What's on Your Mind?

At a factory in Austin, a startup recently finished its first prototype: a row house it plans to replicate in cities nationwide to help with the housing shortage. Row houses—narrow, multistory homes that share walls with neighbors on each side—are ubiquitous in older neighborhoods from Brooklyn to San Francisco, but aren’t commonly built now. The American Housing Corp., wants to bring them back. “Row homes are an underbuilt category in the United States,” says Riley Meik, cofounder and CEO of the American Housing Corp. The company has developed a kit of parts that can be quickly manufactured, shipped to building sites in dense urban neighborhoods, and assembled, h…

I’ve read a lot of books on building a culture at work. A lot of the advice is well intentioned but to me overly complex. A 20-step framework is a lot harder to live by than a simple operating principle. Culture is something people feel and live more than implement. Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in his book What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, “It’s not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meetings. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.” For me, culture is created through actions. It’s the choices leaders make every day that shape how peop…

Almost 10 years ago, physician and data scientist Dr. Ruben Amarasingham founded Pieces Technologies in Dallas with a clear goal: use artificial intelligence to make clinical work lighter, not heavier. At a time when much of healthcare AI focused on prediction and automation, Pieces concentrated on something harder to quantify but more consequential—how clinicians actually think, document, and make decisions inside busy hospital workflows. That focus helped Pieces gain traction with health systems looking for AI that could assist with documentation, coordination, and decision-making without disrupting care. But as hospitals began relying more heavily on AI for diagnos…

The humble tripod is an unheralded but essential part of any film or photo shoot. It’s the key to making shots level and pans smooth, and as a piece of equipment it’s seemingly about as simple as can be, with three legs and a mount at the top. But as any photographer or filmmaker knows, setting up a tripod properly can involve dozens of moving parts, clamps, pivots, and adjustments. A new tripod system from Italian camera equipment maker Manfrotto turns this setup into a single fluid motion. The Manfrotto One’s unique design allows for all three of its legs to be deployed simultaneously, extending out to the desired length in concert, each locking in place wit…

The record-breaking Falcons Flight roller coaster starts out slow, but don’t be fooled. Seconds into the ride at the new Six Flags Qiddiya City in Saudi Arabia, passengers are jolted into a high-speed journey that ascends mountainsides, passes through dark tunnels, and then does it all over again. The ride reaches a height of nearly 640 feet, lasts for nearly 3.5 minutes, and travels more than 2.6 miles. It’s the largest, longest, and fastest roller coaster in the world, reaching peak speeds of about 155 mph. To make it, a European design and manufacturing company used the most powerful electro-magnetic propulsion system on the market. Though Saudi Arabia just kil…

The only constant in life is change. This truth is as salient today as it was when the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus posited the idea centuries ago. It’s a truth that most modern leaders know firsthand, especially when it comes to culture. Culture is in constant flux. Emergent ideas are introduced to an organization—be they new technologies or nascent philosophies—which catalyze new imaginations and result in new ways of work. However, the question isn’t if things will change but how and when? So, we sat down with the former CMO of McDonald’s North America, Tariq Hassan, for this week’s episode of the From the Culture podcast to talk about cultural change and how l…

Most professionals spend their days focused on performance, deadlines, deliverables, and doing good work that gets noticed. That’s normal. But there’s an overlooked truth about work (and life, really) that doesn’t show up in job descriptions or KPIs. Work feels better, and often goes better, when it’s shared. Shared in the human sense: letting someone in, acknowledging others, and enjoying progress together instead of alone. That idea comes through clearly in a story Oprah Winfrey often tells about growing up in Mississippi and learning an early lesson from a candy bar. “I’m telling you, if you do something to make someone else happier, it’s almost like it co…

If you’re a CEO, entrepreneur, recruiter, or hiring manager, you know how important it is to hire the right people for the right roles. But hiring the right people for the right roles goes way beyond simply attracting “the best and brightest” of your industry. Just because someone is highly qualified, great at what they do and has impressive experience, doesn’t mean they are a good fit for your organization or your culture. If you want your business to thrive in the marketplace, you need to filter out potential employees who may not be a great fit for your organization and attract those who are the most likely to thrive. Here are three ways to attract potential employees …

For two decades, I’ve mentored professionals at every career stage: first as a high school teacher and administrator, and presently as a university professor and corporate consultant. One pattern emerges across every career pathway—the people who find strong fits for their talents aren’t the ones with the most impressive single credential. They’re the ones who understand how three things work together: Skills. Credentials. Network. The car mechanic who realized his hands-on skills weren’t enough as cars went digital. So he went to night school and earned his associate’s, bachelor’s, and MBA in four years. During the journey, he took advantage of every professional net…

