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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…

Short staffing and the transition from paper checks to digital refunds are among the biggest challenges facing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) this tax season. That’s according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s expansive Annual Report to Congress, the latest version of which was recently posted online. The annual report aims to “help Congress strengthen taxpayer rights, reduce taxpayer burden, and improve IRS performance.” The Taxpayer Advocate Service, or TAS, is an independent office within the IRS that’s meant to look after the interests of taxpayers. Erin M. Collins, who submitted and signed off on the latest report, has served as the National Taxpayer A…

To say it’s been a bad few days for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would be an understatement. As of the time of this writing, Bitcoin is trading in the range of $77,000 per coin—a price point not seen since last March, when the world was thrown into economic uncertainty by President Donald The President’s tariffs. And Bitcoin isn’t the only crypto facing a bloodbath. Other major tokens, including Ethereum and BNB (Binance) are also in free-fall. XRP, the closely watched native token of the XRP Ledger from Ripple Labs, dipped below $1.60 earlier on Monday, a level it hasn’t seen since 2024. Here’s what you need to know. Cryptocurrencies plunged …

Staying focused for an entire workday can feel like a losing battle. Between constant notifications, shifting priorities, and mental fatigue, even the most disciplined professionals struggle to maintain momentum from morning to evening. To understand what actually helps people stay in the zone, we turned to experts who study attention, performance, and productivity. They shared nine practical, research-backed strategies for sustaining deep focus and getting meaningful work done throughout the day. 1. Reset With Box Breath High performers don’t usually lose discipline. They lose regulation. When your body flips into fight-or-flight, focus gets choppy and your thinki…

In my suburban Boston Ulta, I’m sitting with my hand in a little box. I’ve been promised that in roughly 30 minutes I’ll have nails that are shaped, buffed, and painted—not by a human, but by an AI-powered robot. It feels like an episode of The Jetsons come to life, but the truth is that the AI boom has officially entered the physical world. Most of us interact with artificial intelligence through screens—Gemini drafts our emails, ChatGPT summarizes our docs—but behind the scenes, engineers are racing to give AI hands and feet. Robots already pack boxes in warehouses and make guacamole in fast-food kitchens. Soon, they will be washing dishes, taking care of pets, and …

The University of California Irvine’s new healthcare campus has a long list of innovative features, from its combined inpatient-outpatient surgical suite to its outdoor chemotherapy infusion terrace to an entire floor dedicated to staff only. The one thing it doesn’t have is a gas line. The multi-building healthcare campus with 144 hospital beds officially opened in December as one of a very few major hospitals around the world that runs entirely on electricity. CO Architects, which designed the all-electric hospital alongside design-build partner Hensel Phelps, claims it’s the only hospital larger than 500,000 square feet to pull this off. “Healthcare is just…

For business partners Victoria Jackson and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, their lives are intermingled with work. As cofounders of 15-month-old bookstore Godmothers in Summerland, California, the pair have built a space that they both longed for: a bookstore perched on a magical slice of Santa Barbara County, outfitted with cozy nooks to read and gather, a cafe, and an events space for author events and workshops. Since its September 2024 opening the space has become a beacon of community, creativity and conversation––what Walsh calls “a beautiful creative cathedral” for everyone from that mom in carpool to Oprah Winfrey. “Godmothers is a great representation of coming up w…

It’s been more than half a century since astronauts last stepped onto the moon. Now, NASA’s Artemis II will return four humans to its vicinity in a 10-day lunar loop that lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center as early as February 8. An Orion spacecraft will carry NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, some 230,000 miles to the far side of the moon—farther from Earth than anyone has traveled. Using a free-return trajectory enabled by lunar gravity, they will slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of San Diego. NASA’s Artemis program, along with private and international partner…

In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Thomas Haigh began teaching a course on the history of computers. Haigh, the coauthor of a book on the subject published around that same timenoticed that many classic histories of computing from the 1990s assumed that readers would have firsthand knowledge of technology from around that era—desktop PCs and Macs, early game consoles, and the once-ubiquitous floppy disk. But for many of his students, that equipment was obsolete before they were born. While it might make millennials grimace, Windows 95 and Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 are now firmly in the purview of the history department. “With today’s…

The best recruiter I know is going to spend the next three months hiring without posting to a single job board website, like Indeed or LinkedIn. “LinkedIn?” She laughed. “You mean Facebook for thought leaders? No, I won’t be using any of those sites.” “Rosa” is head of HR for a large tech startup, and someone I trust to tell me what’s really going on in the world of professional recruiting and jobs — the unflinching truth. The last time we talked, she had finally taken back control of her company’s recruiting process, rescuing it from over-automation, misguided AI, and what she called “results-last” hiring. I’ve hired hundreds of people to work with me over m…

