Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i Fast Company

I LOVE MY JOB, BUT IT COMES WITH AN UNSETTLING OCCUpational hazard: editing stories about technologies that threaten my own professional existence. Such was the experience of working on senior editor Mark Sullivan’s story on Perplexity, one of the buzziest startups in Silicon Valley. Perplexity makes an AI search tool that yields impressively detailed and well-organized answers. It’s popular with tech-world insiders and is catching on with normies, too. The company is a David to Google’s Goliath, although its CEO, an OpenAI veteran named Aravind Srinivas, likes to say, “We don’t have to beat Google to be successful.” Yet as Perplexity grows, it will imperil an altogether different entity: the media business. Unlike traditional search engines such as Google, which index the world’s information in the form of links and…

Dealing with travel agents (remember them?) is a bittersweet memory. You enjoyed the convenience of someone handling your travel’s boring and mundane parts—flight connections, seat select ion, and even meet and greet. The trusted air travel advisor would do it for us. Today, though, air travellers prefer to book directly, still hoping for a personalized and hassle-free experience. So, the technological revolution isn’t just about easing travel. It’s about reimagining the entire travel experience. Just as AI has affected almost every aspect of our lives, it has made its mark in aviation. It is transforming various aspects of travel, most significantly, customer experience. Say hello to Sama, Qatar Air ways’ A I cabin crew, f ea turing a digitally created high-fidelity 3D human model, who promises to further revolutionize air…

TWO MONTHS AFTER THE SUPREME COURT overturned Roe v. Wade, Julie Schott launched emergency-contraception brand Julie. The timing was fortuitous. Though morning-after pills have been widely available since 1977, the renewed focus on reproductive rights put increased attention on products across the familyplanning spectrum. Julie’s electric-blue boxes are emblazoned with the brand’s name in hot pink and are evocative of mid-’90s Sassy magazine covers. The brand has used that attention—alongside national distribution at more than 13,000 major retail locations—to make its levonorgestrel tablets popular, even fashionable to Gen Z. Just ask the 22,000 people at the Olivia Rodrigo concert on March 12 in St. Louis. They received free boxes of Julie from the singer, in partnership with the Missouri Abortion Fund. Julie—which lacks the more clinical, furtive associations that come…

For patients with serious ailments—ranging from cancerto autoimmune diseases—access to cell therapies can mean the difference between life and death. But since cell therapies are created for each patient individually, they’re incredibly difficult to scale. As a result, demand greatly outstrips supply, meaning thousands of people around the world can’t access these crucial treatments. Enter Cellares, a South San Francisco– based pharmaceutical firm on a mission to accelerate access to critically important therapies. Utilizing a network of smart factories and a vertically integrated business model, the company offers a radical reimagining of how cell therapies can be made, from development to manufacturing to regulatory support. And—just as significant—it presents an easier path to scalability. “Over the next decade, millions of patients will live that would have otherwise died, because of…

“AS A NEWS ORGANIZATION,” SAID CESAR Conde, who oversees NBC News, “the biggest currency that we have is trust.” Trust is earned over time, of course, and a visitor traversing the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza can viscerally feel its accrual. The Midtown Manhattan building is where, in 1941, NBC launched as the first commercial television network in the United States; and in 2024, trusted anchors relay the evening news to some 6.7 million viewers every night. But trust can also be lost in an instant. That’s a truism that Conde, who has been chairman of the NBC Universal News Group since 2020, is now grappling with. His organization’s many victories in recent years are being overshadowed by a recent scandal: the hiring and firing, in March, of the former…

Children in marginalized communities often lack access to healthy foods, especially fresh fruits, and vegetables. Poor nutrition, in turn, has significant negative impacts on a child’s health and ability to focus in school. Learning and academic achievement often plummet. “Children will never be well-read if they are not well-fed,” says Stephen Ritz, veteran educator and founder of Green Bronx Machine, a nonprofit organization driven by the belief that healthy students are the heart of healthy communities. Ritz originally conceived Green Bronx Machine as an afterschool workforce development program. It’s now a K-12 curriculum program serving more than 275,000 students and 10,000 teachers worldwide. Participants eat more fruits and vegetables, while schools reap the rewards of marked improvements in test scores, attendance, and academic performance. Students have graduated into vocational programs…

