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Google has added Gemini to the Google Trends Explore page to help you find new and fresh search terms. It will also compare those search terms automatically for you, all in a new design. This is rolling out now, but you might not see it just yet.View the full article

As the September evening inched along, the line of residents waiting their turn for the microphone held steady. Filing down the auditorium aisles at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, they were armed with questions about a new gas plant slated for their community. Sitting quietly in the audience was John Dudash. For decades, he’s lived in Homer City, a southwestern Pennsylvania town that was once home to the largest coal-fired power plant in the state. The plant, which shares its name with the town, closed nearly three years ago after years of financial distress. Dudash, 89, has lived in the shadow of its smokestacks—said to be the tallest in the country before they were demolished—for much of his life. At its peak, the Homer City power plant employed hundreds of people and could deploy about 2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power 2 million homes. Join our email list to get the stories that mainstream news is overlooking. Sign up for Capital & Main’s newsletter. It was also a major source of air pollution, spewing sulfur dioxide and mercury, both of which pose serious health risks. Today, Dudash wonders if the pollution might have exacerbated the lung issues that claimed his wife’s life six years ago. The proposed gas plant, expected to be up and running in 2027, will replace the old coal-fired power station, but with more than double the energy output—4.5 gigawatts of energy. The new plant also will have the potential to emit 17.5 million tons of planet-heating greenhouse gasses per year, the equivalent of putting millions of cars on the road. And it will serve a new purpose: Rather than primarily sending electrons to the regional grid to power homes or businesses, the new power plant will exist mainly to feed data centers planned on the site. As the hearing wore on that September night, Dudash, a conservationist, did not stand to speak; instead, he sat quietly, taking mental notes. The next morning, he emailed two staffers at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. “First of all, the project will not be stopped,” he began, with resignation. He went on to offer a few caveats—among them, advice about air monitoring. His letter reached the agency alongside more than 550 comments on a key air permit for the proposed plant, a testament to the project’s complexity. After the permit was approved November 18, Dudash’s prediction began to look remarkably accurate—though the Homer City plant still has about a dozen additional permits awaiting approval before the project can be completed, including one that would impact several acres of wetlands and hundreds of feet of a local stream. Though it is among many energy sites popping up to power the artificial intelligence boom across Pennsylvania, the Homer City facility is unique for its size, its advertised economic potential—the owners have promised the project will generate more than 10,000 construction-related jobs—and for its likely environmental impact. It has earned the backing of President Donald The President, who called it “the largest plant of its kind in the world,” a distinction its owners could not verify. There was a buzz in town in late October when Jared Kushner, The President’s son-in-law, visited, though it was unclear what drew him to Homer City. “I don’t really trust the people who are coming in to build and run the place,” Dudash said. “I do not agree with the artificial intelligence portion of it.” “They’re going to have to sacrifice the environment for these jobs,” he added. “In Appalachia, we’ve been doing that for years.” When the old plant sputtered to a close in 2023, it left the surrounding community—which was built on the local abundance of coal—in search of an economic lifeline. Now the data center boom sweeping the country brings promise of such a rebirth for communities like Homer City, though this promise is one that some experts say may be less than billed. And, it comes with risks. The new power plant will be much larger than its predecessor and is permitted to emit more than twice as much of some pollutants as its predecessor did. The data center, or centers, it powers would also consume a tremendous amount of water—perhaps more than its host townships can spare, some fear. Artificial intelligence requires vast amounts of electricity and has the potential to offer a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry. Though some in the community are sanguine about the promise of jobs, experts say the reality for many living around data centers may fall short. Some are left wondering exactly who the new plant is for—them or some faraway tech companies. The Homer City project is far from alone in its emergence: The nonprofit Fractracker has identified 39 planned data centers in the works across Pennsylvania. Tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon are moving in, alongside others intrigued by the state’s rich legacy of power production, deep natural gas reserves and generous subsidies. In July, Republican Senator Dave McCormick, from eastern Pennsylvania, held a conference in Pittsburgh during which companies announced more than $90 billion in data center investments and related energy infrastructure. This tech boom largely has bipartisan support, including from Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who said at a June press conference that he is committed to “ensuring the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania.” Legislators in Harrisburg, meanwhile, are introducing bills that would both spur the burgeoning industry and give it guardrails. The extent to which the Homer City facility’s owners have lobbied for supportive legislation is not clear. The company’s lobbying registration with the Pennsylvania Department of State goes back only to January 2025. It has, however, spent at the local level. In November, for instance, the company gave a community nonprofit $25,000 for a holiday food drive. It also urged state utility regulators, who are drafting a policy on data centers, to issue one that does not saddle data centers with costs that might “push” them out of state. Meanwhile, communities are pushing back and the environmental nonprofit Food & Water Watch recently called for a nationwide moratorium on new data center construction. More than 200 other groups later joined them in making such a plea to Congress. On the ground in Homer City, a coalition of neighbors have formed Concerned Residents of Western Pennsylvania to oppose the project. The Homer City proposal is the brainchild of the same private equity owners that closed the plant in 2023—after years of financial difficulty and two bankruptcies. Two firms own close to 90% of the plant, with New York City-based Knighthead Capital Management holding the vast majority of that. It’s part of a wave of private equity investment in the data center industry. In March, the owners, operating under an LLC called Homer City Redevelopment, toppled the plant’s signature smokestacks. A few weeks later, they announced that the plant would reopen with a data center customer, or suite of customers, to be announced as soon as 2026. Critics fear the new plant will require a lot more water than its predecessor. The supercomputers that data centers house whirr away around the clock, and need to be routinely cooled down. Some data center companies have introduced recycled water into their systems. Homer City Redevelopment has not said if their data center clients will be among them. In 2014, U.S. data centers used 21.2 billion liters of water, enough to fill nearly 9,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. That number tripled by 2023, with the vast majority of the water consumed by “hyperscale,” or large, facilities like Homer City. In states like Colorado, where water use has, for decades, been meticulously planned and negotiated, data centers are threatening to strain such finely tuned systems. Dudash, the longtime Homer City resident, is concerned about a similar fate. “I’m not sure how they’re going to handle the water,” he told Capital & Main after the September hearing. The power plant has, since 1968, been allotted an uncapped amount of water from Two Lick Reservoir, a 5-billion-gallon, dammed-off portion of a creek that the plant’s former owners built explicitly for its use. The power plant shares the water with a utility that serves two local communities—Indiana borough and the broader White Township—as part of a 1988 drought management plan to prevent and respond to catastrophic weather conditions. The borough of Homer City gets its water from Yellow Creek, a tributary of Two Lick Creek, which serves the reservoir and picks up the slack in the event of a drought. “Should the Two Lick Creek Reservoir be emptied, [the water utility] would not be able to provide sufficient water to protect public health and safety in their service area,” the drought management plan reads. In 1985, the delicate system between Two Lick and Yellow Creek was strained when the then-Homer City plant drew so much water from the reservoir that it led to a drought. “Had a significant rainfall not occurred . . . the reservoir may have faced total depletion,” the drought management plan reads. A report from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection shows that the water utility drawing from Two Lick has, in recent years, routinely used nearly half its allotted amount. But critics fear that allocation could be at risk once a data center opens and starts drawing water. Robin Gorman, a spokesperson for Homer City Redevelopment, told Capital & Main that it plans to leave cooling and water-use decisions to its data center clients, making it unclear how much water will be needed to keep all the computers running, or where that water would come from. Rob Nymick, Homer City’s former borough manager, who serves as manager of the Central Indiana County Water Authority, told Capital & Main that he is confident local municipalities can share water resources with the planned gas plant. But the data centers could be a different story. “I do know that data centers do require a tremendous amount of water,” Nymick said. “That’s something we probably cannot provide.” Nymick said that community officials are operating with “limited knowledge,” and that during the handful of meetings they have held with Homer City Redevelopment, “The only thing that they wanted to discuss is the actual power plant.” Eric Barker, who grew up in Homer City, attended the September hearing with restrained optimism. “The power plant was a source of pride and is a source of pride for the community,” he said. “There’s not too many large employers in Indiana County,” he added. But he found little comfort at the September hearing. The Department of Environmental Protection “seemed woefully, woefully, comically underprepared,” Barker said, citing a response he received to a question about the types of pollutants that would increase under the new Homer City proposal, compared to what was emitted by the old plant. Barker was told the agency would look into it and get back to him. “Some questions and concerns were raised at the public meeting regarding the plan approval about matters beyond the limited scope of the meeting,” said Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Tom Decker in a statement. “Interested parties are encouraged to look to the DEP’s extensive website, including its community page dedicated to the Homer City project, for resources addressing such questions and concerns.” Despite the questions that followed, the department, on the whole, signaled satisfaction with the Homer City plant’s air permit application at the hearing. “What’s being proposed is what we consider state-of-the-art emission controls,” said Dave Balog, environmental engineering manager at the department’s northwest regional office. Environmental nonprofits Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Council, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice countered in a 44-page comment on a draft of the key air permit that the application does not incorporate the best tools for mitigating pollutants such as ammonia, which is known to cause respiratory issues and other health risks. The Department of Environmental Protection agreed with Homer City Redevelopment’s analyses of its best available technology, and the permit was granted. * * * As Homer City’s smokestacks imploded and fell to the ground last March, leaving only a gray cloud, Dudash wondered what particulates might be in the dusty mix. While there were rumors in town that asbestos might be among them, the Department of Environmental Protection told Capital & Main that the site was inspected for the substance before it was demolished and none was found. Still, coal dust, fly ash, and silica particulates are all possible during such implosions, an agency representative said. In the months since, residents have complained of repeated blasts from the site rattling their houses. As of January, the blasts occurred daily. But the particulates that drift from the old plant during the blasts may pale in comparison to the carbon dioxide emissions the new power plant is predicted to release. The key air permit the Department of Environmental Protection issued to the facility allows it to release up to 17.5 million tons of the heat-trapping gas, like carbon dioxide, per year—the equivalent of putting 3.6 million gas-powered vehicles on the road annually. In 2010, according to federal data, the plant emitted just over 11 million tons of greenhouse gasses. In 2023, when it was operating at a fraction of its capacity, it emitted 1.3 million. In their comment to regulators, the nonprofit environmental groups said that the carbon dioxide emissions would be triple those of any polluting facility in the state, representing 6% of Pennsylvania’s total emissions. The new plant will emit sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides, two classes of respiratory irritants, but at rates lower than the old plant. The nonprofit Clean Air Council condemned regulators’ issuance of the air permit, calling it a “death sentence.” Along with PennFuture and the Sierra Club, the Council appealed the permit in December. The owners said the emissions from the new plant will result in a 35% to 40% reduction in carbon dioxide compared to the old plant, but the calculation does not account for the new plant’s larger size. Instead, it is per-megawatt hour, meaning per unit of energy generated. Natural gas is less emissions-intensive than coal when burned, but because the Homer City plant will generate more than double the energy of its predecessor, its overall emissions profile is expected to be higher. As the state grapples with extreme weather events such as flooding due to global warming, locking in carbon emissions is the wrong direction to go, the environmental nonprofits argue. On an annual basis, the plant will be permitted to emit hundreds of tons of respiratory irritants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, and dozens of tons of formaldehyde, a carcinogen. It will also emit health-harming compounds like toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene. Additional emissions are likely to come from the natural gas drilling that will be required to power the site. In 2024, Nymick told Capital & Main that the borough was struggling to find a new economic engine. “We’re fighting for our survival,” he said at the time. Data center industry advocates contend that the data center gold rush will be a boon for communities like Homer City, where boarded-up storefronts line the main street. “For every one job in a data center, six jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy,” said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, at a hearing in the state Capitol in October. Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the nonprofit think tank the Ohio River Valley Institute, said the reality isn’t that rosy. The average data center employs as few as 10 people and as many as 110, per his own calculations based in part on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The computers inside them can generally run on their own with limited maintenance. Even in a rural county like Indiana, O’Leary said, “One hundred is a rounding error. It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they’re paid $200,000 a year. It’s not enough to make a significant change in the status of the local economy.” In a recent report on the data center boom in natural gas economies in Appalachia, O’Leary said gas-powered data centers represent the combination of “three non-labor-intensive industries”—fracking, power plants and data centers. “Stacking [them] on top of each other does not alter the underlying dynamic which ties them together.” Ron Airhart, a former coal miner and executive assistant to the secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America, is more optimistic about the economic potential of the new Homer City facility. Still, he concedes that it will never be what the old plant was. “Yes, building a gas fired power plant is going to create a lot of construction jobs, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “But once it’s done, how many actual employees are you going to have working there?” He quickly added, “But, I’m glad they are doing something with the old power plant there.” Gorman told Capital & Main that Homer City Redevelopment and its construction partner, Kiewit, are planning to hire from local unions and building trades. They foresee 10,000 construction jobs. They also anticipate the site will create 1,000 “direct and indirect” permanent jobs, including those hired at the facility itself and those brought aboard for supportive positions, such as suppliers. “From start to finish, the Homer City Energy Campus will be developed in partnership with skilled local craftsmen and will bring quality, good-paying jobs back to the Homer City community,” Gorman said. O’Leary said the jobs numbers such as those projected by the Data Center Coalition are inflated, similar to the employment projections made before the fracking boom in rural Appalachia. He said such projections are a detriment to communities, in part because taxpayers shoulder the cost of subsidies to attract the industry to the state, such as a sales and use tax exemption for data centers that Pennsylvania codified in 2021. Shapiro has estimated that the credit will expand to about $50 million per year for the next five years. Local residents are also burdened with rising utility bills. The surging demand for electricity is straining the region’s power supplies, increasing what utilities pay for electricity. New power plants coming onto the grid must install transmission equipment, the costs of which they share with consumers. These economic factors, in sum, could outweigh the benefits of the new jobs the data center creates, O’Leary said. Earlier this year, the grid operator for the region that encompasses Pennsylvania, PJM, saw electricity prices surge by roughly 1,000% from two years ago. Some of that cost is expected to be passed on to customers. “We have a problem, and that problem is real, and it is exponential electricity load growth causing exponential price increases for consumers,” said Patrick Cicero, former consumer advocate for the state of Pennsylvania and now an attorney for the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, at the October hearing in Harrisburg. “In the context of Grandma versus Google,” Cicero said, referring to older residents faced with high bills, “Grandma should win every day. That should be the policy statement of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” Federal and state lawmakers are still determining how and whether to regulate the additional costs that data centers pass onto consumers, including for fees associated with transmission throughout the grid. A bill that would create such a process while establishing renewable energy mandates for data centers is now being weighed by Pennsylvania representatives. Dennis Wamsted, energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, predicts such costs add complications for data centers, and has argued that their demand as a whole is overblown. Supply chain delays spurred by surging demand for turbines, including those that Homer City will be using, could also create additional costs and lag times, he said. “If there is an AI bubble and it bursts,” he said, “you would have built all this capacity that wasn’t needed.” Homer City’s owners said the plant is better positioned than others in the industry since it isn’t starting from scratch. “Much of the critical infrastructure for the project is already in place from the legacy Homer City coal plant, including transmission lines connected to the PJM and NYISO power grids, substations and water access,” Gorman, the spokesperson, said. Communities on the front lines of these projects would be the first hurt by a project that fails to materialize. But in Homer City, it’s clear that there’s an appetite for the promise of a new, job-producing industry, regardless of hurdles. At the September hearing, many in the crowd wore neon shirts with union logos—a signal of the region’s fierce pride in its industrial past, and deep thirst for an economic boon. After an evening peppered with skepticism over the plant, Shawn Steffee, a business agent at the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, stepped to the microphone. “Everybody speaking about jobs,” he cried, “there will be jobs, and there will be local jobs.” As he walked away, the room filled with applause—the loudest of the night. —By Audrey Carleton View the full article

