What's on Your Mind?

Customer retention is more than a buzzword—it is a proven driver of sustainable growth and profitability. Sounds like common sense? Think again. Customer churn is on the rise. Yet, while many organizations recognize the value of keeping customers, far fewer appreciate the full spectrum of losses that arise when performance is merely “good enough.” The hidden costs of unremarkable customer experience—lost profit margins, missed cross-sell opportunities, shorter customer lifespans, fewer referrals, and reduced purchase volumes—can quietly erode the bottom line. These losses are often multiplied by the ripple effects of customer complaints or service failures, which ex…

California-based seafood manufacturer Tri-Union Seafoods has issued a voluntary recall of select canned tuna products due to a potential contamination risk from Clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that can cause serious and potentially fatal food poisoning. The recall follows a supplier notification that a manufacturing defect in the “easy open” pull-tab lids may compromise the product’s seal, leading to leaks or contamination over time. While no illnesses have been reported, Tri-Union say it’s taking precautionary measures to ensure consumer safety. Which products were impacted? The recalled tuna products were distributed across multiple retailers nation…

On Wednesday, Utah became the first state in the country to pass legislation mandating that app stores verify users’ ages and get parental consent for certain activity on minors’ accounts. The controversial App Store Accountability Act, which will now head to the desk of Utah Governor Spencer Cox, has pitted app store giants Google and Apple against social media companies like Meta and is part of a wave of similar proposals that have been introduced in a number of states, including Texas and Alabama. The bill received broad support from the social media platforms that have borne the brunt of criticism for failing to protect children online. Those platforms have …

At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we enable high level women to mentor each other to enable each leader to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from some of the thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring. Our insights today come from Susan Holliday, board director and adviser, who speaks about her global career in the insurance industry, spotting new risks and turning them into opportunities. Q: Your career has addressed various issues related to the insurance industry. What are some recent challenges? Susan …

A new album called “Is This What We Want?” features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musicians—and the sound of silence. With contributions from artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens, and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control. The U.K. government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators explicitly opt out. Critics of the idea fear that will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain’s creative industries. Elton Joh…

AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel As gerontologists—social scientists who study aging populations—we envision a future in which older people leave a doctor’s visit with a prescription to go volunteer for something. Does that sound far-fetched? There’s scientific research backing it up. Good for your health While spending more than a dozen years researching what happens when older adults volunteer with nonprofits, including churches, we’ve found that volunteers consider themselves to be in better health than their peers who don’t. In addition, their blood pressure is lower, and they appear to be aging more slowly than other people of the same age. Other researche…

Some of Abir Barakat’s earliest childhood memories are of her father’s fascination with tatreez, a traditional Palestinian embroidery involving hand-stitching patterns and motifs on clothing, scarves, bedspreads, and pillows. Her father would collect thobes—tatreez-embroidered loose-fitting dresses worn by Palestinian women, ultimately amassing an extensive collection of unique, traditional tatreez pieces crafted decades ago by women in Palestine. “My memory is how passionate he was about it and how he would tell us different stories about (tatreez),” says Barakat. “He would acquire these old Palestinian dresses [some of which] are museum pieces, honestly, because th…

When Todd Willing was 15, he entered a high school work experience program at Ford’s Australian Design Studio. His father owned a garage, and he’d always been around cars. “I had a loose understanding of what went into them because of that exposure, and I always had a creative bent I guess,” says Willing. “I would be drawing cars most of the time, to the frustration of my teachers.” The experience is still so vivid in Willing’s mind: the plane ride to Melbourne, the energy and feel of a space devoted to creativity, the culture and environment of a creative team. “That was it for me,” he says. “I wasn’t going to be doing anything else.” Now, 22 years later and still at Fo…

If the joy of seeing butterflies seems increasingly rare these days, it isn’t your imagination. From 2000 to 2020, the number of butterflies fell by 22% across the continental United States. That’s 1 in 5 butterflies lost. The findings are from an analysis just published in the journal Science by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Powell Center Status of Butterflies of the United States Working Group, which I am involved in. The endangered Karner blue butterfly has struggled with habitat loss. [Photo: USFWS/Flickr] We found declines in just about every region of the continental U.S. and across almost all butterfly species. Overall, nearly one-third of the 342 but…

CAVA hopes to expand its physical footprint after a year of financial success, CEO Brett Schulman announced in the company’s fourth quarter earnings call Tuesday. Over the 2024 fiscal year—CAVA’s first full calendar year as a public company—the Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant chain saw a revenue growth of 28.3% and delivered four straight quarters of free cash flow. And after opening 58 new restaurants this past year, the company anticipates new market openings in Detroit, South Florida, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis. “We’re very excited to continue to grow those markets and build upon the presence we have in existing regions,” Schulman tells Fast Company. …