IT’S GRAY SEASON IN BEAVERTON, OREGON. WET AND DANK, JUST WARM ENOUGH NOT TO BE SNOWING, THE MOMENT IN MARCH WHEN EVERYONE WEARILY AGREES THAT WINTER IS SUPPOSED TO BE OVER. SERENA’S TENNIS COURT SITS EMPTY, SPECKLED WITH A FEW DOZEN FLUORESCENT BALLS; A “NO WALKING” SIGN WARNS PEOPLE OFF RONALDO’S SOCCER PITCH. Heidi O’Neill, the company’s president of consumer, product, and brand, sits in front of a window, seven stories high in the Serena Williams building on Nike’s 400acre global headquarters, discussing the company’s 2024 Olympics strategy. It’s my third time visiting the campus, and she’s the only employee I’ve encountered who is bold enough to eschew the swoosh on her feet, instead opting for black platform ankle boots. With the Paris Summer Olympics in July, Nike is preparing…

CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL AND NIUE OCEAN WIDE ••• NATURE SPONSORING AN ENDANGERED animal has long been a way for people to contribute to the conservation of at-risk species, such as tigers and pandas. Now, a program is encouraging the public to sponsor parcels of endangered ocean. About 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand, the tiny South Pacific nation of Niue is “a very small rock in the middle of a large ocean,” says Maël Imirizaldu, regional lead director with the Blue Nature Alliance. Last year, the 101-squaremile island marked its surrounding ocean—about the size of Malaysia— into 127,000 zones and declared them open for sponsorship. With a quick online card purchase of about $150, anyone can chip in to protect a part of the earth’s seas. Niue had already been at…

WORLD-CHANGING COMPANY OF THE YEAR GOOGLE A suite of projects that use AI to tackle climate change, from flood alerts to redesigned traffic lights GENERAL EXCELLENCE Recygénie HOLCIM A 220-unit housing complex in Paris that’s the first of its kind to use 100% recycled concrete ADVERTISING ADLaM MICROSOFT AND MCCANN WORLDGROUP A decades-long initiative to save Pulaar, the African language of 60 million Fulani people, from extinction AGRICULTURE Using cold plasma technology to treat seeds CLEAN CROP TECHNOLOGIES A process that protects seeds from crop-killing contaminants AI AND DATA HomeTeam REFLEXAI A digital training tool that helps veterans support one another through mental health challenges APPS MPATH: Empathic Insights GRESHAM SMITH A platform that uses data from personal devices to quantify emotional responses to urban environments ARCHITECTURE Step(1) Housing THE…

WORLD-CHANGING COMPANY OF THE YEAR CLIMATIZE KAYRROS REGENESIS SIEMENS GENERAL EXCELLENCE Content Credentials ADOBE Retrofitted heavy-industry vehicles FIRST MODE Self-fertilizing seed PIVOT BIO ADVERTISING A new playbook for women’s sports ALLY FINANCIAL AGRICULTURE Self-fertilizing seed PIVOT BIO Using UV light to improve rice seeds BIOLUMIC Vismax ELEMENTAL ENZYMES AI AND DATA AI Food Scanner 3.0 NUVILAB The Autism Journey AFRICA CREATIVE AGENCY ThreatCloud AI CHECK POINT SOFT WARE TECHNOLOGIES APPS Plug Inn RENAULT AND PUBLICIS SAPIENT Sleuth Platform SLEUTH ARCHITECTURE Papillio Domus (Butterfly House): The Children’s Hospice LITTLE DIVERSIFIED ARCHITECTURAL CON SULTING FIRM Regenerative Lab NBBJ ART AND DESIGN The Autism Journey AFRICA CREATIVE AGENCY It All Starts Here GOODBY SILVERSTEIN & PARTNERS #TakeItDown CHILDFUND AND WRTHY BEAUTY AND FASHION Advanced biomanufacturing DEBUT Coachtopia COACH Wastecare AIZOME TEXTILES Working with…

The hammer is made of foam, wrapped in duct tape, and technically it’s stuck to his head with Scotch tape, not in his head, but still. Tough break. His masked killer, dressed head to toe in black, ninja-style, yanks the hammer out of (off of ) his skull, and he tumbles backward onto the mat. One henchman down, four to go. Afternoon sunlight streams in through a stainedglass window high above the dojo floor of a converted cathedral on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, filling the space with the warm glow of fight-choreography heaven. Off to the side, observing and taking mental notes, are veteran stunt performer turned director David Leitch and his producer wife, Kelly McCormick. Two years ago, they converted this building—the headquarters of their production company, 87North—into…