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A brand ambassador program is a strategic approach that enlists enthusiastic individuals to represent a brand, promoting its values and products. These ambassadors actively engage with consumers by sharing content, personal experiences, and insights. This initiative not only enhances brand visibility but additionally cultivates loyalty among customers. Comprehending the roles, benefits, and recruitment strategies involved in such programs can greatly impact a brand’s growth. So, how do you effectively implement and measure the success of a brand ambassador program? Key Takeaways A brand ambassador program recruits passionate individuals to authentically promote a brand and engage with consumers. Ambassadors create content, share personal experiences, and foster trust to enhance brand visibility and loyalty. Recruitment focuses on loyal customers, knowledgeable employees, and influencers aligned with brand values. Training includes communication skills, fundraising techniques, and hands-on activities to empower ambassadors effectively. Success is measured through engagement metrics, reach, and feedback, guiding future marketing efforts. Definition of a Brand Ambassador Program A brand ambassador program is a strategic marketing initiative that utilizes enthusiastic individuals to represent and promote a brand’s values and products. These brand ambassadors can be loyal customers, employees, or influencers who genuinely believe in the brand. They engage in word-of-mouth promotion and social media interactions, enhancing the brand’s credibility. Successful ambassador programs cultivate authentic connections between the brand and its audience, as ambassadors typically share products they love. To effectively implement a brand ambassador program, you need a structured plan and clear communication channels. Management tools are crucial for tracking engagement and performance metrics, ensuring the program’s success. Roles and Responsibilities of Brand Ambassadors As a brand ambassador, your role centers on creating authentic connections that resonate with your audience. You’ll promote the brand’s values by generating engaging content that reflects its mission and improves its reputation. Creating Authentic Connections Though many companies recognize the value of brand ambassadors, comprehending their roles and responsibilities in creating authentic connections is vital for maximizing their impact. Brand ambassadors promote a company’s values through authentic engagement on social media and at community events. They generate buzz around campaigns by sharing personal experiences and encouraging their networks to participate. Furthermore, ambassadors engage in community activities, which strengthens the brand’s credibility. Here’s a quick overview of their key responsibilities: Role Description Importance Promote Brand Values Share personal experiences and stories Builds trust and connection Generate Feedback Provide insights from their networks Helps adapt strategies Manage Fundraising Efforts Organize and promote fundraising campaigns Drives financial support Promoting Brand Values Brand ambassadors play a pivotal role in promoting a company’s values and mission through their authentic engagement with various audiences. In brand ambassador programs, these individuals share their genuine experiences on social media, blogs, and at community events, effectively helping to humanize the brand. By participating in fundraising activities and community outreach, they strengthen ties as they spread awareness of brand initiatives. Brand ambassadors additionally provide valuable feedback from their networks, enabling brands to adapt strategies that better resonate with their audience. They promote specific campaigns, utilizing personal networks to boost visibility and credibility. Through ambassador programs for clothing, you’ll find opportunities that align with your values, allowing you to contribute meaningfully to a brand’s mission. Generating Engaging Content How do brand ambassadors generate engaging content that resonates with their audience? They create authentic posts through social media, blogs, and videos, showcasing their real experiences with the brand. This approach not only improves relatability but additionally builds trust among potential customers. Here are some ways brand ambassadors contribute: Highlighting product features in relatable scenarios Sharing behind-the-scenes insights during events Engaging in creative challenges that encourage community participation Benefits of a Brand Ambassador Program A brand ambassador program offers several key benefits that can greatly improve your organization’s impact. By building trust through authentic endorsements, you increase brand visibility and credibility among potential supporters. Moreover, these programs create opportunities for genuine engagement, allowing you to expand your market reach as you cultivate lasting connections within your community. Enhanced Brand Trust When consumers seek recommendations, they often turn to friends and family, trusting their insights far more than traditional advertisements. Brand ambassador programs leverage these authentic relationships, improving brand trust considerably. Here’s how brand ambassadors contribute to brand credibility: Their genuine experiences resonate, making recommendations relatable. Content they create is perceived as authentic, leading to higher engagement. They nurture loyalty by humanizing the brand, creating a trustworthy image. With 84% of consumers trusting referrals from people they know, these ambassadors amplify consumer trust effectively. By promoting products they genuinely use and love, brand ambassadors nurture a sense of authenticity that not only improves brand credibility but additionally encourages deeper connections with potential customers. This strategy is essential for building lasting relationships. Increased Market Reach Even though traditional marketing strategies often struggle to resonate with consumers, brand ambassador programs offer a potent solution by tapping into authentic relationships and personal networks. These programs enable companies looking for brand ambassadors to reach target demographics that are often hard to connect with through conventional methods. With 92% of consumers trusting peer recommendations, utilizing enthusiastic ambassadors can improve market penetration and increase sales. Furthermore, user-generated content from brand ambassadors is 79% more trusted than traditional advertising, further broadening your reach. Ambassador Examples Benefits Application Process Social Media Influencers Increased Brand Awareness Brand Ambassador Application Local Community Leaders Higher Conversion Rates How to Find Brand Ambassadors Industry Experts Improved Customer Loyalty Program Enrollment Guidelines Micro-Influencers Community Building Ambassador Recruitment Tips Enthusiastic Customers Authentic Engagement Selection Criteria Authentic Engagement Opportunities Engaging with brand ambassadors creates authentic opportunities for connection that traditional advertising often fails to achieve. Brand ambassador programs utilize individuals who genuinely love your brand, nurturing trust among consumers. Research indicates that 84% of people trust referrals from those they know, making brand ambassadors essential for broadening your reach. Here are some authentic engagement benefits: Personal stories shared during events create relatable experiences. Content produced by brand ambassadors feels more trustworthy and engaging. Long-term relationships with customers lead to increased loyalty. With brand ambassadors desired, you can develop a robust community around your brand. As you explore brand ambassador requirements and the brand ambassador application process, consider how Nike companies with brand ambassador programs improve their credibility and connection with audiences. How to Recruit Brand Ambassadors To successfully recruit brand ambassadors, it’s crucial to begin by defining the ideal ambassador persona for your brand. Focus on qualities like relevance, credibility, and alignment with your values. Engaging loyal customers, knowledgeable employees, and influencers can provide a solid foundation. To entice potential ambassadors, consider offering product samples or exclusive discounts. Here’s a quick overview of key recruitment strategies: Strategy Details Define Persona Identify qualities that resonate with your brand. Engage Loyal Customers Tap into your existing customer base for candidates. Offer Incentives Use samples or discounts to attract interest. Promote Diversity Guarantee a mix of ambassadors to broaden your reach. Training and Supporting Your Ambassadors Training brand ambassadors is vital for ensuring they effectively represent your organization and engage with their networks. To achieve this, provide thorough training materials and personalized support that cover fundamental topics such as your nonprofit’s mission, communication skills, and fundraising techniques. Furthermore, consider incorporating: Hands-on activities like organizing events Strategies for impactful community outreach Regular feedback loops to improve learning Engaging ambassadors in targeted training helps them gain practical experience, nurturing a deeper connection with your mission. Regular check-ins allow ambassadors to share challenges and successes, promoting continuous improvement and motivation. In addition, recognizing the diversity among your ambassadors enriches the program and helps reach a broader audience, making it vital to tailor training to leverage different perspectives. Engaging With Your Ambassador Community Building a strong connection with your ambassador community is key to maintaining their enthusiasm and commitment throughout the program. Engaging with your ambassador community starts with clear communication channels that facilitate interaction and motivation. Regular onboarding sessions help set expectations and instill brand values, ensuring ambassadors understand their roles in promoting your brand effectively. Consider activation campaigns that transform loyal customers into active ambassadors; these can encourage participation in tasks aligned with your brand’s goals. Utilizing gamification through reward points or exclusive discounts keeps the ambassador program dynamic, nurturing higher participation levels. Consistent feedback and recognition of contributions from your ambassadors create a sense of community, strengthening relationships and promoting loyalty. You might additionally consider utilizing brand ambassador management software or a brand ambassador platform to streamline these processes. With effective strategies in place, ambassador programs for small influencers can thrive, enhancing brand advocacy. Selecting Rewards and Incentives for Ambassadors When selecting rewards and incentives for your brand ambassadors, consider a mix of options that motivate engagement and improve loyalty. Offering exclusive discounts, free products, or cash commissions can keep ambassadors active, whereas gamifying the system with points for tasks adds an element of fun. It’s likewise important to measure the effectiveness of these incentives, as customized rewards can greatly boost participation and enhance brand promotion. Types of Rewards Offered Selecting the right types of rewards for brand ambassadors is crucial, as these incentives can particularly influence their motivation and engagement levels. Brand ambassador programs often include a variety of rewards to keep ambassadors enthusiastic about their roles. Consider offering: Exclusive discounts on products Free products to promote and review Cash commissions linked to sales These types of rewards not solely incentivize ambassadors but additionally encourage them to create authentic user-generated content. Tiered rewards can motivate ambassadors to complete more complex tasks, whereas gamifying the experience by allowing points for completed tasks can boost engagement. For fitness brand ambassadors, these incentives can greatly improve their commitment to brand ambassadorship applications, leading to greater results. Motivating Ambassador Engagement To effectively motivate brand ambassadors, it’s important to choose the right rewards and incentives that resonate with their interests and goals. Offering a variety of options, like reward points, exclusive discounts, or cash commissions, can greatly boost their enthusiasm to promote your brand. Gamifying the experience by providing reward points for completed tasks encourages ongoing engagement, creating a dynamic community. Higher-value rewards for creative contributions can further improve participation and impact. Exclusive discounts appeal to ambassadors while motivating them to share your brand with their followers, broadening your reach. Furthermore, regular recognition and appreciation of their efforts can strengthen loyalty and commitment, nurturing a passionate advocate community within your ambassador programs. Measuring Incentive Effectiveness How can you effectively measure the impact of rewards and incentives on your brand ambassadors? First, consider the types of incentives that resonate most with your ambassadors. You might find that: Exclusive discounts motivate ambassadors to promote your brand. Gift cards offer immediate gratification and encourage participation. Cash commissions reward significant contributions and boost engagement. Next, use performance metrics to assess how these rewards influence ambassador engagement. Regularly analyze participation rates and the quality of content generated to verify your incentives are effective. Gamifying tasks can also improve motivation, increasing activity by up to 25%. By aligning rewards with your ambassadors’ preferences, you can optimize your brand ambassador programs, driving better results and nurturing a more engaged ambassador community. Measuring the Success of Your Ambassador Program Measuring the success of your ambassador program is crucial, as it provides insights into how effectively your ambassadors are promoting your brand. Start by tracking engagement metrics like likes, shares, comments, and overall interactions to assess their promotional effectiveness. Analyzing reach and impressions offers visibility into your brand message, helping you gauge the program’s impact on brand awareness. Utilizing UTM codes allows you to monitor website traffic driven by ambassador activities, enabling you to evaluate conversion rates for actions such as donations, sign-ups, or event registrations. Social media analytics tools, like Hootsuite and Google Analytics, can quantify the program’s success by providing detailed data on audience engagement and behavior. Finally, collecting direct feedback through surveys improves your comprehension of the ambassador program’s effectiveness, highlighting areas for improvement and encouraging continuous optimization. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track Comprehending how to evaluate your brand ambassador program leads naturally to identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will provide concrete data on its effectiveness. Tracking these KPIs helps you understand the impact of your ambassadors on your brand. Engagement rates: Measure interactions like likes, shares, and comments to gauge ambassador effectiveness. Conversions: Monitor sign-ups, donations, or sales linked to ambassador efforts, providing insights into your return on investment. Brand sentiment: Use surveys and social listening tools to assess public perception and overall brand image. Additionally, analyzing audience demographics reveals who engages with your content, enabling targeted marketing strategies. To streamline this process, utilize reporting tools such as Google Analytics and social media analytics platforms. These tools will help you effectively measure and analyze the success of your ambassador programs, ensuring you’re making data-driven decisions for future efforts. Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs Successful brand ambassador programs illustrate how effective partnerships can improve a brand’s visibility and engagement. For instance, Nike‘s “Nike+” program enlists passionate runners as examples of brand ambassadors, promoting products through community events and social media, which boosts loyalty and awareness. Coca-Cola‘s “Coca-Cola Ambassador” program leverages employees and loyal customers, sharing authentic experiences that strengthen community ties and brand image. Similarly, Glossier uses everyday customers as “Glossier Reps,” who promote products on social media, creating a lively community and driving sales. Red Bull‘s “Wings Team” consists of ambassadors involved in extreme sports, producing authentic content that resonates with their audience. Finally, the non-profit charity: water employs ambassadors advocating for clean water initiatives, greatly increasing awareness and donations. These companies with ambassador programs show how Nike, Adidas, and Apple that need ambassadors can effectively connect with their target markets. Consider applying for a brand ambassador application if you’re interested in participating in such initiatives. Why Organizations Should Consider a Brand Ambassador Program Organizations looking to improve their marketing strategies should seriously consider implementing a brand ambassador program, especially since these initiatives can lead to significant benefits. By leveraging passionate individuals, you can create authentic connections that resonate with consumers. Here are some reasons to develop brand programs: Improved Trust: 84% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, making ambassadors crucial for credibility. Expanded Reach: A dedicated community of brand ambassadors can amplify your message far beyond traditional paid ambassador programs. Valuable Content: Ambassadors generate user content that boosts relatability and influences purchasing decisions. For companies seeking brand ambassadors, a well-structured brand ambassador application can help identify the right individuals. In the end, implementing a brand ambassador program nurtures stronger consumer relationships, increases loyalty, and creates a self-sustaining cycle of promotion, which is critical for long-term brand success. Frequently Asked Questions How Do Brand Ambassador Programs Work? Brand ambassador programs function by engaging enthusiastic individuals who genuinely support a brand. These ambassadors promote the brand through social media and word-of-mouth, sharing their authentic experiences. You’ll often find them rewarded with perks or compensation, enhancing their motivation. A program manager oversees the initiative, ensuring clear communication and expectations. Performance metrics, like community growth and engagement, are tracked to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of ambassador activities, driving brand awareness and loyalty. How Does a Brand Ambassador Get Paid? As a brand ambassador, you can get paid through various methods. Typically, brands offer cash payments, gift cards, or free products based on your agreement. You might likewise earn commissions for sales made through your referral links or discount codes. Some programs provide performance bonuses for achieving milestones, like referral targets. Payment structures can differ, ranging from flat-rate payments per post to tiered systems based on your influence and reach. What Qualifies You to Be a Brand Ambassador? To qualify as a brand ambassador, you should embody the company’s values and effectively communicate its mission. Loyal customers with enthusiasm for the brand often excel, as their authenticity promotes trust. Engaged employees can likewise shine, leveraging their insider knowledge and networks. Strong communication skills are crucial, allowing you to articulate the brand’s message clearly across various platforms. A personal connection to the brand improves your credibility and relatability, making you an ideal representative. How Many Followers Do You Need to Be a Brand Ambassador? You don’t need a specific number of followers to become a brand ambassador, but having 10,000 to 20,000 is often ideal for meaningful engagement. Nevertheless, smaller accounts with 1,000 to 5,000 followers can still be effective, especially if they boast high engagement rates and a niche audience. Brands value the quality and alignment of your audience with their mission more than just follower count, focusing on your ability to positively influence them. Conclusion In summary, a brand ambassador program is a strategic approach that leverages passionate individuals to improve brand visibility and consumer engagement. By clearly defining roles, providing training, and measuring success through specific KPIs, organizations can effectively utilize ambassadors to promote their values. The recruitment process is essential, as it guarantees the right individuals align with the brand’s mission. In the end, implementing such a program can lead to increased loyalty, awareness, and growth for your brand. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Is a Brand Ambassador Program and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A brand ambassador program is a strategic approach that enlists enthusiastic individuals to represent a brand, promoting its values and products. These ambassadors actively engage with consumers by sharing content, personal experiences, and insights. This initiative not only enhances brand visibility but additionally cultivates loyalty among customers. Comprehending the roles, benefits, and recruitment strategies involved in such programs can greatly impact a brand’s growth. So, how do you effectively implement and measure the success of a brand ambassador program? Key Takeaways A brand ambassador program recruits passionate individuals to authentically promote a brand and engage with consumers. Ambassadors create content, share personal experiences, and foster trust to enhance brand visibility and loyalty. Recruitment focuses on loyal customers, knowledgeable employees, and influencers aligned with brand values. Training includes communication skills, fundraising techniques, and hands-on activities to empower ambassadors effectively. Success is measured through engagement metrics, reach, and feedback, guiding future marketing efforts. Definition of a Brand Ambassador Program A brand ambassador program is a strategic marketing initiative that utilizes enthusiastic individuals to represent and promote a brand’s values and products. These brand ambassadors can be loyal customers, employees, or influencers who genuinely believe in the brand. They engage in word-of-mouth promotion and social media interactions, enhancing the brand’s credibility. Successful ambassador programs cultivate authentic connections between the brand and its audience, as ambassadors typically share products they love. To effectively implement a brand ambassador program, you need a structured plan and clear communication channels. Management tools are crucial for tracking engagement and performance metrics, ensuring the program’s success. Roles and Responsibilities of Brand Ambassadors As a brand ambassador, your role centers on creating authentic connections that resonate with your audience. You’ll promote the brand’s values by generating engaging content that reflects its mission and improves its reputation. Creating Authentic Connections Though many companies recognize the value of brand ambassadors, comprehending their roles and responsibilities in creating authentic connections is vital for maximizing their impact. Brand ambassadors promote a company’s values through authentic engagement on social media and at community events. They generate buzz around campaigns by sharing personal experiences and encouraging their networks to participate. Furthermore, ambassadors engage in community activities, which strengthens the brand’s credibility. Here’s a quick overview of their key responsibilities: Role Description Importance Promote Brand Values Share personal experiences and stories Builds trust and connection Generate Feedback Provide insights from their networks Helps adapt strategies Manage Fundraising Efforts Organize and promote fundraising campaigns Drives financial support Promoting Brand Values Brand ambassadors play a pivotal role in promoting a company’s values and mission through their authentic engagement with various audiences. In brand ambassador programs, these individuals share their genuine experiences on social media, blogs, and at community events, effectively helping to humanize the brand. By participating in fundraising activities and community outreach, they strengthen ties as they spread awareness of brand initiatives. Brand ambassadors additionally provide valuable feedback from their networks, enabling brands to adapt strategies that better resonate with their audience. They promote specific campaigns, utilizing personal networks to boost visibility and credibility. Through ambassador programs for clothing, you’ll find opportunities that align with your values, allowing you to contribute meaningfully to a brand’s mission. Generating Engaging Content How do brand ambassadors generate engaging content that resonates with their audience? They create authentic posts through social media, blogs, and videos, showcasing their real experiences with the brand. This approach not only improves relatability but additionally builds trust among potential customers. Here are some ways brand ambassadors contribute: Highlighting product features in relatable scenarios Sharing behind-the-scenes insights during events Engaging in creative challenges that encourage community participation Benefits of a Brand Ambassador Program A brand ambassador program offers several key benefits that can greatly improve your organization’s impact. By building trust through authentic endorsements, you increase brand visibility and credibility among potential supporters. Moreover, these programs create opportunities for genuine engagement, allowing you to expand your market reach as you cultivate lasting connections within your community. Enhanced Brand Trust When consumers seek recommendations, they often turn to friends and family, trusting their insights far more than traditional advertisements. Brand ambassador programs leverage these authentic relationships, improving brand trust considerably. Here’s how brand ambassadors contribute to brand credibility: Their genuine experiences resonate, making recommendations relatable. Content they create is perceived as authentic, leading to higher engagement. They nurture loyalty by humanizing the brand, creating a trustworthy image. With 84% of consumers trusting referrals from people they know, these ambassadors amplify consumer trust effectively. By promoting products they genuinely use and love, brand ambassadors nurture a sense of authenticity that not only improves brand credibility but additionally encourages deeper connections with potential customers. This strategy is essential for building lasting relationships. Increased Market Reach Even though traditional marketing strategies often struggle to resonate with consumers, brand ambassador programs offer a potent solution by tapping into authentic relationships and personal networks. These programs enable companies looking for brand ambassadors to reach target demographics that are often hard to connect with through conventional methods. With 92% of consumers trusting peer recommendations, utilizing enthusiastic ambassadors can improve market penetration and increase sales. Furthermore, user-generated content from brand ambassadors is 79% more trusted than traditional advertising, further broadening your reach. Ambassador Examples Benefits Application Process Social Media Influencers Increased Brand Awareness Brand Ambassador Application Local Community Leaders Higher Conversion Rates How to Find Brand Ambassadors Industry Experts Improved Customer Loyalty Program Enrollment Guidelines Micro-Influencers Community Building Ambassador Recruitment Tips Enthusiastic Customers Authentic Engagement Selection Criteria Authentic Engagement Opportunities Engaging with brand ambassadors creates authentic opportunities for connection that traditional advertising often fails to achieve. Brand ambassador programs utilize individuals who genuinely love your brand, nurturing trust among consumers. Research indicates that 84% of people trust referrals from those they know, making brand ambassadors essential for broadening your reach. Here are some authentic engagement benefits: Personal stories shared during events create relatable experiences. Content produced by brand ambassadors feels more trustworthy and engaging. Long-term relationships with customers lead to increased loyalty. With brand ambassadors desired, you can develop a robust community around your brand. As you explore brand ambassador requirements and the brand ambassador application process, consider how Nike companies with brand ambassador programs improve their credibility and connection with audiences. How to Recruit Brand Ambassadors To successfully recruit brand ambassadors, it’s crucial to begin by defining the ideal ambassador persona for your brand. Focus on qualities like relevance, credibility, and alignment with your values. Engaging loyal customers, knowledgeable employees, and influencers can provide a solid foundation. To entice potential ambassadors, consider offering product samples or exclusive discounts. Here’s a quick overview of key recruitment strategies: Strategy Details Define Persona Identify qualities that resonate with your brand. Engage Loyal Customers Tap into your existing customer base for candidates. Offer Incentives Use samples or discounts to attract interest. Promote Diversity Guarantee a mix of ambassadors to broaden your reach. Training and Supporting Your Ambassadors Training brand ambassadors is vital for ensuring they effectively represent your organization and engage with their networks. To achieve this, provide thorough training materials and personalized support that cover fundamental topics such as your nonprofit’s mission, communication skills, and fundraising techniques. Furthermore, consider incorporating: Hands-on activities like organizing events Strategies for impactful community outreach Regular feedback loops to improve learning Engaging ambassadors in targeted training helps them gain practical experience, nurturing a deeper connection with your mission. Regular check-ins allow ambassadors to share challenges and successes, promoting continuous improvement and motivation. In addition, recognizing the diversity among your ambassadors enriches the program and helps reach a broader audience, making it vital to tailor training to leverage different perspectives. Engaging With Your Ambassador Community Building a strong connection with your ambassador community is key to maintaining their enthusiasm and commitment throughout the program. Engaging with your ambassador community starts with clear communication channels that facilitate interaction and motivation. Regular onboarding sessions help set expectations and instill brand values, ensuring ambassadors understand their roles in promoting your brand effectively. Consider activation campaigns that transform loyal customers into active ambassadors; these can encourage participation in tasks aligned with your brand’s goals. Utilizing gamification through reward points or exclusive discounts keeps the ambassador program dynamic, nurturing higher participation levels. Consistent feedback and recognition of contributions from your ambassadors create a sense of community, strengthening relationships and promoting loyalty. You might additionally consider utilizing brand ambassador management software or a brand ambassador platform to streamline these processes. With effective strategies in place, ambassador programs for small influencers can thrive, enhancing brand advocacy. Selecting Rewards and Incentives for Ambassadors When selecting rewards and incentives for your brand ambassadors, consider a mix of options that motivate engagement and improve loyalty. Offering exclusive discounts, free products, or cash commissions can keep ambassadors active, whereas gamifying the system with points for tasks adds an element of fun. It’s likewise important to measure the effectiveness of these incentives, as customized rewards can greatly boost participation and enhance brand promotion. Types of Rewards Offered Selecting the right types of rewards for brand ambassadors is crucial, as these incentives can particularly influence their motivation and engagement levels. Brand ambassador programs often include a variety of rewards to keep ambassadors enthusiastic about their roles. Consider offering: Exclusive discounts on products Free products to promote and review Cash commissions linked to sales These types of rewards not solely incentivize ambassadors but additionally encourage them to create authentic user-generated content. Tiered rewards can motivate ambassadors to complete more complex tasks, whereas gamifying the experience by allowing points for completed tasks can boost engagement. For fitness brand ambassadors, these incentives can greatly improve their commitment to brand ambassadorship applications, leading to greater results. Motivating Ambassador Engagement To effectively motivate brand ambassadors, it’s important to choose the right rewards and incentives that resonate with their interests and goals. Offering a variety of options, like reward points, exclusive discounts, or cash commissions, can greatly boost their enthusiasm to promote your brand. Gamifying the experience by providing reward points for completed tasks encourages ongoing engagement, creating a dynamic community. Higher-value rewards for creative contributions can further improve participation and impact. Exclusive discounts appeal to ambassadors while motivating them to share your brand with their followers, broadening your reach. Furthermore, regular recognition and appreciation of their efforts can strengthen loyalty and commitment, nurturing a passionate advocate community within your ambassador programs. Measuring Incentive Effectiveness How can you effectively measure the impact of rewards and incentives on your brand ambassadors? First, consider the types of incentives that resonate most with your ambassadors. You might find that: Exclusive discounts motivate ambassadors to promote your brand. Gift cards offer immediate gratification and encourage participation. Cash commissions reward significant contributions and boost engagement. Next, use performance metrics to assess how these rewards influence ambassador engagement. Regularly analyze participation rates and the quality of content generated to verify your incentives are effective. Gamifying tasks can also improve motivation, increasing activity by up to 25%. By aligning rewards with your ambassadors’ preferences, you can optimize your brand ambassador programs, driving better results and nurturing a more engaged ambassador community. Measuring the Success of Your Ambassador Program Measuring the success of your ambassador program is crucial, as it provides insights into how effectively your ambassadors are promoting your brand. Start by tracking engagement metrics like likes, shares, comments, and overall interactions to assess their promotional effectiveness. Analyzing reach and impressions offers visibility into your brand message, helping you gauge the program’s impact on brand awareness. Utilizing UTM codes allows you to monitor website traffic driven by ambassador activities, enabling you to evaluate conversion rates for actions such as donations, sign-ups, or event registrations. Social media analytics tools, like Hootsuite and Google Analytics, can quantify the program’s success by providing detailed data on audience engagement and behavior. Finally, collecting direct feedback through surveys improves your comprehension of the ambassador program’s effectiveness, highlighting areas for improvement and encouraging continuous optimization. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track Comprehending how to evaluate your brand ambassador program leads naturally to identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will provide concrete data on its effectiveness. Tracking these KPIs helps you understand the impact of your ambassadors on your brand. Engagement rates: Measure interactions like likes, shares, and comments to gauge ambassador effectiveness. Conversions: Monitor sign-ups, donations, or sales linked to ambassador efforts, providing insights into your return on investment. Brand sentiment: Use surveys and social listening tools to assess public perception and overall brand image. Additionally, analyzing audience demographics reveals who engages with your content, enabling targeted marketing strategies. To streamline this process, utilize reporting tools such as Google Analytics and social media analytics platforms. These tools will help you effectively measure and analyze the success of your ambassador programs, ensuring you’re making data-driven decisions for future efforts. Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs Successful brand ambassador programs illustrate how effective partnerships can improve a brand’s visibility and engagement. For instance, Nike‘s “Nike+” program enlists passionate runners as examples of brand ambassadors, promoting products through community events and social media, which boosts loyalty and awareness. Coca-Cola‘s “Coca-Cola Ambassador” program leverages employees and loyal customers, sharing authentic experiences that strengthen community ties and brand image. Similarly, Glossier uses everyday customers as “Glossier Reps,” who promote products on social media, creating a lively community and driving sales. Red Bull‘s “Wings Team” consists of ambassadors involved in extreme sports, producing authentic content that resonates with their audience. Finally, the non-profit charity: water employs ambassadors advocating for clean water initiatives, greatly increasing awareness and donations. These companies with ambassador programs show how Nike, Adidas, and Apple that need ambassadors can effectively connect with their target markets. Consider applying for a brand ambassador application if you’re interested in participating in such initiatives. Why Organizations Should Consider a Brand Ambassador Program Organizations looking to improve their marketing strategies should seriously consider implementing a brand ambassador program, especially since these initiatives can lead to significant benefits. By leveraging passionate individuals, you can create authentic connections that resonate with consumers. Here are some reasons to develop brand programs: Improved Trust: 84% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, making ambassadors crucial for credibility. Expanded Reach: A dedicated community of brand ambassadors can amplify your message far beyond traditional paid ambassador programs. Valuable Content: Ambassadors generate user content that boosts relatability and influences purchasing decisions. For companies seeking brand ambassadors, a well-structured brand ambassador application can help identify the right individuals. In the end, implementing a brand ambassador program nurtures stronger consumer relationships, increases loyalty, and creates a self-sustaining cycle of promotion, which is critical for long-term brand success. Frequently Asked Questions How Do Brand Ambassador Programs Work? Brand ambassador programs function by engaging enthusiastic individuals who genuinely support a brand. These ambassadors promote the brand through social media and word-of-mouth, sharing their authentic experiences. You’ll often find them rewarded with perks or compensation, enhancing their motivation. A program manager oversees the initiative, ensuring clear communication and expectations. Performance metrics, like community growth and engagement, are tracked to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of ambassador activities, driving brand awareness and loyalty. How Does a Brand Ambassador Get Paid? As a brand ambassador, you can get paid through various methods. Typically, brands offer cash payments, gift cards, or free products based on your agreement. You might likewise earn commissions for sales made through your referral links or discount codes. Some programs provide performance bonuses for achieving milestones, like referral targets. Payment structures can differ, ranging from flat-rate payments per post to tiered systems based on your influence and reach. What Qualifies You to Be a Brand Ambassador? To qualify as a brand ambassador, you should embody the company’s values and effectively communicate its mission. Loyal customers with enthusiasm for the brand often excel, as their authenticity promotes trust. Engaged employees can likewise shine, leveraging their insider knowledge and networks. Strong communication skills are crucial, allowing you to articulate the brand’s message clearly across various platforms. A personal connection to the brand improves your credibility and relatability, making you an ideal representative. How Many Followers Do You Need to Be a Brand Ambassador? You don’t need a specific number of followers to become a brand ambassador, but having 10,000 to 20,000 is often ideal for meaningful engagement. Nevertheless, smaller accounts with 1,000 to 5,000 followers can still be effective, especially if they boast high engagement rates and a niche audience. Brands value the quality and alignment of your audience with their mission more than just follower count, focusing on your ability to positively influence them. Conclusion In summary, a brand ambassador program is a strategic approach that leverages passionate individuals to improve brand visibility and consumer engagement. By clearly defining roles, providing training, and measuring success through specific KPIs, organizations can effectively utilize ambassadors to promote their values. The recruitment process is essential, as it guarantees the right individuals align with the brand’s mission. In the end, implementing such a program can lead to increased loyalty, awareness, and growth for your brand. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "What Is a Brand Ambassador Program and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