Can I say it? If you have ever scrolled on social media and felt like you joined a conversation halfway through, with no context at all, you are not alone. Over the past few weeks, a type of posting has resurfaced online with the sole purpose of ragebaiting everyone. It is called vagueposting, and it involves being intentionally cryptic as a form of engagement bait. Common vagueposts include “can I say it?” without ever saying anything, or insisting “you won’t like the answer” without ever revealing the answer. Or “oh that’s not…” What? WHAT? The practice is not new. The term was originally called vaguebooking, which referred to posting emo Facebook statuses t…

Women in all parts of my life are encountering similar obstacles in their health journeys. The common thread is that when we don’t advocate for ourselves and ask the right questions, we don’t get the care we need. While volunteering as a women’s heart health advocate and immersing my public relations agency in the health innovation ecosystem, I’m constantly thinking about how to bring to light the issues—and solutions—that are all around us. “Women are dying because we aren’t marketing life-saving therapies to them,” said Rachel Rubin, MD, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, and assistant clinical professor in urology at Georgetown University Hospital. She…

For decades, women business owners have faced a persistent challenge: access to capital. Despite owning nearly half of all small businesses in the U.S., women often encounter barriers to financing. I’ve seen from my experience at the SBA and now First Women’s Bank, that one of the biggest drivers of the gender lending gap isn’t just rejection, it’s that many women don’t come forward for financing at all. Whether due to lack of awareness, confidence, or systemic hurdles, “access” captures both those who are denied and those who never apply. Also driving the gender lending gap is the type of capital women seek. Women often seek startup capital that is difficult to obtai…

Elon Musk is merging his rocket maker SpaceX with his artificial intelligence startup xAI in a deal that changes what a future SpaceX IPO represents. After rumors surfaced last week, Musk confirmed the move Monday in a SpaceX blog post, calling the combined company “the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth,” spanning AI, rockets, space-based internet, and his social media platform, X. Public records filed in Nevada and obtained by CNBC show the deal was completed February 2, with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. listed as the managing member of X.AI Holdings. Bloomberg reports that the merged company is expected to price s…

Oracle shares fell 2% Monday following the company’s announcement it planned to raise upwards to $50 billion in 2026. Funding rounds of that size are no longer unusual. The surge in AI investment and the growing need for cloud capacity and data centers have pushed many companies to seek massive financing. But Oracle’s recent run has been unusually volatile. Just a few months ago, its shares jumped 40% in a single day, briefly making CEO Larry Ellison the world’s richest person (ahead of Elon Musk). That spike came after Oracle reported a 359% increase in its remaining performance obligation (RPO, which are expected revenues based on customer commitments). That was…

China has become the first nation to outlaw the Tesla-style concealed door handle. Demanded by Elon Musk against the safety concerns of his own engineers, the handle and its electronic opening mechanism have been implicated in multiple fatal incidents where trapped passengers couldn’t open their doors from the inside, and emergency rescuers could not access from the outside. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued new safety rules, mandating all cars sold in the country must feature a mechanical release accessible from both the inside and outside. The new law—which takes effect on January 1, 2027—kills the flush, electronic handles that have inc…

Finally, some good news: the Tiny Chef, who captured the hearts of internet users around the world this summer, when his Nickelodeon show was cancelled, will finally grace our screens again. This time, he’s making Swedish meatballs. The Tiny Chef Show was a Nickelodeon series that aired from September 2022 to March 2025. In it, the Tiny Chef (a stop-motion creature vaguely resembling a sentient pea) made plant-based meals for his friends from his home inside a tree stump. But in June, 2025, the Tiny Chef took to his YouTube channel to announce in a heartwrenching video that his series had been canceled unexpectedly by Nickelodeon. It now has nearly two million views …

It’s fair to say that Minneapolis-based Target is going through a rough patch as a result of declining sales and customers. After facing boycotts, tariffs, and a massive surge of federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in its hometown, Target, long overdue for a big change, made one this weekend—appointing a new CEO. Michael Fiddelke, who began his career at Target more than two decades ago, officially took over as chief executive officer on Sunday. He was previously Target’s chief operating officer and its former chief financial officer. (Last summer, the retailer announced he’d be succeeding longtime CEO Brian Cornell.) “While we have r…

Since 1920, the outdoor recreation brand Eddie Bauer has pioneered innovative apparel and sports gear designs for outdoorsmen in America. Now, in another blow for physical retailers, sources say that all of the brand’s North American stores are on the chopping block amid an impending bankruptcy filing. According to a person close to the matter, the company that owns the license to operate Eddie Bauer stores in both the U.S. and Canada, Catalyst Brands, is gearing up for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could potentially shutter all of the brand’s North American stores. The bankruptcy would be limited to the entity that operates the stores, the person said. …