What's on Your Mind?

Is this the beginning of the end for Bitcoin? A Bitcoin (BTC) sell-off on Thursday is sending the cryptocurrency down again today by 3% to $86,410.50 in midday afternoon trading, after a rally had it above $93,000 earlier in the day. It’s now hit its lowest level since April. It’s part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP (XRP-USD) falling below $2.00 per token during the day, while Ethereum (ETH-USD) shed nearly 3% and was trading at $2,832 in the late afternoon at the time of this writing. Both stock market and Bitcoin investors were briefly riding high on chip maker Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report…

Every C-suite executive I meet asks the same question: Why is our AI investment stuck in pilot purgatory? After surveying over 200 AI practitioners for our latest research, I have a sobering answer: Only 22% of organizations have moved beyond experimentation to strategic AI deployment. The rest are trapped in what I call the “messy middle”—burning resources on scattered pilots that never reach production scale. In my 20-plus years helping companies solve complex problems with open-source AI and machine learning, I’ve watched this pattern repeat across industries. Companies get excited about AI’s potential. They fund pilots. They hire data scientists. But when …

How did you get to this article? Maybe you opened a link in an email, or you navigated from the Fast Company home page. Perhaps you Googled “agentic AI” and this figured in the results. The point is, you almost certainly clicked, scrolled, tapped, or typed your way here, because that’s the digital grammar that shapes nearly every online experience. But that 30-year-old paradigm is about to change. Agentic AI is ripping up the rulebook, by creating a new layer of intelligent, autonomous mediation between us and the digital world. Personal shopping agents will handle routine purchases, while in the workplace, agents will automate workflows and streamline procurement. …

How would a school shooting affect your employees? It’s something that most employers never want to think about, but it’s a horrifyingly real threat to any community—and the companies and organizations that do business there. Following the death of my youngest son, Dylan, in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, I can tell you first-hand about the lasting trauma that occurs when your child is injured or killed in this type of tragedy—and how that ripples through the entire community. In October, we held America’s Safe Schools Week, a national initiative to raise awareness about school violence and promote safety. It’s also a time for companies to recognize they have a …

Executives are no longer measured by the weight of their title but by the scale of what they create, especially in an era reshaped by AI. The most effective leaders now marry vision with execution, using technology as a co-pilot to accelerate outcomes while keeping human judgment at the center. Strategy isn’t declared anymore; it’s built in real time, constantly iterating and leveraging AI to turn ideas into outcomes faster than ever. The builder CEO is a visionary who architects systems, coaches teams, and removes obstacles through hands-on involvement. Here’s how executives with a builder leadership style are involved with the day-to-day work and unite teams around …

IT development has been around for more than 60 years and it has undergone radical transformations from the emergence of the first programming languages and OS development to the internet boom and the current AI era. Although programming tools and approaches are constantly changing, one thing remains constant: Only those developers who can adapt and master new knowledge and skills survive. I’m the chief software officer of a 70-strong team that designs a predictive maintenance system (PdM): A solution based on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI. Without continuous growth, our developers cannot remain competitive. The same is true in nearly every industry;…

“Your new boss didn’t even offer you a glass of water?” my mother had questioned me in disbelief. “After how many interviews? You should not take that job. I am telling you not to take that job.” I had received a call from a recruiter to interview with one of the biggest beauty brands in the world. This was my chance to catapult my career into a company that didn’t often have job openings at my level, but didn’t have the best Glassdoor reviews. And I didn’t have time to ask too many questions. The recruiter had given me 48 hours notice to come in and do interviews. I had shared with my mother I did close to a dozen in person interviews, 30 minutes each, back to back. …

Earlier this week, communities around the world observed World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. It’s a day to honor those we’ve lost and recommit ourselves to preventing future tragedies. As someone who’s worked in the transportation industry for more than 25 years, I come at this topic as an insider. You may have heard the term “Vision Zero” in local political campaigns or public safety PSAs. Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all severe crashes. It’s not just a marketing campaign, it’s an approach to road safety that begins with this basic understanding: Severe crashes are preventable. The status quo believes the fantasy that traffic violence is…

As startups race to keep up with advances in artificial intelligence, some of them seem to be borrowing from China’s exacting work culture—which normalized a 72-hour workweek, or a “996” schedule of working six days a week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. While the 996 parlance and laser focus on AI may be new, hustle culture has always been embedded in Silicon Valley to some degree. Some business leaders, perhaps most famously Elon Musk, have long demanded those hours from their employees: “There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week,” he once said of the “hardcore” work ethic promoted at his companies. Now that culture seems …

If your team can’t function without you in the room, you don’t have a team, you have a dependency. Too many business owners confuse supporting their team with carrying them. Instead of learning how to coach team members, they do the work for them. They jump into every problem, solve every issue, and answer every question themselves. It feels like good leadership, but it’s actually just bottlenecking in disguise. The goal of leadership isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. Instead, it’s to build a room full of people who can think, solve, and act without you. That shift, from problem-solver to coach, is one of the most important moves a business owner can make.…