A variety show that’s still revered for its absurdist, slapstick humor debuted 50 years ago. It starred an irreverent band of characters made of foam and fleece. Long after “The Muppet Show”‘s original 120-episode run ended in 1981, the legend and legacy of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and other creations concocted by puppeteer and TV producer Jim Henson have kept on growing. Thanks to the Muppets’ film franchise and the wonders of YouTube, the wacky gang is still delighting, and expanding, its fan base. As a scholar of popular culture, I believe that the Muppets’ reign, which began in the 1950s, has helped shape global culture, including educational television.…

Some high-profile acquisitions take out a rising competitor, such as Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed in 2009, some immediately expand a business’s suite of offerings, such as Salesforce’s 2020 purchase of Slack, and some may morph into an unrecognizable asset, like Amazon’s 1999 purchase of Alexa Internet, then a web traffic-tracking website. (The first Amazon Echo marking Alexa’s debut would launch in 2014.) But many lower-profile tech company acquisitions are made at least in part to gain access to specialized engineering talent. So-called “acquihires” haven’t traditionally raised many eyebrows. But the term’s definition has been expanding as the AI arms race …

Around 70% of large-scale corporate transformation efforts fail. That figure has remained consistent for 25 years—and it comes from an era of relatively manageable change. Artificial intelligence will demand far more of companies: faster adaptation, more comprehensive reinvention, and continuous evolution rather than periodic adjustment. Yet more than three years after the launch of ChatGPT, only 5% of businesses report extracting significant value from their AI initiatives. If companies struggled with transformation before, the coming years will be harder still. Managing rapid change is becoming the central competency for business leadership. Every serious observer a…

A college degree is usually thought of as a ticket to a great job and a secure future. Yet, the job market over the past few years has not been kind to graduates. Rapid changes in technology and uncertainty about the influence of AI on the economy have made it harder for companies to know what their new employees need to know to be successful. I have argued in the past that this uncertainty actually makes college degrees more useful than ever, but higher education is doing a poor job of helping students navigate this uncertainty. Sadly, universities aren’t going to fix this problem by hiring more career counselors. Instead, they’re going to have to do the hard work of…

February is here. The “New Year, New Me” energy has officially worn off, replaced by a much more realistic “New Year, Same Me, But Freezing” thanks to a very disrespectful wind chill a heating bill that’s starting to look like a phone number. But we live in the future! We have technology! Here are six actually useful gadgets that’ll keep you toasty without burning up a ton of cash. Rechargeable Hand Warmers (~$20) Disposable hand warmers are fine, but they’re wasteful and, frankly, kind of gross after a while. These rechargeable ones, on the other hand (pun intended), are basically big batteries that get hot. They charge via USB-C, include one cord that…

You are going to want to turn up the volume on your television sets. It’s time for the 68th Grammy Awards, which take place on Sunday, February 1. The movers, shakers, and singers of the Recording Academy are primed to put on one heck of a concert at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Let’s take a look at the host, nominations, and upcoming changes before we dive into how to tune in and jam. Who is hosting the 2026 Grammy Awards? Trevor Noah is back for his sixth consecutive year as the master of ceremonies. This is going to be his last hurrah, though. In fact, he almost didn’t do the honors this year. Executive producer Ben Winston told the Los Ange…

A new dating app called Known, which went live earlier today in San Francisco, wants to offer users a dating experience that is far less gamified—and far more enabled by artificial intelligence. The app, which uses voice-based conversations with an AI to match people to prospective romantic partners, is the latest evidence that the next generation of dating apps isn’t looking to maximize matches. In other words, there’s no swiping. Known, founded by former Stanford University students Celeste Amadon and Asher Allen, uses an AI-based chat interface that interviews prospective daters and gauges their interests and values. Then, the app uses a model—which the company sa…

The world’s biggest tech companies are facing a legal showdown that could fundamentally change the way that social media is designed. The trial is taking place in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where jury selection started on January 27. It’s testing out a new legal theory intended to spur greater regulation of social media platforms like TikTok, Snap, YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram: Lawyers are gearing up to argue that the companies behind these platforms are designing their sites to be deliberately addictive, resulting in direct personal injury to users, especially children. Overall, the trial is expected to consist of nine cases, which hav…