street networks that are engineered for us to comfortably drive much too fast for our surroundings. Even our old, pre-automobile cities have been “upgraded” to make dangerous driving habits easy. Transportation professionals are allowed to use good judgment when deciding how to design city streets, but they often need to be reminded, especially in cities where the state department of transportation has authority. It’s not enough for you as a good urbanist to tell an engineer to make better choices. After all, they’re not a malicious bunch trying to wreck society. They’re conforming to the long-established rules of the industry. The AA…

Companies that endure beyond 15 years understand that innovation is not optional—it’s essential to fend off constant disruption, stay ahead of competitors, and sustain growth. The opportunities are endless, from modernizing entrenched processes to strengthening business continuity. Axon For helping law enforcement coordinate manhunts The proliferation of public cameras, vehicle sensors, and other data sources can greatly aid law enforcement in locating suspects, but only if the information is efficiently collected and analyzed. Axon Fusus provides a unified interface that integrates video feeds, alerts, analytics, and vehicle data from Axon devices, community cameras, …

OpenAI unleashed Sora 2 last month, the final boss of slop machines (at least for now). The social app draws entirely from artificial intelligence: Instead of sharing photos and videos of themselves, users can opt in for “cameos” and create fake clips that depict themselves or their friends in any scenario imaginable. It’s mostly being used to make viral meme content and the type of short-form videos you’d scroll past on TikTok, albeit with deepfakes. Sora doesn’t allow you to make videos of other living people (dead celebrities and SpongeBob SquarePants characters are fair game) unless given express permission. As one user put it: “Digital Taxidermy is the…

Owning a home sounds like a dream, sure, but a majority of Gen Z Americans feel discouraged about whether they can make this sort of lifetime goal a reality. To blame? Housing just isn’t affordable. While two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 say that homeownership is a lifetime goal, 82% of people in this generation believe that actually buying a home is more difficult for them than older generations, according to a new survey of 1,000 Gen Z adults released today by Realtor.com. Things are so bad, in fact, that 16% of Gen Zers rate housing affordability as one of their top life concerns. And it’s not just a feeling: Younger generations have been l…

With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the The President administration’s promised layoffs. Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate. “Luckily, I was able to pay rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worke…

When you type a question into an AI search engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and it comes up with an answer, that information comes from somewhere. Scouring the web for content that’s contextually relevant to the asker, it typically assembles an answer based on several different sources, interpreted through the lens of its training data and system prompt. The fight over being one of those sources is the new game of online discovery that’s replacing SEO. Typically called GEO or AEO for generative/answer engine optimization, the field is nascent, and the rules, best practices, and even the benefits aren’t entirely clear. There’s one thing everyone agrees on, though:…

Have you ever felt like your brain was one of those viral egg experiments, cracked open and sizzling on a bare sidewalk that was truly, much too hot? You may have been experiencing signs of burnout (and dehydration). As an introverted professional, I’ve been there as well, many times in my career. Over the years, I’ve developed healthy reflective coping methods to recharge my batteries and prevent (or at least combat) that intense feeling of overwhelm. As a LinkedIn Top Voice and a very public keynote speaker who’s learned to grow in the spotlight on my own terms, I’m not the best at pretending to be an extrovert for any extended period of time—it’s too tiring! Inste…

To announce its entrance into 5G home internet service, Mint Mobile found the real-life version of a new AI-generated actress, even if only in (nick)name. Tilly Norwood is the name of a so-called AI actress launched by AI talent studio Xicoia. It also happens to be the name of a woman who stars alongside Ryan Reynolds in Mint Mobile’s new ad for its home internet service, which it’s branding “Minternet.” “It’s hard to believe that Mint is launching 5G home internet. It’s also hard to believe that a real version of an AI actress is out there,” a Maximum Effort representative tells Fast Company. “And thanks to the incredible and somewhat disturbing stalking detectiv…

Nestle will cut 16,000 jobs, new CEO Philipp Navratil said on Thursday, as the world’s largest packaged food company seeks to cut costs and win back investor confidence. The jobs being cut represent 5.8% of Nestle’s around 277,000 employees. Navratil said Nestle had raised its cost savings target to 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.77 billion) from 2.5 billion francs by the end of 2027. U.S. import tariffs are a headwind for Nestle, despite the bulk of the company’s U.S. sales being manufactured locally, while food producers across the board are grappling with fragile consumer confidence and changing habits as people seek to eat more healthily. “The world is changin…

When my teenage son developed mysterious symptoms, I followed the same path anyone else would: I put his health in the hands of a team of medical professionals. Multiple myeloma is a rare blood cancer. It is so uncommon in 17-year-olds that it doesn’t appear on diagnostic checklists. Despite having no clear starting point to work from, my son’s doctors worked their way to an accurate diagnosis through a process of trial and error, bouncing ideas off each other and testing and discarding hypotheses until they could tell us what was wrong. The process felt inefficient and uncertain at a time when I wanted fast answers and cast-iron guarantees. But this messy and distinctive…

During a recent New York Fashion Week, a wood-paneled boutique popped up in SoHo next to Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta. On the racks were tailored, wide-leg jeans and simple black Henley dresses that signaled understated elegance. But unlike those of neighboring boutiques, the clothes weren’t from a storied European maison de couture. They were some of the newest collections from Scoop and Free Assembly, two brands led by Brandon Maxwell, creative director at the House of Walmart. The pop-up—which featured items priced between $8 and $75—was part of the Bentonville, Arkansas–based retailer’s strategy to get its products in front of urban shoppers who might not be f…

There’s no shortage of inspiration for what to do with a part of the house that’s not quite looking its best. Interior design magazines and furniture blogs are stuffed with idealized bedrooms, and online vision boards make it easy to cast a dragnet over the myriad images of classy lounges or perfectly ordered home offices. But there’s always the unavoidable catch that while these images may be helpful references for how to rethink a room, they don’t actually represent your room. A new AI tool offers a more personalized alternative. Created by the online interior design service Havenly, it’s an app-based AI design assistant that takes user-submitted images of rooms and…

Fear over credit quality in U.S. regional banks rippled through markets on Friday, dragging global financial stocks lower and reviving memories of the crisis of confidence that shook sentiment just over two years ago. The selloff hit Wall Street, with main equities indexes seeing a mixed open, as investors stayed on edge with banking sector worries adding to anxiety already heightened by escalating U.S.-China trade tensions and renewed worries about the global economic outlook. The banking sector’s exposure to two recent U.S. auto bankruptcies has rekindled concerns about lending standards more than two years after Silicon Valley Bank’s failure, when high interest…

I was thrilled this week when Apple issued a press release announcing that its original film, F1 The Movie, starring Brad Pitt, would make its streaming debut on the company’s video service December 12. But it wasn’t the news about the movie that excited me. Rather, it was a small line at the end of the press release that quietly announced something else: “Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.” The “+” branding on Apple TV+ always bugged me. Whenever I looked at it, I thought, “Apple TV plus what?” Apple News offers a free base version and a paid version that gets you more content, called “Apple News+,” which makes sense. But there’s never bee…

You’ve probably heard of House of Highlights—even if you’re not a sports fan, it’s hard to miss, whether on YouTube or scrolling through your social feeds. What started as a college dorm Instagram account has grown over 11 years into the #1 sports media brand on the platform, boasting 100 million followers and billions of monthly views. Today, House of Highlights is a multi-platform sports media powerhouse, producing creator-led content and original series that rival traditional TV. Drew Muller, vice president and general manager at House of Highlights, spoke with Yasmin Gagne and Joshua Christensen on the Most Innovative Companies podcast about growth strategies,…

Meta is rolling out a new Facebook feature that the company says will help users share more photos—but which could also be used to help train its AI. The opt-in feature allows Facebook’s AI to access your phone’s camera roll in order to find photos it finds “shareworthy,” and to suggest edits using its AI tools. Users can then decide if they want to share the images or not. “With your permission and the help of AI, our new feature enables Facebook to automatically surface hidden gems – those memorable moments that get lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps – and edit them to save or share,” Meta said in its announcement explaining the new feature on …

As economic uncertainty deepens, the rush for gold continues—with prices for the precious metal topping $4,300 for the first time this week. The going price for New York spot closed at a record $4,326 per troy ounce on Thursday. Futures also traded as high at more than $4,344 per troy ounce Thursday, before falling below the $4,300 mark Friday morning. Still, gold is up significantly over the last week, marking one of its best weeks to date. Gold sales can rise sharply when anxious investors seek a “safe haven” for their money. For the U.S., the latest gains arrive amid the now weekslong government shutdown and ongoing trade wars abroad—with President Donald The P…

In 1998, five kids met in a cafe in Belgrade. Still in their 20s, they were, to all outward appearances, nothing special. They weren’t rich, or powerful; they didn’t hold important positions or have access to significant resources. Nevertheless, that day, they conceived a plan to overthrow their country’s brutal Milošević regime. The next day, six friends joined them and they became the 11 founders of the activist group Otpor. A year later, Otpor numbered a few hundred members and it seemed that Milošević would be the dictator for life. A year after that, Otpor had grown to 70,000 and the Bulldozer Revolution brought down the once-unshakable dictator. That’s how …

When samurai warriors went into battle in 16th century Japan, their swords included a piece of hidden art. Within the tsuba, the hand guard at the bottom of the blade, metal smiths carefully crafted beautiful and complex designs, including flowers, animals, and landscapes. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States in its permanent collection, including hundreds of tsubas. It has just collaborated with the fine jewelry designer Monica Rich Kosann to create a collection of necklaces inspired by three tsuba designs—a crane, a turtle, and a butterfly—to introduce these ancient works of art back into the m…

Over the past few years, business leaders have lived through a masterclass in volatility. A global pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, surging cyberattacks, economic whiplash, and now the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence have reshaped markets in unpredictable ways. For many executives, resilience once meant little more than business continuity planning: extra servers, backup systems, and insurance policies. But the world we lead in today demands more. Resilience is no longer just about defense—it’s about growth. The organizations that thrive amid disruption are not those with the strongest walls, but those with the most flexible foundations. They are a…