What's on Your Mind?

U.S. hospitals generate nearly six million tons of waste each year, and a single patient can be responsible for more than 30 pounds a day. Much of that waste comes from the operating room (OR), which accounts for up to a third of a hospital’s total output and is among the most expensive areas to manage. A large portion comes from single-use devices, packaging, and transport materials. These practices are often criticized, and not without reason. But in settings like transplantation, much of that waste is directly tied to protecting patients. I’m often asked, “Why not make devices reusable?” or “What about the environmental impact?” After years in the OR and workin…

The ability to stay connected through technology plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives, but in some areas of our lives we are only beginning to realize the life-saving potential of smart technology. This is particularly true in the world of fire and carbon monoxide (CO) safety, where timing can be the difference between life and death. We know that having working smoke alarms in the home can double the likelihood of safely escaping a house fire. Due to modern synthetic materials and open floor plans, fires today are burning hotter and faster. In an emergency, every second counts. Smart technology that provides real-time notifications and remote monitoring cap…

Congratulations! You’ve just closed a funding round or hit a major milestone in your company’s journey. Now, it’s time to share this exciting moment with the world. As a founder or company leader, you know how important it is to communicate major news to investors, partners, customers, and other stakeholders. But the steps you take when developing your communications strategy can make or break its true impact. Here is your communications playbook for developing a well-planned strategy that ensures your next milestone attracts the attention of media, employees, partners, and those who matter most. 1. Establish your North Star. As a first order of business, y…

Debate about whether artificial intelligence can replicate the intellectual labor of doctors, lawyers, or PhDs forgoes a deeper concern that’s looming: Entire companies—not just individual jobs—may be rendered obsolete by the accelerating pace of AI adoption. Reports suggesting OpenAI will charge $20,000 per month for agents trained at a PhD level spun up the ongoing debate about whose job is safe from AI and whose job is not. “I’ve not seen it be that impressive yet, but it’s likely not far off,” James Villarrubia, head of digital innovation and AI at NASA CAS, told me. Sean McGregor, the founder of Responsible AI Collaborative who earned a PhD in computer sc…

As millions of new graduates enter the job market this spring and summer, many may encounter a potentially frustrating paradox: They need experience to get hired, but they need a job or internship to gain that experience. This paradox is deepening in today’s labor market. At Deloitte, we recently released a Global Human Capital Trends report that found that 66% of hiring managers say most recent hires are not fully prepared for their roles, most often due to a lack of experience. Meanwhile, research has shown that a majority of employers have increased experience requirements over the past three years, and many “entry-level” roles today often require two to five years of…

Last week, the nonprofit that runs New York City Pride revealed that around a quarter of its corporate donors have either canceled or diminished their support this year. The pullback has result in an estimated $750,000 shortfall for the organization as it gears up for its biggest event of the year. According to Chris Piedmont, media director at Heritage of Pride, many sponsors cited uncertainty around the economic impact of tariffs as their reasoning for scaling back. Others, though, “expressed concern about potential blowback from the current administration for publicly supporting Pride and other [DEI] initiatives.” It’s a troubling new chapter in a months-long trend…

For generations of Americans, the soundtrack to spring weekends has been a rise in birdsong and the loud, constant “virrrrrr” of neighbors cutting their growing grass. But the gas lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and weed eaters that have been used for more than a century to keep lawns manicured aren’t only noisy—in the past few years, researchers have discovered that they also pose an outsize risk to the environment and to human health. In response, cities across the U.S. are experimenting with incentive programs to encourage residents to opt for more environmentally friendly electric lawn equipment. The shape these programs take isn’t one size fits all: From bans to rebat…

eOlipop’s surging popularity has taken the $60 billion soda industry by storm. As Gen Z and millennials ditch sugary sodas, Olipop is leading the pre-biotic beverage trend, sparking the likes of Coca Cola and PepsiCo to enter the fray. Olipop co-founder, CEO and formulator, Ben Goodwin, shares how the brand is navigating the turbulence of rapid growth amid rising competition, and whether healthy soda is actually healthy or just a TikTok-fueled fad. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversatio…

Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) are far more interested in buying homes today than they were just six months ago. That makes the group the only generation whose interest in homeownership has increased since September 2024. However, these same people are tending to put off the investment due to sky-high mortgage rates. The new data comes from an online survey of 2,230 adults conducted by Realtor.com. Six months ago, 15% of millennials said they were interested in buying a home. Now 23% are interested, according to the latest survey. Still, that doesn’t mean more 29- to 44-year-olds are actually buying homes. In a press release, Laura Eddy, vic…

You couldn’t have missed the news: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have teamed up, after OpenAI acquired Ive’s company io for $6.5 billion. The plan? For Ive, and a sizable team of ex-employees from Apple, it’s to create a series of hardware products for OpenAI. The news alone dropped shares of Apple by 1.8% as two of the most celebrated software and hardware development teams in the modern era have combined to realize the potential of artificial intelligence and change the way we live. Hopefully for the better. The first io product, according to The Wall Street Journal, arrives in 2026. It will be a small object “capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and…

The last two years have been one of the toughest job markets I’ve seen in decades. This isn’t like 2020 or 2021, where after the initial phase of the pandemic receded, jobs quickly reappeared. This one has been slow and unrelenting—market volatility causing uncertainty, and digital transformation of workplaces, and AI taking over jobs faster than you can read the headlines. These days, it feels like you’re sending your resume into the abyss. Sound familiar? I see it every day as a recruiter and career coach: talented job-seekers submitting application after application into what feels like a black hole. Weeks turn into months. The silence is deafening. Each passing da…

