What's on Your Mind?

As protests in Iran intensify, satellite technology has become one of the only ways for people in the country to circumvent a total internet blackout and heavy restrictions on phone service. Now, as a number of people in the country turn to SpaceX—the company now providing free access to Starlink—there are growing calls for Apple to get involved, too. At least one member of Congress has now reached out to Apple urging the company to turn on satellite texting in Iran. The office of Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican from Georgia, confirmed to Fast Company that they’d been in touch with Apple about opening up satellite messaging—which lets iPhone users send messages even w…

Is the future of concert venues more spheres? It seems so. Following on the success of Sphere in Las Vegas, plans are underway to bring a smaller-scale version to the National Harbor in Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, announced on Sunday that the state and Prince George’s County are working with Sphere Entertainment Co. and Peterson Companies to develop a 6,000-seat sphere, its second venue in the U.S. “This will be one of the largest economic development projects in Prince George’s County history,” Moore said in a statement. “We’re excited for what this means for our people, and how it will showcase the best of wha…

Close your eyes and picture the word “Valentino.” Chances are, you’re seeing a very specific shade of red. This visual imprint is part of the creative legacy left behind by the Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani, who died at home on January 19 at the age of 93. Throughout his career, Garavani became synonymous with red—so much so that a myth that his signature brand color, Valentino Rosso, was once patented with universal color matching company Pantone has become part of fashion canon. While other designers, like Jason Wu, Richard Nicoll, and Kate Spade have indeed made custom brand colors with Pantone, the company says Garavani never turned Valentino Red in…

It’s Friday afternoon, and a potential client just emailed, asking about your services. You scramble to find your pricing. (Where did you save that document?) You dig through old emails for a proposal you sent six months ago that you could adapt. You piece something together and curse your past self for not being more organized. This scenario plays out constantly for solopreneurs. Most chalk it up to the chaos of running a business alone. But constantly scrambling will start to cost you as your business grows—and eventually hold you back. Most solopreneurs think that “operations” is something only real companies need: businesses with employees, office managers, a…

Every season, the Next Big Idea Club editorial team reviews dozens of upcoming books to curate a selection of the most exciting, must-read nonfiction titles. We start with a broad pool of nominees from which we identify a small handful of finalists and, ultimately, an official season selection. Today, it’s our pleasure to share our list of five finalists for Season 29! Without further ado, the new books we’re most excited about right now are . . . The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World By Brad Stulberg Publication Date: January 27, 2026 A practical guide to realizing our potential amid the chaos of mode…

Below, Melissa Bernstein shares five key insights from her new book, The Heart of Entrepreneurship: Crafting Your Authentic Recipe for Success. Bernstein founded a toy company, Melissa & Doug, with her husband, in 1988. In 2021, they launched their second company, Lifelines, a wellness brand offering sensory products to manage stress and enhance well-being. She is the entrepreneur-in-residence for the Inner MBA certification program created by Sounds True, LinkedIn, and Wisdom 2.0. She is also cofounder of Duke University’s Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs program. What’s the big idea? As we age, many of us lose touch with the childlike curiosity and wonder…

Several times during the men’s final of the Madrid Open tennis tournament between Casper Ruud and Jack Draper last spring, TV viewers were treated to a remarkable camera perspective. They watched the match from just behind the baseline, effortlessly following the player’s movement step for step and glimpsing his perfect angle on the ball with every shot. With no discernible blur or delays, the smoothly flowing live footage had the hyper-real feel of a video game. Tennis TV “I love the footwork by the cameraman,” wrote one YouTube commenter. The company now uses the comment in its investor pitch deck. In reality, these uncanny tracking shots didn’t i…

Leadership loves speed. You see it in job postings: “We’re a fast-paced environment.” And you hear it: “Decide quickly.” “Respond ASAP.” “Fix it… now.” And yes, action needs to happen at work. But reacting quickly and leading effectively aren’t the same thing. Some of the biggest leadership mistakes don’t happen because someone’s careless. They happen because someone feels pressure to respond immediately and prioritizes urgency over accuracy. Someone makes a mistake and you groan. You hear feedback and go on the defensive before you’ve even fully heard it. Someone gets sick during a key project and your first thought is, “How will this get done now?” The…