United Wholesale Mortgage sees this branding partnership as an opportunity to recruit workers in its home market in the Detroit area, CMO Sarah DeCiantis said. View the full article

What shape could buildings take in 2026? Fast Company asked architects from some of the top firms working around the world what they thought about the look of architecture in 2026. Of course, a building designed in 2026 almost certainly will not be completed in 2026, and construction timelines are notoriously fluid. But according to experts, there are some overarching trends in architectural design that could put a clear 2026 stamp on buildings designed this year, whenever they officially open. Here’s the question we put to a panel of designers and leaders in architecture: When they finally get built, what will buildings designed in 2026 look like, and what will be the biggest factors determining their design? Integrated design After years of spectacle and brand-driven architecture, there’s an appetite, especially in New York, for buildings that feel integrated and inevitable rather than singular and expressive. Architecture that values experience and usefulness over heroic form will (hopefully) produce buildings that are calm, proportioned, and materially grounded. —Trent Tesch, principal, KPF Complexity rethought People need to ask more of their buildings. Our built world can and should fulfill our purposes in more targeted, uniquely tailored ways. Buildings will do more to meet the needs of people beyond the walls, in their communities, and be more inclusive on multiple fronts. Our built spaces will say something about who we are collectively and represent the best qualities of our society. They can do more to make people feel safe, to be responsive to climate specificities, to challenge the very perceptions of what a building should be while also being beautiful in unexpected ways. That is what the best buildings of the future will look like and achieve. Rather than design being complex for complexity’s sake, rich and complex buildings will emerge out of solving for this multiplicity of conditions, perspectives, and needs we face societally. —David Polzin, executive director of design, CannonDesign Situational design At the scale of our work at PAU, something built next year was designed starting in 2020 or 2021. This is why architecture is not like fashion or software—it simply cannot be produced in time to reflect a zeitgeist. PAU’s work is “situational” in the sense that it is a mirror and window into the places and prerogatives in which each project is situated. So it is as much about where, why, and for whom as it is about when. That said, there are material advancements occurring that will allow us to use, for example, more sustainable concrete and other greener materials in the coming years. —Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder, PAU Architecture goes organic The buildings of 2026 will be softer and more organic—with more natural, low carbon materials than any generation of contemporary buildings before them. —Colin Koop, partner, SOM Building trust As someone deeply engaged in design leadership for an international practice, I see 2026 as a pivotal moment for architecture—a true point of inflection. We are all confronting the profound and unavoidable emergence of artificial intelligence, which will transform how we work, think, and live; that transformation is real and consequential. But for me, the pressing issue shaping my approach to the built environment today is not technological. It is the state of our social fabric. We are designing at a moment of intense fragmentation: fraying civic trust, weakened institutions, and a growing sense of disconnection between people, between communities, and between society and nature. In that context, the most meaningful architecture of 2026 is not defined by a particular aesthetic, but by its intent and agency. We at Ennead have long believed that architecture is a civic and cultural act, and that our creative energies need to increasingly carry responsibility in addition to program and performance, beyond aesthetics and form. I believe our buildings are being asked to act as anchors of trust—places that reaffirm the value of science, education, culture, and public life. Design in our contemporary society should prioritize openness and steadiness, reinforce institutions as places of collective knowledge and shared values, create environments that encourage community, inspire hope, and embody optimism. Design should become an act of reassurance: that knowledge matters, that culture endures, and that the public realm is still worth investing in. This shift requires architects to think deeply about human behavior, psychology, and social dynamics, and to see architecture as a long-term contributor to the historical record, not just a response to a brief. If architecture can engage these issues not in an esoteric way, but as an active participant in the global ethos, then I believe the built environment can play a meaningful role—however modest—in helping to heal some of the fractures we are living with today. —Thomas J. Wong, design partner, Ennead Architects Multipurpose architecture Buildings designed in 2026 will reflect a growing pressure on new development of all types to serve more and growing needs. We expect architecture to become more multipurpose and adaptive, shaped by embodied carbon and material limits, life-cycle performance, climate resilience, and long-term value. The most compelling projects will not announce themselves through form alone; spatial delight and invention is key. There is a basic need for joy and inspiration in the places that we can create to ease daily life. In many cases, the most radical choice will be to build with less, reuse even more, and design in ways that encourage change by others. —Claire Weisz, founding principal, WXY architecture + urban design View the full article

Nearly 500 buildings designed by Wright were built during his lifetime, but almost 15% of those have been demolished or lost through neglect, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization that works to preserve the famed architect’s work Now, a new logo for the organization serves as a reminder of how important it is to protect architectural history. Designed by the studio Order, the Conservancy’s new logo features a missing square that’s meant to represent the void when one of Wright’s buildings is lost or neglected. The Conservancy’s previous logo was a representation of the Lark Administration Building in Buffalo, New York, which was demolished in 1950. But Order hoped to design a new system for the group that could evolve and move forward. “Though this building’s story is, of course, important, our goal was to expand what the identity could capture by bringing in the full breadth of their community,” says Garrett Corcoran, a design director at Order. The new logo is a four-by-four square grid that references one Wright’s visual signatures, a red square. Wright used the shape as his own “stamp of approval” on designs, letters, and buildings, and the shape has been used widely in logos for groups associated with his work, like the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust. That widespread use, though, was the reason Order initially explored logo approaches that were slightly different, “to help identify the Conservancy within the landscape,” Corcoran tells Fast Company. That approach didn’t last long, though. “There was an undeniable truth the square brought when representing Frank Lloyd Wright,” Corcoran says. “Ultimately we came back to it as a foundation we could illustrate through as opposed to a crutch to lean on, embracing it but adapting it to make it the Conservancy’s own.” Instead of one square, the logo has 15, plus another made from the negative space where the single missing square should be. By representing a missing building abstractly instead of just depicting one outright, the new logo unlocks plenty of new graphic possibilities. It’s a simple form that works well at small scale, and it also tells a story. “When even one building is threatened, the urgency of our mission becomes clearer,” Conservancy executive director Barbara Gordon said in a statement. “Each and every one of Wright’s built works showcases ideas that inspire, and the Conservancy exists to protect them all, ensuring the ideas they embody will impact the future. Our new identity was built to passionately communicate this.” The typeface used in the identity is a customized version of Reply, a geometric sans serif inspired by Wright’s favored font, the typewriter version of Intertype Vogue. The versatile color palette comes with multiple shades to give graphics a sense of depth and light. The new logo forms the basis of a larger design system for the organization that uses squares, grids, and block-like shapes for graphics and representations of Wright’s buildings, and the negative space can also be used as a window to show images of his architecture in the opening. For the group’s twice-a-year magazine SaveWright, Order designed an alternate version of the logo that fills in the blank space with a colored square, emphasizing our power to save now what one day could be lost. Rather than getting boxed in by the square, the Conservancy’s new logo manages to reinterpret a well-worn symbol for the celebrated American architect in a new way. View the full article

Fifty minutes into a training session at a gym in lower Manhattan, I’m doing burpees and clean-and-jerks while Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown—all 6 feet, 5 inches of him—is bear-crawling into pushups, then slamming a medicine ball to the ground from overhead. I was lured to this TMPL gym off Astor Place because Brown is a lifelong fitness nut, and he’d shoehorned this workout in on Monday morning between arriving from L.A. the night before and departing again that afternoon. But Brown also wanted me to experience Beyond’s radical new launch, its first product that is not a savory meal option, the way a target customer would: post-workout, desperate for a functional recovery drink. After Brown’s trainers—known as Coach K and Dom—put me through multiple rounds of kettlebell squat jumps and casually suggested that I add another 40 clean-and-jerk reps with just the bar to, you know, tighten my form, I was ready to chug anything liquid and cold. The product Brown handed me was from Beyond’s new line of drinks, called Immerse—for the way he says its ingredients “immerse the consumer in the remarkable nutrition of plants.” They come in 12-ounce cans that are sold in two protein strengths (10 and 20 grams) and three lightly carbonated flavors: lemon-lime, peach-mango, and orange-clementine. Starting today, they’re available on the Beyond Test Kitchen site for $29.95 for a 12-pack of the lower-protein version and $34.95 for a 12-pack of the higher-protein version, with retail rollout coming soon. Each can delivers seven grams of fiber, plus electrolytes, and a full day’s worth of vitamin C. The protein comes from yellow peas, though Brown says that Beyond plans to add other plant proteins next, such as fava beans. How Beyond went liquid Immerse represents the second category departure in six months for Beyond—a notable pivot for a company that has been battered by changing consumer tastes. Last July, Beyond broke from its 17-year history as a meat-substitute pioneer to relaunch as a complete-protein brand, dropping “Meat” from its name and introducing Ground, a versatile Swiss Army knife of plant proteins designed to work in any dish, any time. The shift into functional beverages extends that same philosophy: plant proteins liberated from the center of the dinner plate. “The idea is to unlock what’s in plants and minerals, and get that to consumers in a form they’ll use,” he explains, “instead of trying to represent them as something else.” Immerse is the first ready-to-drink product to combine protein, fiber, and electrolytes in such a high formulation, and the company hints these beverages are the opening salvo in a broader line of functional products, saying that some are in the works. Beyond has been flirting with the beverage category for longer than you’d think, ever since Brown tried making a plant-protein water back in the 2010s. But he says the recovery-drink idea was born out of personal need. Brown is obsessive about plant protein, generally consuming it at every meal, and often in between. For years, he drank post-workout protein shakes, and to these he would add a scoop of psyllium husk, for fiber. But the formulation filled him up. “I wanted to feel light,” Brown says. And the science just wasn’t there yet; he recalls jugs of early prototypes he kept under his desk and protein that kept separating. Back then, perfecting a beverage line wasn’t mission-critical for Beyond anyway. Worth billions at the time, the company was the darling of Silicon Valley, beloved by Hollywood stars, Wall Street, and seemingly every fast-food chain on the planet. But then alt-meats’ novelty started to wane, and the pandemic drove up input and distribution costs, making these products feel like more of a splurge to price-conscious shoppers. By 2024, Beyond’s market cap had slid to $500 million. Around that time, the recovery-drink concept reemerged. Brown would visit his son at the University of Missouri, where he was playing guard on the school’s basketball team, and swing by the locker room, where he’d see three separate types of recovery drinks being offered to players: electrolytes for hydration, cherry juice for antioxidants, Core Power-brand shakes for protein. That was . . . a lot of liquid? Brown wondered, Why not one drink that could achieve all three? In Beyond’s early attempts, sediment settled at the bottom of cans. The advances that the company made in solubility “were the big thing,” Brown explains. Now, “you can drink 20 grams of protein and 7 grams of fiber, and it feels like a regular liquid.” In the process, Beyond scientists also worked to minimize calories and keep fat at zero. (A comparable 12 ounces of a Core Power chocolate shake contains 22 grams of protein, but has 50% more calories and almost 3 grams of saturated fat, and raises cholesterol rather than lowering it the way soluble fiber does.) It turned out that the sports nutrition space could reward Beyond’s scientific strengths—protein density, nutritional optimization—rather than punishing it. And Brown’s excitement is now fixating on a nutrient that isn’t even protein. It’s a different ingredient in Immerse, a tapioca fiber derived from the cassava plant. It helps lower LDL cholesterol, feeds good gut bacteria, regulates blood sugar response, and triggers satiety hormones including PYY and—you guessed it—GLP-1. Brown is doubly excited, because he says research suggests that if eaten together, the combination of this fiber and the psyllium husk he adds to his own protein shakes (and uses in the Beyond Ground products) can synergistically deliver both immediate and long-term improvements to gut and heart health. The FDA says that tapioca fiber may help reduce heart disease risk as part of a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. Beyond contends the Immerse drinks are therefore great for muscle recovery, gut health, immunity, and people with lactose intolerance. The power of plants Were these drinks great for me? After my workout at TMPL, no magic was going to fix my stiff back, neck, and legs. But as far as the high fiber goes—equal to three cups of spinach, or half a can of black beans—I was an interesting test case. As a type 1 diabetic, I wear a continuous glucose monitor in my arm that records my blood sugar 24/7. A “perfect” glucose is 100 milligrams per deciliter of blood, though even non-diabetics routinely swing between 70 and 140 during the day. The night after trying Immerse, mine traced a straight line between 90 and 110. Causation, or coincidence? It’s impossible to say with a sample size of one. But the functional properties designed for athletic recovery have established ancillary benefits, like steadying metabolic responses. The new drink line “also takes us outside of what’s become a very political thing,” Brown adds, moving past the science to address Beyond’s deeper corporate strategy, one that bypasses the culture-war baggage attached to putting protein “at the center of the plate.” Beyond, along with the company’s top rival, Impossible Foods, and other alt-meat proponents, say the multibillion-dollar beef industry has spent years secretly and not-so-secretly smearing alt-meats as unhealthy, ultra-processed, and too fake. The results have been brutal. Beyond’s own sales dropped by nearly 5% in 2024, and then by another projected 14% for 2025. Shares, which peaked above $230 after its 2019 IPO, slid to penny-stock levels before meme traders staged a 1,300% rally in October that evaporated within days. The company has restructured debt and cut staff while working to stabilize its finances. Meanwhile, demand for animal proteins helped JBS and Cargill post record revenue and a 44% profit increase despite the highest-ever beef prices and worst cattle shortage in years. Impossible’s CEO Peter McGuinness has even threatened to stick actual beef into the Impossible Burger. Then, days before TMPL’s trainers kicked our butts, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. flipped the national food guidelines upside down—going all-in on red meat and full-fat milk while demoting whole grains, but still advising Americans to, somehow, reduce their intake of saturated fat. The The President administration immediately described it as “the most significant change in federal nutrition guidance in the history of our nation,” and commemorated the move by announcing it would sell RFK-autographed food posters for $400 from a government-run website. For years, Beyond has supported work being done by Stanford Medicine researcher Christopher Gardner to evaluate a plant-based diet’s effects on cardiovascular health. Gardner is of the 20 nutrition experts the federal government has tapped to review evidence for the new dietary recommendations. Last week, Gardner said that the The President guidelines “go against decades and decades of evidence and research.” Brown, like many Americans, feels like we are living in Upside-Down World. But he’s not deterred from pushing plants. After all, the new pyramid does put peas at the very top—even if they’re shown in a bag labeled “frozen.” What excites Brown, despite the chaos, is that the past few years have helped him refocus on what plants can do that meat cannot. Much of Beyond’s past was invested in making plants emulate meat—in ways previous generations would have thought impossible. Now he’s highlighting plants’ distinct nutritional advantages, including their fiber content, something essential to human health that animal products lack. Plants also deliver protein in a lower-calorie format. Immerse packs 20 grams of protein into just 100 calories, a 20% protein-to-calorie ratio. David protein bars swept America last year, hitting $100 million in sales, because they deliver 28 grams of protein for every 150 calories, an 18.7% ratio. Watching Brown power through his final set at TMPL—a guy who had five knee surgeries by his 20s and just took the Beyond corporate team on a grueling hike to celebrate the Immerse launch—you see how much thought he has put into obsessing over making his body perform. It’s hard not to wonder if the company is catching up to its founder. He jokes that this time, critics looking for ingredients to attack will have to target the water in the cans: “They’ll have to say, ‘There’s too much H2O in that water!’” View the full article

