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Agentic AI is redrawing the boundaries of value creation in corporate America. Gartner projects that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, and at least 15% of daily business decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents. The AI race isn’t about building the most sophisticated algorithms, it’s about whether employees actually adopt these digital collaborators and use them to expose inefficiencies long hidden in plain sight. Yet many business leaders are still grappling with how to integrate agentic AI seamlessly into existing operations, and deliver meaningful results. A recent MIT Nanda report found that 95% of AI pilots fail…

Americans’ mental health is suffering and it’s not just due to stressful news feeds or not getting enough steps in. Toxic work environments are playing a large role in an epidemic of worsening mental health. According to Monster’s newly released 2025 Mental Health in the Workplace survey of 1,100 workers, 80% of respondents described their workplace environment as toxic. The alarming statistic is an increase from 67% just a year ago. The challenging environment has major implications. An astonishing 71% of workers say their mental health is poor (40%) or fair (31%), while only 29% rank it positively: 20% said it was good and 9% described it as great. Workers say…

I don’t know if urbanism is science or art, but I do know its outcomes are best with a dose of creativity. There’s plenty to learn from the giant leaps in art and science to improve your urbanism advocacy. Happy, healthy communities aren’t made from being stuck in a bygone era. The value of fog Impressionist painters didn’t discover fog. It was always there, but it wasn’t something people were discussing much in the early 19th century leading up to the impressionists and tonalists. Each of those artistic movements created illusions of reality with familiar scenes. James McNeill Whistler was an influential figure and one of the original tonalists. Here’s what he…

When announcing her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the New Heights podcast, Taylor Swift said, “You should think of your energy as if it’s expensive. . . . Not everyone can afford it.” She was encouraging people to have a healthy relationship with social media and not get sucked into online drama and endless scrolling. As a working mom with three kids, this hit me deeply—about much more than social media. I have spent a good portion of my adult life talking about productivity, apps, and tools to save time. But Swift used a different word: energy. I can do dozens of things to save time in my day, but if I don’t have any energy left, what have I really gained? …

America’s defense technology sector is rapidly expanding. Top talent, ambitious founders, and serious capital are flooding into a mission that matters, delivering products and solutions that will send us to the moon, deploy unimaginably capable unmanned aerial devices, and redefine what’s possible in modern warfare. It’s an exciting moment—one full of possibility and potential. But here’s the problem: while everyone is focused on the moonshots, we’re overlooking the foundation. The unsexy stuff. The quiet, mission-critical gaps that don’t make headlines but could leave us dangerously vulnerable. We’re building skyscrapers without checking if the ground beneath us is s…

To survive in today’s market, enterprises must deliver experiences that feel instant and intelligent. Customers expect brands to anticipate their needs and guide them through interactions that are seamless and personal. It’s the promise of having the right conversation at exactly the right moment. But here’s the reality check: While “real time” dominates boardroom conversations, most data ecosystems are anything but. MOVING BEYOND “NEXT BEST ACTION” For years, the “next best action” model has been the playbook for customer engagement. It takes available data, analyzes it, and delivers a single, data-driven response, like recommending a product or sending an off…

Michelle, a 42-year-old marketing executive, was scrolling through her grocery app when she saw the total: $87. A year ago, her weekly cart never dipped below $200. Chips, late-night snacks, and bottles of wine had given way to produce, yogurt, and lean proteins. But that same morning, a $900 charge for her GLP-1 prescription landed on her credit card. Whatever she was saving at the supermarket felt dwarfed by the cost of her medication. Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound are being hailed as medical breakthroughs. They’re not just changing waistlines—they’re changing household budgets. And as these shifts ripple through everyday spending, the finan…

Quantum computing promises to disrupt entire industries because it leverages the rules of quantum physics to perform calculations in fundamentally new ways. Unlike traditional computers that process information in a linear, step-by-step fashion, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent multiple states simultaneously. This leads to breakthroughs in areas such as drug discovery, financial modeling, and cybersecurity by overcoming computational barriers that have limited progress for decades. Quantum computing is transitioning from theoretical research to a transformative force for industries worldwide, much like AI and cloud computing before it. …

Ever had a song you couldn’t get out of your head? That happened to me the other day. Pink Pony Club. It’s everywhere right now; I can’t escape it. And even though I really don’t like that song, it’s catchy. And as you’ve probably experienced, once you get a song like that stuck in your head, it can feel impossible to get out. What you might not know is there’s a scientific reason for this: It’s called ironic process theory. Or, you may have heard it by its more common name: The white bear problem. But there’s a tried and tested brain hack that helps you to get a song out of your head. What’s more, you can use it to replace negative or harmful thoughts with po…

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. When we named Tarang Amin Modern CEO of the Year in December 2024, the E.l.f. Beauty chairman and chief executive had racked up a string of notable successes. Under Amin’s leadership, the publicly traded cosmetics company had posted 23 consecutive quarters of net sales and market share growth. E.l.…