Instead of teens simply putting down their phones to take a break, TikTok wants them to use the app’s new breathing exercises and affirmation journal to improve their well-being. Over the past couple of years, a growing number of legislators have been proposing or enacting laws to restrict or limit minors’ access to social media apps in order to protect children’s and teens’ mental health. TikTok has other ideas on how to boost well-being—without ever leaving the app. This week, it launched a Time and Well-Being space within users’ account settings, replacing the existing screen-time management page. New features in the space include an affirmation journal …

AI has made us faster and more productive at work. It drafts our emails, summarizes our meetings, and even reminds us to take breaks. But here’s the problem: in our rush to embrace AI, it’s quietly eroding our relationships and how we build human connections at work and in our everyday lives. People are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT to help them write, coach, and communicate. And many are also turning to it for therapy and relationship advice. The problem is, AI doesn’t truly understand people as unique individuals. It can mimic empathy, but it can’t understand it. It can predict tone, but it can’t sense intent. The way we communicate with one person shoul…

The modern workplace runs on a dangerous myth: that constant motion equals maximum productivity. We’ve built entire corporate cultures around this fallacy, glorifying the “always on” mentality while our teams quietly unravel. The result? A burnout crisis that’s costing companies billions in turnover, absenteeism, and lost innovation. But here’s what the data—and our own exhausted bodies—are trying to tell us: emotional recovery isn’t a luxury. It’s the most strategic investment a leader can make. The Real Cost of Running on Empty Burnout isn’t just about feeling tired. It’s a systematic depletion that manifests as cynicism, detachment, and plummeting profession…

How can you tell if someone is a great leader? They always want to know more. They’re interested in mastery of a subject or skill. They ask great questions. And, as they find out more, they sometimes change their mind. They’re a “learner.” But these days, most CEOs and other leaders take the opposite approach. They think of themselves as “knowers.” They appear to have all the answers. That’s bad for them, their direct reports, and the organizations they lead. That insight comes from researcher and author Brené Brown and Wharton professor and author Adam Grant. The two behavior experts had an open-ended discussion about the nature of courageous leadership during a rece…

New research has found that AI-powered content moderation systems from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek don’t always come to the same conclusions about bad language on the internet. View the full article

I think back to freshman year, when my friends and I would cram onto a lumpy dorm-issue twin bed and huddle around one phone, collectively cringing as we swiped through Hinge. That was my first foray into dating apps. It took me a week—and a handful of dead-end chats—before I deleted it. As it turns out, I’m far from alone. According to mobile app analytics company AppsFlyer, 65% of dating apps downloaded in 2024 were deleted within a month. This year, that number has climbed to 69%, AppsFlyer told Fast Company. During the pandemic, dating apps were a lifeline. Gen Z spent much of their formative years—high school, early college—on Zoom, and online dating…

Silicon Valley’s giants crowd the list of the world’s most valuable companies, but drugmaker Eli Lilly is hot on their heels. The company topped a market capitalization of one trillion dollars on Friday, becoming the first business in the health industry to hit that milestone. Lilly’s achievement comes during a tense week for stock watchers. AI chipmaker Nvidia, which itself became the first $5 trillion company less than a month ago, beat expectations with its latest quarterly earnings. But with AI overrepresented among the world’s top businesses and massive AI investments making headlines every day, investors remain skittish that excitement over the tech might be ove…

The gap between the release of the movie musicals Wicked: Part I and Wicked: For Good feels like the longest intermission ever. Eager fans had to wait a year before seeing the story’s conclusion, which premieres November 21. The creative team behind Wicked claims to have tried to condense the plot down to just one film, but an overabundance of material led to the decision to split it into two. Financial considerations also likely came into play as two films will make more money than one. As fans celebrate Wicked: For Good’s release week, let’s get you up to speed on everything you need to know, including projected box-office figures. Who’s in the movie? Sin…

In 2023, Pop-Tarts changed the world of brand mascots forever when it sacrificed the life of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its remains to the Kansas State football team as a reward for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl game. The weirdly macabre stunt got 4 billion media impressions, and in the eight weeks following the game, parent company Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than in the eight weeks before the game. Riding on that success, the brand upped its ambitions and brought three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl last year, letting the winning team’s MVP choose which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa State’s quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now …

Jon Armstrong never intended to create the booming live-commerce platform Stacked Golf. All he wanted was to join the local golf club, but his wife, Ashley, gave him an ultimatum: Yes, he could join, but only if he could find a way to pay for it himself. His solution? Start a YouTube channel reviewing golf balls. The problem was that he didn’t even have the money to buy balls to review, so he scoured the woods at his Daytona Beach golf club for lost balls and started making videos comparing the Titleist Pro V1 balls he plays to whatever he found in the rough. Zero budget. Zero business plan. Just a guy with a phone and a hunch that people might search for golf ba…