The lender claims the ransomware gang behind a breach provided proof it deleted compromised customer information, and it hasn't appeared on the dark web since. View the full article

A year after President The President took office, clean energy is still growing in the U.S. In 2025, nearly all new power added to the grid came from solar, wind, and batteries. In September, for example, solar made up 98% of new capacity. And in 2026, the U.S. Energy Administration projects that all net new generating capacity will come from renewable energy and batteries. That’s despite obvious policy challenges. On his first day in office, after declaring an “energy emergency,” The President paused permitting for some wind projects and promised to boost fossil fuels. A few months later, the administration ordered an offshore wind project to stop construction; other stop-work orders followed. In July, The President signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which phased out a longstanding tax credit for building clean energy projects. The EPA ended the Solar for All program, designed to bring solar power to low-income homes and reduce electric bills. After a memo from the Department of Interior that effectively paused permitting for wind and solar projects on public land, the DOI cancelled a massive solar project in Nevada that would have powered 2 million homes. The administration also pulled grants for R&D on new clean energy tech. Some states and developers have fought back and won lawsuits, but the attacks keep coming. Revolution Wind, a large offshore wind farm that’s under construction off the coast of Rhode Island and nearly complete, was issued a stop-work order in August by the The President administration; a preliminary injunction from a judge in September let the work continue, but a second stop-work order came again in December. This week, the developer got another preliminary injunction to continue construction. Unsurprisingly, the policy uncertainty has hurt clean energy businesses. “We saw some smaller companies go under because financing became challenging,” says Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Association. Offshore wind developments are struggling to survive the administration’s repeated attacks. By some estimates, as much as 117 gigawatts of solar and battery storage projects—enough to power nearly 100 million homes—are at risk of not coming online in the next couple of years because of new challenges in getting federal permits. But at the same time, many clean energy developers are fully booked with new projects. The demand from data centers is “unabated,” says Jim Spencer, president and CEO of Exus Renewables North America. “As much as we can deliver, they’re buying it.” Last week, the company closed a $400 million credit facility to build out new solar and wind projects—$150 million more than it initially expected to get from banks. Like other developers, Exus is rushing to begin new solar and wind projects before July, the deadline to still be able to qualify for the tax credit. Projects also need to be completed by 2030 to qualify. To grandfather in developments that are still in the planning stage, Exus and others are buying equipment like solar panels earmarked for specific projects. Ending the credits is creating a temporary surge in new clean energy projects. “Particularly after the bill was enacted, you saw a lot of activity as people tried to accelerate projects to take advantage of the tax credits that were remaining,” says SEIA’s Spencer. An analysis from S&P Global suggests that the deadline could boost new solar capacity in 2030 by 35% compared to what would have happened otherwise. Still, “while a surge in the near term is likely, how long that tail lasts and to what degree is still highly uncertain,” says Mike O’Boyle, policy team director at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and climate think tank. Developers are also looking for ways to cut costs and make projects economic without the tax credit. “In two years, we’re going to be living in a different environment,” Spencer says. “Okay. “And I think that there’s a lot of creative minds working on how to ensure that that growth continues.” It’s also theoretically possible that the political environment will shift in elections in 2026 and 2028 and that incentives could be put in place again. Some large companies have slowed investment, but say that they still have a long-term commitment to renewable energy in the U.S. Engie, a France-based electric utility company that has invested between $2-4 billion in the U.S. in recent years, told Fast Company in a statement that its current investment strategy is more selective. “We expect materially lower annual investment in response to continued permitting, trade and policy uncertainty which impact large long-term investment in wind, solar and battery projects,” the company said. But long term, it sees “strong opportunity” driven by the driven by rising electricity demand from data centers and AI. That enormous demand is one more argument for the The President administration to support renewable growth. “Energy prices are going up, despite rhetoric from the administration,” Spencer says. “And the rise in energy prices is directly tied to policies that the administration’s implementing. They have the ability to enable, rather than restrict, addition of new supply to the grid, which would reduce prices and improve customers’ lives.” View the full article