If you have travel plans this weekend and don’t necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck. A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekend—dubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel—and could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance. The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significa…

If you’re a typical American, you get home from work and start flipping switches and turning knobs—doing laundry, cooking dinner, watching TV. With so many other folks doing the same, the strain on the electrical grid in residential areas is highest at this time. That demand will only grow as the world moves away from fossil fuels, with more people buying induction stoves, heat pumps, and electric vehicles. That’s a challenge for utilities, which are already managing creaky grids across the United States, all while trying to meet a growing demand for power. So they’re now trying to turn EVs from a burden into a boon. More and more models, for instance, feature “vehicl…

Over the past couple of days, TikTok has been flooded with owl impressions—albeit ones in which the birds sound like various celebrities, have regional accents, or find themselves in hyper-specific situations. It’s a trend better seen with your own eyes than explained. “My impression of an owl if the owl was Jennifer Coolidge” is one such viral example. “If The President were an owl,” impersonated another. An “owl but it’s Keira Knightley,” another posted. Or “an owl but it’s Bella Swan,” said yet another. The hashtag #owlimpression currently has 13,000 videos of TikTokers “hoo-hoo-ing” in various likenesses. There are also definitive rankings of the best i…

It looks like OpenAI is taking the “new year, new you” approach when it comes to its business strategy. To kick off 2026, the company announced it would soon introduce ads into ChatGPT—which was a bit of a surprise, considering CEO Sam Altman had previously said ads would be a “last resort” as a business model. It’s hard to say how final a resort this is without looking at OpenAI’s balance sheet, but we do know the company is feeling the heat. After Google released Gemini 3 in the fall—which scored well on leaderboards, market share, and plaudits from the AI community—Altman declared a “code red” at OpenAI to ensure that ChatGPT is best in class. And as impressive as …

To anchor the long rows of server racks that power the artificial intelligence boom, every data center needs thousands of holes drilled into its concrete floor. It’s a precise part of the construction process that has required workers to bend over with handheld drills for hours at a time grinding meticulously placed holes into thick pads of concrete. Now, there’s a robot doing it up to 10 times as fast. Tool brand DeWalt has just revealed a downward-drilling robot that can autonomously roam the floors of under construction data centers to drill the thousands of holes that are necessary for installing server hardware and other building elements. Developed in conjun…

Sales reps, business owners and recruiters are documenting their cold calls online and cashing in on the viral content. Cold calling has existed as long as the telephone: It’s a sales technique where a representative for a company calls an individual unsolicited to attempt to hook them with their sales pitch in the first 30 seconds or less. Some say cold calling is dead in 2026, as people pick up the phone less and less due to the increase in spam and AI bots on the other end of the line. But these days, if your phone incessantly buzzes with endless sales calls, answer at your own risk—you might end up going viral on TikTok. Across the social media platform…

For decades, the discussion around organic farming has centered on important tenets of sustainability, environmental health, animal welfare, and a vision for food that heals rather than harms. But in America’s fields today, a different conversation is taking root and is grounded in profits. With new economic data and over 40 years of side-by-side comparisons between organic and conventional systems, we can now confidently say that organic is no longer just a values-driven choice; it’s the most profitable model available to U.S. farmers. At Rodale Institute, the latest Economics of Organic report examines farm-level data across crops, regions, and production systems. T…

Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning. But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms—those are two very differ…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. In the second half of 2025, there was a notable jump in delistings, as some home sellers—particularly in the Sun Belt—who couldn’t get their desired price decided to pull their homes off the market. Indeed, U.S. delistings as a share of inventory ticked up to 5.5% in fall 2025—a decade-high reading for that time of year. In December 2025, ResiClub noted to readers: “Looking ahead, in markets seeing the biggest jumps in delistings right now, many of those listings will likely return to the resale market in spring 2026—or test out the rental market.” …