After months of rigorous searching, you’ve found your ideal executive candidate. They tick every box on paper and seem perfect in interviews. But then reality hits: Your “Cinderella candidate” isn’t prepared for the real-world challenges of the role. Now what? A popular study highlights just how common—and costly—this scenario is. A 2015 research report from Corporate Executive Board found that 50% to 70% of leadership hires fail within 18 months. And that can cost the company one-half to twice the hire’s annual salary, according to a 2019 Gallup report. Given the high levels of remuneration, the financial impact can be even more severe at the executive level. As …

Warren Buffett is likely the best-known, most successful investor in the world today. The philanthropist and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has an estimated net worth of $158 billion and is known as the Oracle of Omaha for his ability to pick long-term investments. He’s also dedicated to sharing his wisdom with everyday investors, including beginners. Here are Buffett’s top three tips: Principle No. 1: Invest Only in What You Understand Buffett has famously advised, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” In a letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders in 1996, Buffett explained the concept of a “circle of competence”: Basically, these are the field…

Twice a year, New Yorkers and visitors are treated to a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and sinks below the horizon framed in a canyon of skyscrapers. The event is a favorite of photographers and often brings people out onto sidewalks on spring and summer evenings to watch this unique sunset. The first Manhattanhenge of the year takes place Wednesday at 8:13 p.m., with a slight variation happening again Thursday at 8:12 p.m. It will occur again on July 11 and 12. Some background on the phenomenon: Where does the name Manhattanhenge come from? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the ter…

Have you heard of “Maycember”? According to social media, it’s a term that describes the hectic nature and mounting expenses families face around May, particularly parents with children, due to the increased cost of everything from graduation gifts to summer camps and family vacations, which combined with inflation (and tariffs), have made May feel extra expensive, just like the winter holiday season. That’s as total spending for college and graduation gifts is expected to reach a record $6.8 billion in 2025, up from $6.1 billion in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation. And U.S. consumer spending was up in May 2024, even as prices remained stable; the per…

As the founder of a high-growth SaaS business, Evan was the quintessential entrepreneur. Ideas and innovation were his strength, and they led to his success in attracting investors and inspiring his early hires. With the infusion of investment capital, the company entered a new stage of growth. To scale successfully, the business needed to standardize operations and develop repeatable processes to reliably deliver services to its customers. But these were not Evan’s strengths. With a near-constant flow of ideas and a desire to resource them, he soon earned a new nickname among his team: “chief distraction officer.” Eventually, investors grew tired of Evan’s lack of f…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s workplace advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer your biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: What should I do if I think my coworkers are gossiping about me? A: In past columns I’ve said that much of office life can feel like high school, and this is the ultimate example. This is a situation that feels awful but that you have little control over. So while you can’t control other people, you can control your own actions and reactions. Here are a few things you can do: Don’t engage in negative gossip yourself “Gossip is an important pa…

The recent exposé Careless People, by former Facebook (now Meta) executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, has received significant attention for its jaw-dropping revelations about the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. According to the author, company decisions enabled the Chinese Communist Party to suppress dissent, undermined the mental health of teenage girls, and led to genocide in Myanmar and election interference in the U.S. While there has been much attention to details showing the moral bankruptcy of Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, there has been less discussion of how financial pressures shaped executives’ decisions. Are Meta’s leaders just “…

One of the world’s most distinctive new buildings is now poking out of the center of a small village in the Swiss Alps. The structure, a cylinder of bone-white columns topped by a dome, wasn’t built in the traditional sense. It was 3D-printed. It’s now the tallest 3D-printed tower in the world, and it could offer a technique for other 3D-printed buildings to rise even higher. Standing on the base of an existing building, the tower rises to a height of 98 feet, with four floors connected by a central staircase. The tower itself is all structure, with 32 tree-inspired concrete columns forming a cage-like shell that’s open to the air. Gradually widening as it rises, the …

There’s nothing spooky about ghostworking, apart from how popular it may be right now. The newly coined term describes a set of behaviors meant to create a façade of productivity at the office, like walking around carrying a notebook as a prop or typing random words just to generate the sound of a clacking keyboard. (Some might call this Costanza-ing, after Jason Alexander’s example on a memorable episode of Seinfeld.) Pretending to be busy at the office is not something workers recently invented, of course, but it appears to be reaching critical mass. According to a new survey, more than half of all U.S. employees now admit to regularly ghostworking. That statistic …

Norman Foster has always treated technology as a form of expression. As one of the pioneers of high-tech architecture (along with his friend and colleague Richard Rogers), his buildings celebrate exposed structure, advanced engineering, and machine-age style. Think of the flashy steel trusses and tension rods of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, the transparent spirals of the Reichstag dome in Berlin, or the diagonal frame of the elliptical Gherkin in London. His latest project, dubbed the Gateway to Venice’s Waterway, recently unveiled at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, extends that tradition into electric mobility. Developed with Porsche and the …

After back-to-back explosions, SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship again on Tuesday evening, but fell short of the main objectives when the spacecraft tumbled out of control and broke apart. The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off on its ninth demo from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site at the southern tip of Texas. Residents voted this month to organize as an official city. CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX hoped to release a series of mock satellites following liftoff, but that got nixed because the door failed to open all the way. Then the spacecraft began spinning as it skimmed space toward an uncontrolled landing in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX later confirmed that the spa…