The fiercest space race is not about getting back to the moon—it’s about allowing you to post a TikTok or watch Netflix on your phone anywhere around the globe, from the Atacama Salt Flats to the Khongor sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. To make this happen, two distinct design philosophies are at war, as companies build out the infrastructure needed to ensure every phone on the planet is permanently connected to the internet. On one side is Elon Musk’s SpaceX/Starlink and the copycat companies that have followed in Starlink’s wake. Their approach is to invade space with tens of thousands of small satellites, creating a network of objects that blanket low Earth orbit. On the other side is a small Texas-based company called AST SpaceMobile, which believes it can provide better service with fewer than 100 gigantic satellites in space. Both companies—along with Amazon and a handful of Chinese organizations—want to dominate worldwide wireless communications. The satellite constellation with the fastest service, widest coverage, best compatibility with 5G cellphones, and lowest operational costs will own how we communicate for years to come. Which approach prevails will have serious impact not only on the future of the internet but also the health of our planet. A new space race era Musk set off a new space race with his desire to rule low Earth orbit. SpaceX, which owns Starlink, launched its first satellite in 2019, providing broadband internet access to anyone with a large Starlink antenna and modem on the ground. Since then, it has put more than 9,000 satellites into orbit. The company projects it will eventually have a constellation of 34,000 satellites. After Starlink’s initial launch, competitors followed suit, including Jeff Bezos and his Project Kuiper—now called Amazon Leo—and the Chinese, whose plans include two large satellite constellations. But there’s a fundamental problem with this mega-constellation design: Musk’s plan for space internet is a flawed, wasteful, and dangerous game of orbital Russian roulette. Scientists worry that Starlink’s projected 34,000-satellite constellation will cause irreparable damage to the atmosphere. A large-scale constellation also dramatically increases the possibility of a space collision that could start a catastrophic chain reaction, destroying orbital networks that are crucial for our survival as a species. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and spaceflight historian at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been documenting satellite launches in his newsletter, Jonathan’s Space Report. He believes there may be other, better ways to achieve global coverage via satellites—if we need to be doing it at all. “I do personally have a preference for smaller numbers of larger satellites,” he tells Fast Company. “One of the reasons is the risk of space collisions. If you have 10 times as many satellites, you have 100 times as many close misses. So from that point of view alone, consolidating on a smaller number of satellites seems wiser.” A more efficient alternative That’s where Musk’s biggest competitor comes into play. AST SpaceMobile has developed a direct-to-cell technology that utilizes large satellites called BlueBirds. These machines use thousands of antennas to deliver broadband coverage directly to standard mobile phones, says the company’s president, Scott Wisniewski. “This approach is remarkably efficient: We can achieve global coverage with approximately 90 satellites, not thousands or even tens of thousands required by other systems,” Wisniewski writes in an email. McDowell agrees that AST SpaceMobile’s approach is more efficient and less wasteful. The key is its satellites’ size and sophistication. AST’s first generation of commercial satellite, the BlueBird 1-5, unfolds into a massive 693-square-foot array in space. Today, the company has five operational BlueBird 1-5 satellites in orbit, but its ambitions are much bigger. On December 24, 2025, AST launched the first of its next-generation satellites from India—called Block 2—and this one broke records. The BlueBird 6 has a surface of almost 2,400 square feet, making it the largest single satellite in low Earth orbit. The company plans to launch up to 60 more by the end of 2026. “This large surface area is essential for gathering faint signals from standard, unmodified mobile phones on the ground,” Wisniewski explains. It is essentially a single, extremely powerful and sensitive cell tower in the sky, capable of serving a huge geographical area. This design philosophy directly addresses the two greatest threats posed by the mega-constellation model. First, with only about 90 Block 2 satellites needed for global coverage, the sheer volume of material being launched and deorbited is orders of magnitude less than the tens of thousands planned by Starlink and others. With a 7- to 10-year lifespan, AST SpaceMobile’s satellites are designed to last longer than Starklink’s satellites, which have a lifespan of about 5 years. This combination of factors drastically reduces the potential for atmospheric pollution. Additionally, a smaller number of satellites dramatically lowers the risk of orbital collisions. “Fewer satellites in orbit inherently reduces the probability of collisions and the creation of space debris, promoting a more sustainable orbital environment,” Wisniewski says. It is a solution built on precision engineering rather than brute numerical force, a testament to a different way of thinking about the problem. As McDowell puts it, from a space traffic point of view, “Fewer, bigger satellites is probably better.” It is a design choice that prioritizes sustainability and risk mitigation. A reckless, brute-force plan The core idea behind Starlink’s direct-to-cell service is one of brute force. It is the digital equivalent of carpet-bombing: Saturate low Earth orbit with tens of thousands of relatively small, cheap, and disposable satellites. Each one acts like a tiny cell tower in the sky, talking to the phone in your pocket. Because they are in a low orbit, the lag is minimal, and the signal is strong enough for a standard phone. It’s a simple concept, but its elegance is deceptive. In reality, it has the elegance of a sledgehammer. Starlink’s model relies on a constant cycle of replacement. The satellites are programmed to fall back to Earth after about five years, burning up on reentry. This is where the first major problem arises. “When they burn up, they don’t just vanish,” McDowell explains. “They turn into dust, alumina dust, aluminum oxide particles. These particles are very good at destroying ozone.” The long-term effect of depositing tons of this material into the upper atmosphere every single day is a terrifying unknown. We are, in effect, conducting an uncontrolled experiment on the protective layers of our own planet. McDowell notes that while a single rocket launch causes temporary, localized ozone damage, the continuous reentry of thousands of satellites creates a persistent, global problem that has never been studied on this scale. SpaceX aggressively dismissed these concerns in 2021 in a legal battle with Viasat, a rival space internet service for home, business, and military use. Its legal defense directly attacked the scientific premise that burning satellites create harmful amounts of aluminum oxide. SpaceX has been ignoring warnings about potential ozone depletion since 2024. However, the company has tried to address light pollution. When faced with an outcry from the astronomy community about its satellites’ brightness, it iterated on the design. First came DarkSat, an experimental coating that proved ineffective. Then came VisorSat, a deployable sunshade that blocked light from reflecting off the brightest parts of the satellite. McDowell tells me that now SpaceX is using a dielectric mirror film that reflects less light back to Earth. “They have made a significant effort to reduce the brightness, and the newer Starlinks are substantially fainter than the early ones,” McDowell says. “But they are still bright enough to be a problem for the big survey telescopes like the Vera Rubin Observatory.” These mitigation efforts, while commendable, address only one symptom of the problem—light pollution—and do nothing to solve the more fundamental issues of atmospheric pollution and orbital crowding. The problem is compounded by the fact that everyone is now copying the SpaceX model. Amazon’s Project Leo plans to launch more than 3,200 satellites. Beijing and some Chinese companies are planning two separate mega-constellations, Guowang and G60 Starlink, totaling nearly 26,000 satellites. “We’re just at the beginning of this . . . so that gets very worrying because now it’s not just one company, it’s a whole bunch of companies,” McDowell warns. To add to his worries, just this week the Chinese government has applied for launch permits for 200,000 satellites. To be clear, AST SpaceMobile’s approach is not without its own controversies. The sheer size of the company’s satellites makes them incredibly bright in the night sky, a significant source of frustration for ground-based astronomers. McDowell confirms that when it launched in 2022, AST’s prototype satellite, BlueWalker 3, became “one of the top 10 brightest objects in the night sky for a while.” “It’s a serious issue, and we are working directly with the astronomy community to mitigate our impact,” Wisniewski says. The company is exploring solutions like anti-reflective coatings and operational adjustments to minimize the time its satellites are at maximum brightness. However, McDowell is not aware of anyone working with AST SpaceMobile, and the company didn’t provide any specifics. According to McDowell, the size and brightness is a trade-off he believes is reasonable. “Although the BlueBirds are scary bright, there aren’t that many. So I kind of prefer that approach,” he says. “As long as they don’t turn around then and say, ‘Actually, we need 30,000 of these as well.’” A game of orbital Russian roulette Beyond the environmental concerns lies an even more immediate existential threat: Kessler Syndrome. Popularized by the movie Gravity, it is a scenario that keeps space experts like McDowell up at night. The theory, proposed by NASA scientist Donald Kessler in 1978, describes a domino effect where a collision between two objects in orbit creates a cloud of debris. Each piece of that debris then becomes a projectile that can cause another collision, creating even more debris, until low Earth orbit becomes an impassable minefield of hypervelocity shrapnel. “The more satellites you have, the more the chance of a collision,” McDowell states plainly. “And the problem is once you have the first collision, the debris from that is now threatening all the other satellites.” SpaceX has engineered a highly automated collision avoidance system for Starlink, and McDowell acknowledges its sophistication. The company’s satellites constantly monitor their trajectories and can autonomously fire their thrusters to dodge potential impacts. “They do thousands of maneuvers a month,” he says, which is a testament to both the system’s capability and the terrifyingly crowded environment it operates in. In total, Starlink satellites have performed 50,000 evasive maneuvers since 2019. But while SpaceX claims that its satellites are 100% safe, the facts tell us that they are not foolproof. “Even with a 99% success rate for deorbiting, a 1% failure rate on a 30,000-satellite constellation means you’re adding 300 dead, multi-hundred-kilogram satellites to orbit every five years,” McDowell says. That’s 300 uncontrollable bullets waiting to start the Kessler Syndrome. A catastrophic chain reaction could, in a matter of hours or days, wipe out the essential satellite networks that underpin modern civilization. This isn’t just about losing your GPS navigation on the way to a new restaurant. It’s about the collapse of global finance, weather forecasting, communications, and critical military and disaster-response systems. We are talking about a technological regression of decades, a scenario McDowell finds increasingly plausible as more mega-constellations are launched. It’s a high-stakes gamble with civilization’s essential infrastructure. There’s also a direct-hit danger for people on the ground. A few Starlink satellites have already failed in orbit, becoming uncontrollable space junk that fell back to Earth. There’s at least one report of a piece of a satellite hitting a building in Canada. The latest reported incident took place on December 17, 2025, when a Starlink satellite experienced an anomaly, losing communication and causing a propulsion tank vent, rapid orbital decay, and the release of debris in low Earth orbit. In a 2023 report to congress, the Federal Aviation Administration said there’s a real risk of falling Starlink debris injuring or killing someone by 2035. Space junk is also a problem for rockets. In early November, three taikonauts returned after being stranded on China’s Tiangong space station for nine days. They couldn’t use the spaceship that was going to take them to Earth—the Chengdou-20—because it had been struck by orbital debris. The China Manned Space Agency said its astronauts found “tiny cracks” in a small window of their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft. The hit was not fatal, but things could have gone very wrong. The Chinese, however, seem undeterred. Beijing will be launching hundreds of thousands of satellites that mirror Starlink’s design, contributing to the problem and increasing the risk to themselves and everyone else. Why AST SpaceMobile could win Right now, Starlink doesn’t provide direct-to-cell broadband; instead, it provides only text and limited data connections. This low-speed connectivity requires a line of sight with the satellite, as SpaceX states on its site. Starlink, despite its leading market position in the internet satellite business, is still playing catch-up on the direct-to-cell front, and it may never be able to close the gap with AST. Musk’s company has two big strikes against it. First is the hardware in orbit. To provide broadband to phones it needs a next-generation Starlink V3 satellite, which doesn’t exist yet. SpaceX has no reliable way to launch it, anyway. At an estimated 4,400 pounds, the V3 satellite is too big and heavy for the workhorse Falcon 9 rocket to deploy in economically viable numbers. The entire business model for Starlink V3 hinges on the success of Starship, Musk’s next-generation, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle. But Starship remains in development, having yet to achieve the consistent operational launch cadence required to deploy and maintain a constellation of thousands of V3 satellites. But even if SpaceX manages to finish Starship and Starlink V3 satellites on time, there’s a second, even bigger hardware problem: The broadband connectivity won’t work unless the cellphone has a special modem chip. Yes, my space cadets, you will need to buy a new phone to enjoy Starlink connectivity, while AST works with any current, unmodified phone. None of these new Starlink-enabled phones exist or have been announced yet. According to SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell, the company is now working on this chip. “We’re working with chip manufacturers to get the proper chips in phones,” she told the audience at World Space Business Week in Paris back in September. Expecting phone manufacturers to incorporate Starlink’s proprietary modem in their phones feels like a tall order. Especially when manufacturers like Apple have their own direct cell-to-space plans. It seems unlikely that Tim Cook will tie his company’s crown jewel to Musk’s whims. Or make the phones even more expensive. However, that doesn’t matter, because even if Musk had 15,000 V3 satellites and the Starships ready to launch, the problem will remain the same: You will need phones with Starlink modems in them for broadband. And the line-of-sight problem will persist. The broadband works only when the phone can “look” at the satellites in the sky. This is why Musk’s promised direct-to-cell broadband timeline is speculative. In fact, while he said it would be ready in 2026, according to SpaceX, testing of the first phones equipped with Starlink chips is scheduled for this year, with an aim to complete its V3 direct-to-cell satellite constellation in 2027. It is a promise built on a promise, a technological if dependent on a logistical when. Meanwhile, AST SpaceMobile is preparing to launch new operational satellites on existing rockets. AST SpaceMobile has already proven its technology works, with six working satellites now transmitting at typical 5G speeds directly to regular phones. This doesn’t mean that it has a guaranteed win against Starlink or any of its competitors. While it has the capital to execute its plan—with the backing of investors like AT&T, Alphabet, Rakuten, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, who owns the largest telecom operator in Latin America—and superior technology, it needs to execute dozens of launches. This confidence in the technology explains why the stock has skyrocketed 333% in a year, but the doubts about potential execution problems also explain why the stock experiences wild swings. With every news of a launch or a delay of a launch, the stock can swing 10% or 20% up and down. That’s why the market treats AST as a high-risk, high-reward battleground. It can be a trillion-dollar business or explode on the launchpad if the company doesn’t put all those satellites up in 2026. The coup de grâce This technological and philosophical divergence has not gone unnoticed by Elon Musk. Seeing a direct threat to his ambitions, he has engaged in a campaign to undermine AST SpaceMobile with baseless accusations, claiming that its satellites are a danger in low Earth orbit because of their size. At the same time, Musk is battling his own problems in low Earth orbit. China has already denounced two near misses with Starlink satellites that triggered its space station to perform emergency evasive maneuvers. On January 2, SpaceX was forced to move 4,000 satellites to a lower orbit after new research by Chinese scientists highlighted the company’s recklessness and the very real risk of collision. Moreover, Musk desperately tried to stop the Federal Communications Commission from granting AST access to the necessary spectrum—the range of radio frequencies it needs for its satellites to connect with cellphones on Earth—claiming it would be “catastrophic” for his service because the powerful signals from AST’s large satellites could interfere with Starlink’s user terminals. In response, AST SpaceMobile asserts that its system is designed to coexist with other networks and operates fully within the internationally agreed-upon limits established to prevent such interference. The FCC agreed and allowed AST to use the spectrum. And that move, if every logistical aspect executes to plan, gives AST an absolute slam dunk against Musk. Think of the radio spectrum as a giant highway in the sky with a limited number of lanes. Carrying data back and forth, AST’s trucks have the rights to travel through a huge number of these lanes thanks to partners like AT&T and Verizon—roughly 35 MHz of what the industry calls the “golden low-band spectrum.” It also acquired an extra 45 Mhz low-band spectrum from a bankrupted communications company called Ligado. That’s a massive 80 MHz. And remember the company’s patented magic sauce we mentioned earlier? That’s AST’s secret weapon to make this highway work: a chip that glues the different radio bands together into one massive pipe, capable of delivering peak speeds of 120 megabits per second to phones (comparable to your typical 5G connection). SpaceX and its partner T-Mobile have very few lanes available right now: only 5 MHz. That’s like comparing an 80-lane superhighway to a 5-lane street. To try to fix that, Musk has spent $17 billion to acquire 50 more lanes: 50 MHz of S-band spectrum from another bankrupt communications company, EchoStar. The problem is that physics dictates that higher-frequency radio waves, those that SpaceX is operating on, do not penetrate solid objects as effectively as lower-frequency waves. That’s why Starlink’s space-to-cell service will require line of sight to work. Meanwhile, AST claims its system will work indoors and outdoors, penetrating buildings in a similar way to a regular cell signal. Wisniewski claims that a phone will connect through “one wall” and work through your car’s roof because of two factors: It uses a low-frequency radio connection, and its satellites are big enough to “listen” and “talk” to the phones on the ground, even behind obstacles. This scenario has yet to be proven by AST or a third party. Only line-of-sight broadband with regular phones has been tested successfully. However, if it works inside cars and buildings like Wisniewski claims, the user experience will be seamless. A phone will have service where it didn’t before, delivered through an existing provider like AT&T or Vodafone. Should we really do this? But what if we’re looking at this cell-to-space race the wrong way? “I hear from friends who go hiking in faraway places, look up at the sky, and say, ‘Wow, you just never see an empty sky anymore,’” McDowell tells me with a hint of sadness and worry. Musk, Bezos, Wisniewski, the Europeans, and the Chinese would argue that we need ubiquitous cheap internet everywhere in the world, for civilian and military applications. Sure, there’s a lot of money to be made and there’s a genuine need to serve communities in remote places without having to invest in ground infrastructure. But do we really need to stream TikTok from space? “I don’t necessarily have a position on that,” McDowell says. “My position is that even if that’s the case, it shouldn’t be just the U.S. that decides that. It should be decided by all of the countries in the world, because they’re all affected whether they’re space powers or not.” He’s right. And if we all decide that we do need this, we should also all agree on the best solution to minimize the impact on humanity. The smarter solution. The most technologically advanced. View the full article

Let’s do a thought exercise. If the role of the chief marketing officer is to oversee marketing and the role of the chief operating officer is to oversee operations, while the chief financial officer’s responsibility is to safeguard the organization’s finances, then what’s the responsibility of the chief executive officer? Surely, it’s more than overseeing executions or leading executives, yet the “CEO” naming convention doesn’t give much insight as to what the role is or what it’s responsible for. This gets even more convoluted when an organization has both a CEO and a president. Who’s responsible for what? Clearly, a president presides over the organization or nation state—it’s right there in its etymology. But, perhaps, the “CEO” nomenclature needs a bit more clarity. After over 200 in-depth CEO interviews at the Yale School of Management’s Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management since 2020, Jon Iwata has an interesting take on the matter. According to Iwata, the former IBM senior vice president and chief brand officer and now lecturer at Yale, the job of the CEO involves the challenge of “refounding” the company. That is, the founder started the organization for a reason, be it a year or a century ago, with a thesis about the business and why it exists beyond the category. Simon Sinek refers to this as a company’s “why;” I like to think of it as the company’s conviction. It’s what they believe and are willing to stand for, even if it means losing business. I find conviction to be much more action-oriented because your organization can have a “why” but veer away from it in the face of inconvenience. However, you can’t be convicted if you aren’t willing to stand for it. Through this lens of refounding, the CEO’s job is to maintain the integrity of the founder’s intended conviction and align it to a holistic operating system within the organization. That operating system, of course, is culture. Like any culture, the ideology of a company’s conviction informs the way the organization see’s the world and how it engages in it. Over time, as an organization grows and each incremental team member grows further and further away from the founder and their intentions. Consider a start-up with five employees. It’s likely that the sixth employee gets to spend a substantial amount of time with the founder and hear her preach the gospel of the organization’s conviction. The sixth-hundred employee, on the other hand, after the company’s 50th year of operation, not so much. Therefore, there must be a vehicle to evangelize the enduring convictions of the organization. That’s the responsibility of the CEO. This isn’t merely a matter of proximity; it’s also a factor of context. Take the fictional start-up that grows into a multinational organization sixty years later. Over the course of those decades, the world around the organization changes substantially, which exerts force on how the organization behaves. Societal norms shift. Social expectations evolve. New technologies bloom. The result of these changes subsequently require change from the organization as well. For instance, there was once a time when child labor was considered acceptable, but society changed (thankfully), which necessitated a corresponding organizational change. While these adjustments happen outside the organization, it’s incumbent on its leadership to not merely blow in the wind of change but also stay anchored in its conviction, negotiating the tension between the present (today’s context) and the past (the founder’s intention). The founder constructed the organization’s point of view of the world in a world that no longer exists. Therefore, as the world around the organization changes and evolves, so, too, must the organization. What does the organization believe and what does that mean today? It’s the CEO’s responsibility to not only regurgitate the convictions of the organization but also recontextualize them for a contemporary world. Like the United States of America was founded 250 years ago on a conviction and a set of policies articulated in the Constitution, these ideas had to be recontextualized for a modern day. Hence, why we have amendments. The same goes for organizations. This is the job of the CEO, to reenvision the founding beliefs of the organization in a contemporary context and imbed this refounding conviction into the operating system of the organization—its culture. So, perhaps, a more apt title for the CEO would be the chief envisioning officer, the leader whose responsibility is to envision the founder’s intentions in today’s world and activate the company to behave accordingly. This isn’t merely a grammatical subversion, but an entire paradigm shift. Hear more about the idea of “refounding” in our conversation with Jon Iwata on our latest episode of the FROM THE CULTURE podcast. View the full article

Investment banking divisions expected to shine for traditional Wall Street rivals after year of rising animal spiritsView the full article