It’s Friday afternoon. Your inbox looks like a battleground, your calendar is a collage of back-to-back calls, and the strategic plan you built last quarter already feels outdated. You’ve spent the week reacting, extinguishing fires, and juggling unexpected demands you didn’t plan for. You’ve been busy, but not necessarily productive. You’ve managed the chaos, but you haven’t had space to lead through it. This is the trap many leaders find themselves in today. Our attention is consumed by the urgent, leaving almost no cognitive room for the deep thinking, creativity, and strategic foresight that leadership requires. Working harder isn’t the answer. Neither is download…

Listen, I don’t know about you, but I’m generally not so big on listening. I tend to be more of a “words in front of my eyes” kind of guy when it comes to taking in information (which, as I’ve come to learn, also means I’m “an old person” by modern-day standards—hey, I’m okay with that). Sometimes, though, there’s something to be said for sitting back and enjoying an aural experience—or, as the cool kids call it these days, a podcast. Whether you’re seeking out important info or just casually checking out a conversation about tech, comedy, or whatever floats your dinghy, oceans of options are out there that exist only in the form of audio. But what happens when yo…

Every company wants to be innovative. Most approach this by trying to hire highly creative specialists or by spinning up a new “innovation” team. But companies that consistently innovate do something different: They build company-wide systems focused on customer solutions and make innovation part of everyday business. Smart organizations focus on building reliable processes to understand customers, test assumptions, and scale what works. In my experience at Verra Mobility, the difference between companies that talk about innovation and companies that deliver it often comes down to a repeatable process that drives creativity. QUESTION EVERYTHING YOU “KNOW” The b…

PayPal is replacing CEO Alex Chriss with Enrique Lores, saying that the pace of change and execution at the company has not met board expectations over the past two years. Lores has served as a PayPal board member for almost five years and has been board Chair since July 2024. He’s also spent more than six years as president and CEO of HP Inc. “The payments industry is changing faster than ever, driven by new technologies, evolving regulations, an increasingly competitive landscape, and the rapid acceleration of AI that is reshaping commerce daily,” Lores said in a statement on Tuesday. “PayPal sits at the center of this change, and I look forward to leading the t…

For a show that lasts roughly 13 minutes, the Super Bowl halftime performance has fueled decades of conversation. Sometimes the spark comes from a single moment — as it did when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” triggered a broadcast reckoning. Other times, it arrives through imagery and intent, from Jennifer Lopez’s 2020 caged children staging that critiqued U.S. immigration policies to children at the U.S.-Mexico border to Kendrick Lamar’s carefully layered Black storytelling, delivered as Donald The President watched from his seat inside the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. The halftime show magnifies everything — fashion ch…

One of the things that I love about working for myself is that I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission before making a decision. If I want to make a change, I go for it, on whatever timeline makes sense for me. But the freedom of solopreneurship can be a double-edged sword. Since you don’t need approval from other people, nothing is stopping you from chasing every shiny tool, course, or strategy that promises to solve your problems. The ability to say no to distractions is an underrated skill for solopreneurs. There’s a difference between making strategic decisions and letting yourself be pulled in a million directions. You need to master the former and resist t…

For the past two years, artificial intelligence strategy has largely meant the same thing everywhere: pick a large language model, plug it into your workflows, and start experimenting with prompts. That phase is coming to an end. Not because language models aren’t useful, with their obvious limitations they are, but because they are rapidly becoming commodities. When everyone has access to roughly the same models, trained on roughly the same data, the real question stops being who has the best AI and becomes who understands their world best. That’s where world models come in. From rented intelligence to owned understanding Large language models look powerf…

About three years ago, David Lafitte surveyed the website, social media, and marketing content from Tecovas, the Western apparel brand he leads, and realized that the messaging had become “very diluted.” So the Austin-based company decided to establish a company-wide OKR—the goal-setting framework it uses, short for “objectives and key results,”—that focused on storytelling. Tecovas brought on more creative types who experimented with different messaging, including long-form commercials, and things started to click, Lafitte said during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “I think everyone embraced this storytelling concept because we have to talk …