It’s tough enough bringing the first major redesign of a commercial jetliner to fruition—especially when it looks more like something out of The X-Files than a travel brochure. So, to streamline that journey, JetZero—the first commercial blended-wing body (BWB) aircraft—is teaming with Delta as an eventual buyer to troubleshoot operation and design issues from the ground up. “Our biggest challenge is, `How do you bring an aircraft to market as quickly as possible so that you can have the most impact for your customer?’” says CEO Tom O’Leary, who cofounded JetZero with CTO Mark Page. “We don’t want to zig-zag our way to entry into service. We want to take the cleanest,…

Exhaustion. Mental fatigue. Difficulty concentrating. Irritability. Dreading your next calendar appointment. Nobody likes showing up to work with a hangover. But these days, you don’t need a long night of drinking to feel the effects. Instead, you might be suffering from a meeting hangover—the lingering exhaustion, disengagement, and productivity drain that follow an unproductive meeting. Studies show that 28% of workplace meetings leave employees feeling drained, with more than 90% of workers experiencing meeting hangovers at least occasionally. Nearly half (47%) report feeling less engaged with their work afterward, while more than half say these hangovers…

There’s a reason Haliey Welch seemingly vanished from the internet overnight: she’s the focus of an upcoming documentary exploring her meteoric rise—and dramatic fall—from viral fame. The 22-year-old influencer will be the subject of an upcoming documentary from Emmy-winning production company Bungalow Media + Entertainment, according to Deadline. “The documentary will chronicle how Welch, a young woman from a small-town with no active social media presence, unknowingly created a viral moment that gave way into a global phenomenon,” per a press release shared with the outlet. The documentary will focus on Welch’s “unexpected rise to fame, the scrutiny that followe…

In hindsight, NATO was an unnecessarily confusing acronym for a trade organization representing movie theater owners. For 60 years, the National Association of Theatre Owners has promoted interests of movie theaters, from the biggest chains to the one-screen mom and pop shops. They’ve also regularly gotten mail and phone calls intended for the other NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the theater owner’s organization is looking to the future, with a new name and a refocused mission. The group will now be known as Cinema United, president and CEO Michael O’Leary told The Associated Press Tuesday. “It can be a little complicated having the same name as…

Lawrence Cappello is an award-winning professor of U.S. legal & constitutional history at the University of Alabama and a graduate of New York City Public Schools. He is the author of None of Your Damn Business: Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age (University of Chicago Press) and a certified information privacy professional (CIPP/US & CIPM). His work on the right to privacy has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Hill, and other media outlets. What’s the big idea? In an age of constant connectivity, privacy can feel like a thing of the past—but award-winning professor Lawrence Cappello makes…

National Leadership Day, which takes place every Feb. 20, offers a chance to reflect on what truly defines leadership – not just strategy or decision-making, but the ability to build trust. In an era of rapid change, when teams look to leaders for stability and direction, trust is the invisible currency that fuels organizational success. As an economist, I know there’s a lot of research proving this point. I’ve conducted some myself, including work on how trust is essential for leaders in cross-cultural business environments. In an expansive study of China’s fast-paced restaurant industry, my colleagues and I found that leaders who cultivate trust can significantly re…

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…

If you follow any Gen Zers on social media, you may know they seem to abide by one piece of sage wisdom: Go big or go home. That much is certainly true when it comes to their wild prom-posals and sometimes scary-extravagant gender-reveal parties. And apparently, it also holds true for their Valentine’s Day celebrations. According to a new survey from CouponFollow, on average, Americans in relationships plan to spend around $155 on the day of love this year. But Gen Z? Gen Z wouldn’t be satisfied unless they were going above and beyond. The generation that seems to enjoy flashy celebrations will spend far more on cards, chocolates, and stuffed animals, budgeting $235 t…

A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians. The study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes two smaller ones that detected evidence of infection in previously undiagnosed farmworkers. In those studies, several of the infected workers remembered having symptoms of H5N1 bird flu, while none of the veterinarians in the new paper recalled any such symptoms. The new study is more evidence that the official U.S. tally of confirmed human bird flu infections — 68 in the last year — is likely a significant undercount, said Dr. Gregory Gray, an infectious disease researcher at the University o…

After a rough start to 2025 due to the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, awards season in Hollywood is officially back in the swing of things. The fires, which broke out right after the Golden Globes, even caused some to question awards shows’ relevance in this time of crisis. Despite several delays, however, the Critics Choice Awards was held at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on February 7. The following day, the Producers Guild of America Awards (PGA) was held at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles and the Directors Guild of America Awards (DGA) was presented at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. The results from these three prestigious awards shows …

China appears to be pursuing a calculated effort to recruit recently laid-off U.S. scientists—particularly those with expertise in artificial intelligence—to relocate or contribute remotely to research operations based in Shenzhen. This campaign is reportedly being driven by a network of entities linked to a shadowy Chinese technology conglomerate. In March, advertisements offering “full-cycle support” for relocation to Shenzhen were placed on LinkedIn, Craigslist, and in several major international publications. (I was alerted to one such newspaper ad through a friend in the city.) The timing coincides with a wave of budget-driven layoffs across U.S. federal agencies…