** NEEDS JUSTIN POT BYLINE ** Have you ever opened your favorite music-streaming app and wondered why all your playlists have the same five songs? It can be annoying, even if they happen to be five songs you’re really into right now. And, make no mistake, they will be five songs you’re really into right now, because that’s how many of these services work—and it’s not because everyone else has the same taste in music as you. For instance, any Spotify playlist that says “created for” in the header is catered to the individual user, based on their listening history. There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily—it can be nice to know you’re going to hear songs you like. But there are downsides. Mostly, this feature makes it hard to discover new music. Maybe you want a little bit of an idea of what’s going on in the broader culture. Maybe you love discovering new songs. Music-streaming services have a tendency to stick the same songs into every playlist and radio station, but there’s a way to get out of the same ol’ song rut. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Time to escape the algorithms I’ve actually got two Cool Tools to share with you today. ➜ Both of these tools will help you escape the music-streaming algorithms so that you can discover and listen to new music. ⌚ You can start using either of them in an instant. 1️⃣ The first tool is called Spoqify, and it creates a clean version of any Spotify playlist or radio station so you can listen to music like an anonymous user. The easiest way to use Spoqify is through a browser. To get started, simply: Copy the URL for any playlist or radio station on Spotify Change the “t” in “spotify.com” to a “q” Paste that new URL into a browser The service will instantly create a playlist for you containing what Spotify would show you if it had no prior knowledge of your listening habits. You can now listen to the updated playlist and even save it to your library. Though it is a bit of a workaround, you can still use Spoqify if you’re on the Spotify app. Granted, it’s not as simple (you’ll need to install a tool called Spicetify), but it allows you to listen to Spoqify without ever leaving the service. (Also, is anyone else getting confused with all the Spotify/Spoqify references?!) 2️⃣ If you don’t use Spotify or you don’t want to mess with URLs, you could always check out Playlist Generator—today’s second Cool Tool. This separate service lets you search for any song, artist, or album and creates a list of similar songs. It reminds me of Pandora, back in the day. Once you generate your playlist on Playlist Generator, just click on the “Transfer” button—and you’ll be taken to their partner site, where you can export your playlist to any number of streaming services. Or, if you want to listen on Spotify, you can connect Playlist Generator with Spotify to save a list directly to your library. I’ve been enjoying both of these services, though I recommend combining tools like these with a good community radio station, if your town has one. There’s nothing like real human DJs for finding new music. Both of the services mentioned here will work in any web browser. They’re also both completely free. You can use both Spoqify and Playlist Generator without creating accounts, though you can connect your Spotify account to Playlist Generator if you want. Playlist Generator does also collect some information, but the site’s privacy policy makes clear that it doesn’t sell or share your personal information in any shady-seeming ways. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletter—starting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app that’ll tune up your days in truly delightful ways. View the full article

Over a long and industrious career, the investor George Soros developed a theory he calls reflexivity. The basic idea is that expectations don’t form in a vacuum. They are shaped, in part, by our perceptions of what other people believe. The more widely an idea is accepted, the more likely we are to accept it ourselves and that, in turn, reinforces the collective wisdom. If many believe that, say, the stock market will go up or that AI will create an economic boom, we’re more likely to believe it too. That belief then drives behavior: investors buy stocks, companies pour money into AI, and the prediction begins to fulfill itself. All of this only adds fuel to the fire. Nobody wants to get left out of a good thing. Soros made a lot of money betting against reflexivity because once the pattern of self-reference and self-reinforcement takes hold, things are bound to overshoot. Expectations drift far beyond underlying reality—and eventually snap back. It seems something similar is brewing. As big institutions accumulate unprecedented power, a growing backlash seeks to take power back. The rise and fall of Porter’s competitive advantage For decades, the dominant view of business strategy was shaped by Michael Porter’s theory of competitive advantage. In essence, he argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power over suppliers, customers, new market entrants, and substitute goods. Yet as AnnaLee Saxenian explained in Regional Advantage, around the same time that Porter’s ideas were gaining traction among CEOs in the establishment industries on the East Coast, a very different way of doing business was gaining steam in Silicon Valley. The firms there saw themselves not as isolated fiefdoms, but as part of a larger ecosystem. The two models are built on very different assumptions. The Porter model saw the world as made up of transactions. Optimize your strategy to create efficiencies, extract the maximum value out of every transaction and you will build a sustainable competitive advantage. The Silicon Valley model, however, saw the world as a web of connections and optimized their strategies to widen and deepen linkages. If you see your business environment as neatly organized into specific industries, everybody is a potential rival. Even your allies need to be viewed with suspicion. So, for example, when a new open source operating system called Linux appeared in the 1990s, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer considered it a threat and immediately attacked, calling it a “cancer.” Yet even as Ballmer went on the attack, the business environment was changing. As the internet made the world more connected, technology companies found that leveraging that connectivity through open source communities was a winning strategy. Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, declared that the company now loves Linux. Ultimately, it recognized that it couldn’t continue to shut itself out and compete effectively in a networked world. Preferential attachment, power laws, and network collapse Phil Knight built Nike into exactly the type of business Porter imagined. It created an impressive marketing machine built on partnerships with famous athletes, dominance of retail channels, including its own proprietary outlets, and an optimized supply chain that kept costs to a minimum. The company was a paragon of sustainable competitive advantage. Then, in the early 1990s, writer and activist Jeffrey Ballinger published a series of investigations about Nike’s use of sweatshops in Asia. People were shocked by the horrible conditions that workers—many of them children—were subjected to. In many cases, factory owners lived outside the countries where the facilities were located and had little contact with employees. As the network scientist Albert-László Barabási and his colleagues discovered, this is exactly the type of asymmetric vulnerability that even the most powerful fall prey to. A firm like Nike becomes dominant because of a phenomenon called preferential attachment, sometimes also called the Matthew effect. Essentially, the rich get richer. What happens is that once a node in a network builds a small advantage over competitors, it is more likely to attract new connections than smaller players. That creates a power-law distribution in which the network is dominated by large hubs that are exponentially larger than their competitors. Yet the sweatshop scandal threatened to reverse that process, making rivals without scandals marginally more attractive to consumers than Nike. That shift, however small at first, could cascade, allowing rivals to strengthen relationships with suppliers and retailers, widening and deepening their corporate networks at Nike’s expense. At first, Knight was defiant, but ultimately, even he recognized he needed to give in. As he would later write in his memoir, Shoe Dog, “We had to admit. We could do better.” Going beyond its own factories, the company established the Fair Labor Association and published a comprehensive report of its own factories. Backlashes, old and new Today, we live in a new era of big business dominance. Just seven companies dominate the U.S. stock market. The economist Thomas Philippon and his colleagues have documented how the growing dominance of large firms across increasingly consolidated industries has led to a decrease in competition in the United States. A Federal Reserve report had similar findings. We’ve been here before. The Gilded Age in the late 19th century was marked by enormous investment in a breakthrough technology: railroads. Vast fortunes were made and a breed of oligarchs like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller created industry trusts that allowed them to dominate the United States, both commercially and politically. Yet every revolution inspires its own counterrevolution. The Gilded Age was soon followed by the Progressive Era and the rise of the muckrakers epitomized by Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and McClure’s Magazine, who exposed corruption and exploitation on a massive scale and shifted the political winds. New legislation and enforcement tools, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, led to a leveling of the playing field. Today, we are seeing similar signs. The Australian government has banned social media for children under 17. Frustration with the low-quality content that AI has flooded the internet with led The Economist to name “slop” as its “Word for the Year.” Elon Musk’s effort to bring Silicon Valley management techniques to government with DOGE was a massive failure, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Against this backdrop is a growing New Brandeis movement, which seeks to reinvigorate antitrust efforts and restore competitive markets. After gaining traction during the Biden Administration, it has mostly been dormant since, but things can change quickly. Larger risks amid lesser resilience In 2008, when the global financial crisis hit, the world was a relatively stable place. While the U.S. was still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, those were fairly low-level conflicts at that point. The U.S. federal deficit was $450 billion and the U.S. national debt was $10 trillion, both less than a third of what they are now. Today, the world is a very different place. Beyond the worsening economic situation, we have the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. Russia, China, and other bad actors are engaged in a massive information war against the West, fueling populist surges and political turmoil in Western nations. The Atlantic Alliance, once a force for stability, is in shambles. Many would argue that, today, we are in a new Gilded Age, in which powerful industrialists, unbeholden to the rule of law, regularly engage in predatory behavior, but their actions are often shielded from view by technology, buried in complexity. When they are called before Congress, the people’s representatives seem lost, unable to meaningfully challenge their power. And much like the Gilded Age was marked by continued cycles of government-sponsored overinvestment and financial panics, today we are likely on a path to an AI bubble that will rival the massive panics we had in 1873 and 1893. Unfortunately, unlike during the 2008 financial crisis, our capacity to manage the fallout will be greatly diminished. Clearly, we are on a path that is taking us into rough waters. As Soros described, once the pattern of self-reference and self-reinforcement has taken hold, systems don’t correct gently. They overshoot—and the eventual snapback is rarely orderly or kind. Correction will not come from markets alone. It will come through backlash—political, social, and institutional—when those left bearing the costs decide the system no longer serves them. View the full article

When I was a product marketing leader for a corporate regional bank, I found myself getting annoyed during an all-day strategy meeting. My frustration came from hearing the same voices, sharing the same old ideas. I wondered why other people, especially the women in the room, weren’t speaking up. I remember thinking, “Well, you could be the one to speak up.” I felt nerves jump in my throat and doubt sink heavily in my stomach. Who was I to speak up? I thought that others in the room were smarter than me since they had higher titles and more experience. Looking back now, I realize that I had a big problem, a Pedestal Problem. I silenced my ideas because I was intimidated by the HiPPO in the room, the highest-paid person’s opinion. I had them on a pedestal, thinking they knew better than me, therefore there was no room for my ideas or expertise Since that day, I have seen this play out among thousands of leaders. One example is my client Melinda, an executive director who silenced her gut and trusted her CEO’s judgment on hiring a new sales leader for the organization. One year in, after various missed sales targets and employee complaints, she realized her gut was right all along. AUTHORITY BIAS STIFLES INNOVATION A very human instinct to defer to the person who seems smarter can quickly become a structural issue within organizations. Psychologists call this authority bias, which leads us to accept information or instructions from perceived authority figures without critically evaluating the content. Pedestalling leaders can lead to dangerous outcomes, like Theranos and Uber’s corporate scandals. Superhumanizing their founding CEOs, Elizabeth Holmes or Travis Kalanick, actually led to them being dehumanized. It created an allure of perfection that prevented employees from seeing and connecting to their leaders as real people. One study found that when employees strongly deferred to leaders’ authority (or viewed leaders as “untouchable”), they were more likely to go along with unethical behavior rather than speak up. This problem can also interrupt feedback loops that fuel brand identity snafus like the billboard ad for Match, which advertised a woman with freckles and the tagline, “If you don’t like your imperfections, someone else will.” If someone spoke up before the ad went live, it may have prevented them from offending millions of people with freckles and the inevitable public apology. To pull down the pedestal and bring people together to the table as equals, it’s not about training our teams to present more confidently. Instead, leaders need to recognize the authority bias they carry, simply because of their position, title, or even their charisma. Here are three ways that leaders can foster genuine team connection, and unlock the ideas that keep organizations relevant. RECONNECT WITH YOUR CURIOSITY I have studied this pedestal problem for nearly a decade, and I still have to be careful not to fall into the trap myself. In the past, during the Q&A portion of workshops or speaking events, I would simply answer the questions presented to me. However, I realized that participants could put me on a pedestal, without stopping to consider that I often knew little about them or their situation. Now, when they ask me a question, I curiously respond with questions like, “What’s been your current approach?” or “What options are you considering?” Nearly every time they respond with a unique idea or insight that benefits the entire room, and they get a boost of confidence to trust their gut and try the idea. Transferring this to your everyday 1:1 meetings, how often are you simply answering questions from your team? What new ideas could be heard if you responded curiously, starting with the two questions above? DON’T BE THE EXPERT, FACILITATE THE EXPERTISE My client, Kara, a chief marketing officer, frequently complained that her team was too quiet during feedback and brainstorming meetings. Kara was a founding employee known for ideating a billion-dollar product in the organization. While she was burned out from carrying the creative load, her team always deferred to her judgment. I challenged Kara to see that her team had put her on a pedestal. I encouraged her to shift away from being the expert, and instead facilitate the expertise in the room. Kara knew she’d hired great talent, and so she implemented some approaches to cultivate greater involvement. Before meetings, she invited quieter team members to share publicly in the meeting, she started rotating who led meeting agendas, and she started allowing for uncomfortable silences in meetings to benefit those who needed reflection or courage to speak up. In just one month, Kara already noticed a shift. Her load was reduced, new voices were emerging, and her team was energized because they now had ownership over the new marketing strategies they would be testing and implementing. EQUALIZE YOUR CONNECTION WITH OTHERS One of the biggest near-failures in my career came from assuming that because I had a good relationship with my team, the new training team members from the two banks we acquired would naturally align with our existing chemistry and processes. After several weeks of urging new team members to follow our long-standing training methods, and missing their feedback, one member invited me to pay a site visit to watch their training operation in action. I was humbled. They had several more creative training techniques and they were more efficient than us. This experience taught me that while I had relationships with my team, we weren’t on equal footing. To truly connect, I needed to get out of my office more and into their world. This is why CEOs of Uber and Starbucks frequently visit the frontline, to reestablish a more equal connection to team members that facilitates two-way feedback. When leaders connect with their teams as equals, they dismantle the pedestal that keeps honest feedback and innovation out of reach. CONNECT OTHERS TO THE FUTURE One of the best CEOs I worked under viewed the team as people who would cocreate the future with him, not simply execute his vision. I distinctly remember his self-awareness, because during town halls, he acknowledged that while he had a vision, he didn’t know exactly how we’d get there. In these town halls, he called out team members by name, recognizing that their unique perspectives were essential to making the vision successful. When leaders over-plan the future, they unintentionally send the message that there’s no space for input. In my work, I have found that the most impactful leaders don’t sell the how, they sell the what. He called others to focus their energy on how they could contribute to shared future goals instead of pointing their attention toward achieving his goals. To prevent smart people from quieting their ideas, which leave products undeveloped, policies outdated, status quos unchanged, and cultures mediocre, leaders hold the responsibility to pull the pedestal. Equalizing their connection with their teams creates a safer place for new voices to emerge because they feel seen, heard, and understood. View the full article