Barack Obama helped Marc Maron lock the gates on his podcast Monday, returning to the show for the final episode after 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes. The former president gave new status to “WTF With Marc Maron” and to podcasts in general when he visited Maron’s Los Angeles garage studio while still in office a decade ago. Obama brought the 62-year-old host, stand-up comic and actor to his Washington office for the last interview. Obama asked the initial questions. “How are you feeling about this whole thing?,” he said, “transition, moving on from this thing that has been one of the defining parts of your career and your life?” “I feel OK,” Maron answered. “I …

JPMorgan Chase will directly invest up to $10 billion in U.S. companies with crucial ties to national security. The investment plan revealed Monday will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing in critical minerals, pharmaceutical precursors, and robotics; defense and aerospace; energy independence, with investments in battery storage and grid resilience; and strategic technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and quantum computing. The investment is part of the bank’s Security and Resiliency Initiative, a $1.5 trillion, 10-year plan to facilitate, finance, and invest in industries critical to national security. “It ha…

While most employers offer mental health care coverage as part of their health insurance packages, major gaps in care exist. According to new research, many employers aren’t sure how mental health care services are being used by employees. The 2025 Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) Employer Survey, released Friday, polled professionals at 400 companies with 500 or more employees who made benefits decisions. Mental health coverage was a given almost across the board (97% of respondents said their company offered it), and several companies covered nontraditional programs, like financial therapists (62%) and mindfulness apps (74%). However, there were also s…

Repeat after me: You do not need expensive software just to make basic edits to PDF files. Maybe if you’re a legal professional collecting countless e-signatures on confidential documents, a tool like Adobe Acrobat is a necessity. For the rest of us who just need to sign, merge, split, or fill out PDF documents, there are simple online tools that do the job just as well. The latest advancement in online PDF editing? One that doesn’t require you to upload any of your personal files—and doesn’t even need an internet connection to function. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and g…

Designer and educator Omari Souza conceived of his new book Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities, well before the The President administration began its campaign to demonize diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the ideas the book wrestles with aren’t a reaction to a single moment in time; they’re deeper, and go to the heart of design’s pitfalls—and potential. Souza, a first-generation American of Jamaican heritage, born and raised in the Bronx, now teaches at the University of North Texas in Denton. In September 2020, his online event “The State of Black Design” drew more than 2,000 live viewers. Souza’s book challenges design students an…

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s cloud business unit has launched its second data center in Dubai, it said on Tuesday, nine years after its first, as it expands its global cloud computing services to meet growing demand. Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and artificial intelligence division, said in a statement the launch was part of the technology major’s pledge to invest 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years. No financial details were disclosed in Tuesday’s statement. “The Middle East’s advantageous position in fast-tracking AI adoption and its collaborative ecosystem are crucial enablers for private and public sector companies to thrive,” said E…

Researchers are only just beginning to piece together the complex ways that technology affects young minds, but a new study raises some serious concerns. A paper published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, better known as JAMA, explored the relationship between social media use and cognitive performance in kids starting at age 9. The new research drew on data collected from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a massive, long-term study on adolescent health and brain development being conducted in the U.S. The ABCD study is currently following almost 12,000 children from age 9 to 10 as they age, with a particular foc…

Schools with “bell-to-bell” phone bans are pushing students to bring back old-school methods to chat with friends—much to their teachers’ amusement. “Schoolkids are creating a Google Doc with their friends that they all have real-time access to, and they just type into it during class,” one teacher explained in a recent TikTok video. The clip had since racked up over 4.4 million views. “They basically reinvented the AOL chat room.” Other teachers have shared similar stories. “It’s like we are back in the nineties,” one said. “That’s what we did.” Rather than get mad, many teachers praised the students’ ingenuity. “Kids will always find a way, but honestly, …

There is an all-out global race for AI dominance. The largest and most powerful companies in the world are investing billions in unprecedented computing power. The most powerful countries are dedicating vast energy resources to assist them. And the race is centered on one idea: transformer-based architecture with large language models are the key to winning the AI race. What if they are wrong? What we call intelligence evolved in biological life over hundreds of millions of years starting with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria interacting with their environment. Life gradually developed into multi-cell organisms learning to seek what they needed and to avoi…

The government shutdown is delaying another major economic report, leaving policymakers at the Federal Reserve with a cloudier picture even as the economy enters a challenging phase of stubbornly persistent inflation and a sharp slowdown in hiring. The Labor Department’s monthly inflation data was scheduled for release Wednesday, but late last week was postponed until Oct. 24. The department is recalling some employees to assemble the data, which was collected before the shutdown began. The figures are needed for the government to calculate the annual cost of living adjustment for tens of millions of recipients of benefit programs such as Social Security. The shutdown c…

Walmart will be putting millions of sensors on its pallets across its supply chain chain, in a move that technology partner Wiliot is calling “the first large-scale deployment of ambient Internet of Things (IoT)” sensors in the retail industry. The technology is currently deployed in 500 Walmart locations, and the retail giant plans to expand nationwide in 2026. The ambient IoT sensors are battery-free and operate by harvesting energy from sources such as radio waves, light, motion, and heat, according to CNBC. The wide rollout will cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and over 40 distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain…