What's on Your Mind?

For the better part of the last half-century, the world has traveled to California to experience Silicon Valley. They’ve heard from Stanford dropouts-turned-unicorn founders, toured dazzling tech campuses, spoken with shrewd venture capitalists, and discussed, ad nauseum, the region’s core DNA. They’ve come to scoop up the secret fertilizer, take it back home, and sprinkle it onto the local soil in the hopes of magically growing “Silicon Prairie,” or “Silicon Heartland,” or Silicon Fill-in-the-Blank. In reality, few places in the United States—almost none outside a handful of big coastal cities—have succeeded. Eventually, hopeful communities have abandoned their “inno…

Startups bubbling with new perspectives, fresh technologies, and a war chest to spend on disruption while their businesses find their footing are often rife with innovation, but they don’t hold a monopoly on it. Young talent looking to disrupt legacy industries traditionally looked to entrepreneurship and startups. As corporations prepare for AI they’re trying to convince innovators that the best place to turn their ideas into reality is within the enterprise. “It’s fundamentally shifted in the last year and a half to two years,” says Michele Capra, a senior client partner for talent recruiting and consulting firm Korn Ferry. “Clients are now coming to me saying, ‘we…

Normalizing good urbanism requires culture change, and culture change requires an advocacy long game that makes space for ideas that seem impossible today. Political scientist Joseph Overton developed a concept in the 1990s that had a major influence on my views on and approach to building support for good urbanism. “The Overton window” refers to the range of ideas that are acceptable or mainstream in public discourse at a given time. The acceptable topics are shaped by public opinion, media coverage, influence of special interest groups, and actions of political leaders. As Joseph Lehman, a colleague of Overton’s put it, “Public officials cannot enact any policy…

When Iga Światek breezed to victory in this year’s Wimbledon women’s final, little mention was made of the head-to-toe On kit she was wearing. The reaction was testament to the “softly, softly” approach used by On these last few years—but the victory and subsequent exposure cemented its place among the fastest-growing challengers in a category long dominated by household names like Nike, Adidas, and Puma. Together, these legacy brands still command a significant portion of the global athletic footwear market, but their grip is loosening. Between 2021 and 2023, challenger brands like Hoka and On (sometimes referred to as On Running) grew their revenues by 29%, compared…

Grating coworkers, tone-deaf bosses, a ninth ask for revisions on a PowerPoint deck—as the workday annoyances pile up, it’s only a matter of time before every worker hits a boiling point. And when they do, they often hit up a trusted colleague to vent to in a direct message on a platform like Slack or Teams. “So often you’re sitting in a meeting, you’re hearing something, and you’re like, ‘Am I crazy, or are they contradicting themselves? Did they change the strategy again? Can you believe they just said this thing?’” says one former employee at a consulting firm, who agreed to speak to Fast Company anonymously. Sounding off to coworkers in DMs feels like both an out…

The Minecraft movie is crass, dumb, and barely coherent. It also just made almost $163 million at the domestic box office over its opening weekend. Video game adaptations have been on a hot streak in recent years. In 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed the billion-dollar mark, nearly unseating Barbie as the year’s top-grossing film. Amazon’s Fallout shattered records with 2.5 billion viewing minutes in its debut week. And now, A Minecraft Movie stands as the highest-grossing film since Deadpool & Wolverine. Hollywood’s obsession with intellectual property—from comic book heroes to kids’ toys—is nothing new. But for decades, video games were the outliers…

Vince Gilligan spent a decade ruminating about his next TV series before he had a clear vision of what it was going to be. But through all that time, the writer/director, who is best known for creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, knew one thing for sure: it had to be entirely different from what he’d made before. In fact, it had to be completely unlike any other show, period. “As far as a prime directive, it is always: A) how can we make this show look different than any other show on TV? That’s the most important one,” Gilligan told me during a recent call. “And B, how can we make the show look and sound and feel different from the other shows we’ve already …

As Fast Company‘s Brands That Matter marks its fifth year, the goal remains to honor globally recognized brands that inspire and resonate with audiences. This year’s honorees demonstrate the same qualities that have defined the program since its inception: a deep dedication to their core mission and meaningful connections with both their customers and the wider cultural landscape. While the recognized brands span diverse industries and achievements, they’re united by these fundamental commitments. METHODOLOGY With more than 1,200 entries, choosing Brands That Matter honorees requires months of researching and vetting applications, until finally landing on the …

You’re scrolling Netflix at 10 pm, exhausted. You don’t read a single review or check Rotten Tomatoes. You pick the thumbnail that catches your eye: a face, a pose or gesture, a moment that sets the expected tone of the movie. Now contrast that with the last time you bought a car, or researched a medical diagnosis, or tried to understand a ballot measure you actually cared about. Different mental gears entirely. That difference has a name: the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in the 1980s, the ELM explains how people process persuasive information differently depending on their motivation and ability to think critically. “Elab…

In “The Mindset of Making,” Oliver Jeffers shared a compelling invitation: “Simply make as an extension of being alive.” His wisdom ignited my imagination. Too often, we associate creativity with being an artist, when all of us are creators. What might the world look like if we tapped into our innate creativity? “The world is a result of all of us as creators and storytellers,” Jeffers shares. “All human beings are is a collection of stories: There are the stories that we’re told, the stories that are told about us, and then the stories that we tell.” “We’re all born with this sense of surviving and then making—that is the reason that civilization flourishe…

There are a lot of words marketers can’t seem to quit. “Unique.” “Authentic.” “Real.” But these are threadbare clichés, which have all but become nullified due to the erosion of their meaning, a dilution fueled by the desire for brands to be generally, yet specifically, for everyone. But “everyone” is not a target audience. It’s a comfortable void. What brands really need right now isn’t another lap around the buzzword block. It’s courage. Courage to lean into the one trait that could cut through in a world of algorithms, sameness, and mediocrity. Marketers need to be weirder. If you want a sociological anecdote of how weird wins, look no further than online dating. D…

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. On any given workday, you might find Whatnot employees hawking trading cards, apparel, or other items on the digital live-shopping app. They’re not slacking on the job or trying to make rent—they’re actually evaluated on whether they’ve spent time selling and buying on the app. “…