2025 was a banner year for cryptocurrencies on many fronts. Global regulation eased. Stablecoins powered $46 trillion in annual transactions. And major shifts in U.S. government policy spurred wider adoption. But with that expansion came a notable bump in crypto fraud. A new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform based in New York City, estimates that $17 billion in crypto was stolen last year through fraud and scams. Impersonation scams, where criminals pretend to be trusted entities or use fake tokens or websites to trick victims into sending them crypto, were up a jaw-dropping 1,400% year over year. And while it’s much too early to gather any conclusive data for 2026, the year got off to an inauspicious start. Earlier this month, the FBI warned about the use of Bitcoin ATMs, saying the devices are a magnet for scammers to convince people to send money (their entire life savings, in some cases) overseas. And just this week, the fintech firm Betterment confirmed that hackers had broken into its systems earlier this month and used the data to send a fraudulent crypto note to users, which funneled money to a wallet controlled by the attacker. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Eric Adams launched a new crypto token on Monday that he said would combat antisemitism and promote blockchain education. It quickly lost 81% of its value, bringing about accusations of a “rug pull” across the crypto community. Chainalysis warned in its report that this could be just the beginning of another year of new highs. “As we move into 2026, we expect further convergence of scam methodologies as scammers adopt multiple tactics and technologies simultaneously,” it wrote. Early projections by Chainalysis indicate scammers in 2025 received at least $14 billion on-chain, a transaction that occurs directly on the blockchain (compared with a speedier and cheaper but riskier off-chain transaction). That’s a big jump from last year’s initial estimate at the same time of $9.9 billion. Ultimately, the 2024 number settled at $12 billion following recalculations. The 2025 total is projected to come in above $17 billion, as more bogus wallet addresses are uncovered in the coming months. That would make last year’s rise in crypto scam losses the biggest since 2020 to 2021, when they doubled. Subsequent years have been fairly flat, hovering between $12 billion and $13 billion. Scams were not only happening more frequently last year, the people perpetrating them were also pocketing more each time. The average scam payment in 2025 was $2,764, a 253% increase over 2024’s $782. “The 2025 data reveal the extent to which cryptocurrency-enabled scams are becoming more sophisticated, organized, and efficient,” Chainalysis wrote. “There are no silver bullets to tackling such entrenched, industrial-scale scamming activity, and to be effective, a multipronged response is required.” Impersonation scams were the biggest driver of losses. Not only were the number of those sorts of cons significantly higher, but the average amount people paid to the groups behind them was up 600%. Crime syndicates in East and Southeast Asia drove many of these, the report says, with forced labor compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and other regions forcing trafficking victims to operate the scams—the most prolific of which was a phishing scam that targeted users of the E-ZPass toll collection system with a fake “outstanding toll.” Artificial intelligence is becoming a weapon of crypto scammers as well. The technology’s ability to leverage large language models and deepfake technology makes the schemes more realistic. As a result, scams that used AI vendors to create on-chain links averaged a haul of $3.2 million, compared with $719,000 for those without. While fraud was on the rise last year, there were some victories by law enforcement. Police in the U.K. recovered 61,000 in stolen Bitcoin. And TerraUS and Luna crypto developer Do Kwon, a Stanford graduate known by some as “the cryptocurrency king,” pleaded guilty in August to fraud charges stemming from the collapse of Terraform Labs, the Singapore-based firm he cofounded in 2018. Customers lost $40 billion in that fraud, a figure that exceeded the total losses of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. Kwon was sentenced to 15 years in prison. View the full article

Last year, various surveys, including reliable indicators, have highlighted a significant decline in reading habits over the past decades. The most striking evidence is not simply that people read less, but that their capacity for deep reading is weakening. According to OECD data, the proportion of 15-year-olds who fail to reach minimum reading proficiency has now risen to nearly one in four across advanced economies, with sharp declines in tasks requiring inference, evaluation, and integration of information across texts. In the United States, NAEP scores show that average reading performance among 13-year-olds has fallen to its lowest level in decades, reversing long-standing gains. Laboratory studies mirror these trends: experiments comparing print and screen reading consistently find that readers of digital texts score 10–30% lower on comprehension and recall, particularly for longer and conceptually demanding material. Eye-tracking and cognitive load research further indicates that frequent digital readers engage in more skimming, less rereading, and shallower semantic processing. Crucially, these effects are not confined to weaker readers. Even highly educated adults now report shorter attention spans for long-form text and greater mental fatigue when reading complex arguments, suggesting that the decline of reading reflects not a loss of literacy, but an erosion of the cognitive endurance and attentional discipline that deep reading uniquely develops. Not just children To make matters worse, various robust data indicators show that adults are spending less time reading, especially for pleasure. For instance: (1) A large time-use study analyzing diary data from over 236,000 Americans found that the share of adults who read for pleasure on an average day dropped from about 28% in 2003 to just 16% in 2023, a roughly 40% decline over two decades. (2) That same research showed a steady annual fall of about 3% per year in the prevalence of daily leisure reading among U.S. adults. (3) An earlier report by the World Economic Forum indicated average daily reading time in the U.S. declined from about 23 minutes per day in 2004 to around 16 minutes by 2019, even before the most recent decade’s drop. (4) In the U.S., fewer adults now report reading books for pleasure: about 48.5% of adults said they read at least one book in the past year in 2022, down from 54.6% in 2012. A real concern? Should this really concern us? Perhaps not. After all, reading is just one medium through which humans have ingested information and exercised their minds, including for deep thinking. For most of history, knowledge travelled orally rather than silently on the page. Ancient cultures relied on storytelling, poetry, and song to preserve and transmit complex ideas: Homer’s epics were memorized and performed long before they were written down; Greek philosophy unfolded through dialogue rather than textbooks; and entire moral, legal, and scientific traditions were passed across generations through ritualized speech, music, and debate. From this perspective, the book is a relatively recent cognitive technology, not an eternal prerequisite for intelligence (consider that Socrates and his fellow philosophers were concerned by the invention of writing, thinking it may atrophy memory). And today, once again, new media promise alternative routes to learning and thinking: immersive simulations, virtual and augmented reality, AI tutors, and even speculative neuro-technologies all claim to enhance understanding, creativity, or memory without requiring sustained reading at all. Perhaps these tools will indeed make us more knowledgeable or even smarter. Needless to say, not all reading is cognitively ennobling. Wading through a disposable airport romcom is unlikely to stretch the mind more than an unscripted, curious conversation with a stranger at a bar. The real question, then, is not whether reading is declining per se, but whether whatever replaces it can cultivate the same depth of attention, reflection, and intellectual effort that serious reading has historically demanded. Digital diversions To be sure, every person is different and even among those who are reading less, former reading time may be recycled or reutilized in many different ways. That said, there is a clear trend to devote more time and attention to the very technologies that have increasingly monopolized our focus over the past two decades. Time-use and media-consumption data strongly suggest that leisure reading has been displaced not by other cognitively demanding activities, but by screen-based media. In the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics time-use surveys show that average daily reading for pleasure fell from about 23 minutes in the early 2000s to roughly 16 minutes by 2019, while time spent on digital devices and television increased steadily. Over the same period, social media use expanded rapidly: Pew Research Center reports that adult social media adoption rose from around 5% in 2005 to over 80%, with many users spending multiple hours per day on these platforms. Globally, Digital 2024 data indicate that adults now spend about 2.5 hours per day on social media and more than 6.5 hours per day consuming digital media overall, compared with a small and declining fraction of time devoted to reading books or long-form text. While time spent reading traditional text has declined, many adults are substituting other sustained listening activities that share some cognitive benefits of reading; for example, Edison Research’s Infinite Dial reports that the share of Americans ages 12 and older who listen to podcasts weekly has grown from about 11% in 2013 to over 60% in 2024, with average weekly listening around seven hours, suggesting deeper engagement than typical short-form scrolling. Audiobook consumption has also risen sharply: the Audiobook Publishers Association and APA Foundation data show that nearly 50% of American adults listened to an audiobook in the past year, with frequent listeners averaging more than 6 hours per week, offering another way to engage with complex narrative and informational content. These trends indicate that although reading declines are real, listening to long-form spoken content (whether through podcasts or audiobooks) is increasingly filling part of the gap, providing extended attention to ideas, storytelling, and analysis in ways that resemble some of reading’s cognitive and reflective benefits. Unique benefits And yet, cognitive and developmental psychology remind us of the distinctive benefits of traditional reading, especially when it comes to thoughtful immersion and deep processing of text. Decades of research converge on at least five lessons worth remembering. First, sustained reading strengthens attention and cognitive endurance, training the ability to concentrate for extended periods without external stimulation, a capacity that is closely linked to academic achievement and complex problem-solving. Second, reading supports deeper comprehension and critical thinking: compared with fragmented or audiovisual media, linear text promotes inferential reasoning, abstraction, and the integration of ideas across time. Third, regular reading expands vocabulary and conceptual knowledge, which in turn predicts reasoning ability (especially verbal and crystallized intelligence), learning speed, and even long-term occupational outcomes. Fourth, reading fiction in particular has been shown to enhance perspective-taking and social cognition, improving people’s ability to understand others’ emotions, intentions, and mental states. Finally, early and sustained exposure to reading plays a foundational role in brain development, literacy, and self-regulation, with long-lasting effects on educational attainment and cognitive resilience across the lifespan. None of this means that reading is the only route to thinking, or that newer media are inherently inferior, but it does suggest that some cognitive benefits are unusually hard to replicate without sustained engagement with text. And if you made it this far, thank you for reading this. View the full article

Foldable phones have spent years trying to justify themselves. Some were too fragile, others too bulky, and most felt like solutions in search of a problem. The Galaxy Z TriFold is Samsung’s clearest attempt yet to answer a more reasonable question: Can one device replace the phone-tablet combo without becoming a chore to carry? Coming to the United States later this month, the TriFold folds twice, opens into a 10-inch screen, and closes back into a pocketable form. It’s an assertive design, but not a novelty play. Samsung seems very aware that this kind of device only makes sense for a specific kind of user. The double fold is the trick, but the software does the real work The headline feature is the dual hinge. Closed, the TriFold behaves like a premium smartphone. Open it fully, and it becomes a genuinely usable tablet-size workspace. That space matters. You can run three apps side by side, resize them, and keep them anchored even when calls or notifications interrupt. Samsung’s task bar lets you jump back into complex layouts without rebuilding them, which is a small thing until you’ve lost your place mid-task one too many times. We had a chance to try the phone first hand at a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) preview. The first time you open the device, the folding mechanism, in particular, stands out. Fully open, you might not even notice you’re holding a phone rather than a tablet. The three separate screens blend together seamlessly. Samsung has also added guardrails. The phone will warn you if you’re folding it the wrong way when you go to put it away—which feels less like hand-holding and more like protecting an expensive mistake. Editing photos is where the bigger screen actually shows off The TriFold’s size gives Samsung’s photo tools room to breathe, especially its generative editing features. Blake Gaiser, head of smartphone product management, says the difference is immediately obvious once you start using them. “We’re really well known for what we call generative editing—being able to remove things from a photo,” Gaiser told me during a demo this week. He took a photo that included a person, and then was able to select and remove that person from the photo in seconds. “It understands everything that I want to pick out here, and I’m able to take all the pixels out of that.” He points to something that’s easy to miss on smaller screens: cleanup details. “Not only did it take the person out, but it took their shadow out as well,” he said. “So now I can look at both side by side each other, and you can see the shadow that she had there is gone.” Being able to zoom in on before-and-after images simultaneously sounds minor. But for people who actually edit photos regularly, it’s the difference between trusting the result and hoping for the best. This is very much not meant for everyone The TriFold is not designed for everyone. Samsung isn’t pretending otherwise. Gaiser is blunt about the intended audience. “It is for your top productivity people,” he says. That philosophy shows up most clearly in DeX (short for desktop experience), Samsung’s desktop-style interface. On the TriFold, DeX treats the device like a full monitor. You can resize windows freely, stack them, snap them into place, and even create multiple desktops that remember their layouts. “So if I’m consistently looking at news articles and Samsung apps because I’m working on a piece or whatever, I could set those up in their own desktop,” Gaiser said. “Even when I clear the memory and everything, it remembers that setup.” Gaiser has been using the TriFold as part of his own daily setup, and not always as the primary device. “The two key things that I’ve done with this personally, in the three months that I’ve had this device: I have just a portable stand that I put it on, wireless keyboard, mouse, use it like a PC,” he said. “Or in my hotel room, I had my PC and I had this set up as a second monitor.” The TriFold supports wired and wireless display output, including 4K when wired, making it less of a stretch to imagine it replacing a second screen for travel or temporary setups. Built sturdier than it looks Triple-folding phones raise obvious durability questions. Gaiser acknowledges the complexity. “Because we have two different hinges on here. You have two different pivot points,” he said. The phone uses magnets to keep it shut, but also to give the third screen a gentle “pop” after you open the first, making it easier to lift. Samsung also leaned heavily into materials, using ceramic glass fiber, a titanium lattice, and carbon fiber reinforcements to protect the folding display. Gaiser was candid in comparing it with competitors. Power without cutting corners Under the hood, the TriFold runs on a customized Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, includes a 200-megapixel camera, and uses a 5,600 milliamp-hour battery spread across its three panels. That complexity is invisible to the user—which is the point. The phone lasts through a full day of heavy use and charges quickly enough not to feel precious. Samsung also worked with Adobe to create a subscription-based Lightroom-specific app that behaves like its desktop counterpart, reinforcing the idea that this device is meant for people who actually produce things on their phones. The phone will come with a free trial. How it stacks up against other foldables Huawei Mate XT Huawei was the first with the Mate XT, proving that trifold hardware was possible. Availability is limited, software support is complicated outside certain markets, and it feels more like a statement piece than an everyday device. Concept triple-folds from other brands Several manufacturers have shown trifold concepts at trade shows. Most trifold devices are still prototypes, and that’s fine. Building one is hard. Making one that survives daily life, and the bumps that come with it, is even harder. Samsung’s advantage isn’t that it folded a phone twice. It’s that it’s spent years figuring out hinges, software behavior, durability testing, and what users actually tolerate. The TriFold feels like the result of that learning curve rather than a shortcut. So who should even consider this? Samsung’s own answer is narrow. Gaiser calls the target audience “the top 1% heavy users.” “Productivity tools, multi-window users, your ultra-top users,” he said. “It’s not for everyone.” That honesty helps. The Galaxy Z TriFold isn’t trying to convince casual users to upgrade. It’s aimed squarely at people who already push their devices hard and want fewer things in their bag. It’s not flawless, not cheap, and not subtle. But it’s also the clearest signal yet that foldables are moving out of the experimental phase and into something more practical, even if only for a small slice of users. View the full article

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