Geography The shifting winds of the U.S. economy in the past year have left designers disoriented. OFFICIALLY, THE LABOR MARKET is still on fire, with job-growth data from the Department of Labor continuing to surprise economists, adding more than 600,000 jobs in the first two months of 2024. But if you work in tech, the picture looks decidedly different. The tech industry—the terrain of many designers—lost more than 50,000 jobs worldwide between January and March of 2024, according to tracker site layoffs.fyi, as it continues to downsize following more than a decade of unfettered head-count growth and the rising specter of AI. But the news for designers isn’t entirely bleak. We’ve analyzed four months of listings on Google’s jobsearch engine—which consolidates postings from thousands of sources around the web, including…

JEFF BEZOS IS A BUSY man. But in December, he found the time—two hours and 11 minutes, to be exact—to talk with Lex Fridman, a computer scientist and host of the Lex Fridman Podcast. Fridman’s podcast is the most popular in the technology category, according to Apple and Spotify. His following on social media—including his own Reddit community, 38,000 strong—extends to more than 8 million people. During the past six years, Fridman has recorded more than 400 episodes on topics ranging from alien life to venture investing. His interview subjects have included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, aspiring Middle East dealmaker Jared Kushner, and entrepreneurial YouTube star MrBeast. In July, Fridman interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, for an hour. At first glance, Fridman might seem an…

ADVERTISING VETERAN NANCY REYES HAS SPENT THE PAST 25 years helping some of the world’s biggest companies, including Google, H&M, and Frito-Lay, connect with consumers. Reyes has long championed inclusivity, founding Circle of Women, which gives leadership coaching to female executives, and serving as a founding member of the nonprofit Time’s Up, which supports victims of sexual harassment. What’s your best habit, and what’s your worst? Best: Waking up early. Worst: Never sleeping in. What do you do when you’re creatively stuck? I do something mundane like make a list. It gives my brain a break. Is there a businessperson you admire? I can’t decide between Oprah and Beyoncé. Is there an expression you never want to hear again? The annual declaration that advertising is dead. It’s never been a…

Manufacturers of electric vehicles (EV) and semiconductors should have every reason to be optimistic. Their products are in demand, and the industries have benefitted from favorable tax breaks and billions of dollars in federal spending. But they are facing a huge problem: a dire (and worsening) shortage of skilled workers needed to keep their products rolling off the line. In 2023, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC)—which helps businesses and communities all across the Great Lakes State grow and succeed— launched a program to address and head off the potential shortfall. Its Talent Action Team (TAT) is a $34 million initiative that brings together employers, education leaders, and training providers to prepare a workforce with the specialized skills required to make semiconductors, EVs, and other high-tech goods. In its first…

Since its founding in 1936, Consumer Reports has been a tireless advocate for the American public. And it is a healthy spirit of innovation that now drives the Yonkers, New York–based nonprofit to continue with its scrupulous product testing, dogged investigative journalism, and unwavering consumer advocacy. “Our mission is unchanging, but the marketplace is dynamic,” says Consumer Reports president and CEO Marta Tellado. “Consumer protections and rights haven’t kept up with the pace of technological change. We believe that you don’t need to make a trade-off. You can design with consumer safety in mind.” Two recent innovations highlight Consumer Reports’s commitment to improving consumer safety and security in the face of rapid technological advancement. First, is the advanced, one-of-a-kind automobile testloop, built in Connecticut, which will yield even more data…

Severe blood loss, whether the result of an accident or a complication during surgery, can result in death within minutes. An easy-to-use technology that can instantly stop severe bleeding would have the potential to save countless lives. The Brooklyn-based biotech company Cresilon has developed a unique solution with a proprietary plant-based gel that can control bleeding on contact. Last year, the company received its first FDA clearance for its latest gel showing remarkable hemostatic properties, capable of stopping the flow of blood from injuries. Their first product using this technology is called Traumagel—and Cresilon is ready to bring this revolutionary technology to the trauma and emergency markets.The impact should be powerful. The gel, which is applied with a syringe, can stop severe bleeding almost immediately. And it doesn’t require special…

GOOGLE THE THIN CLOUDS THAT STREAK BEHIND AIRPLANES, called contrails, are a sizable source of global warming, responsible for more than a third of aviation’s climate impact. But slightly changing a plane’s flight path can help avoid the phenomenon, which happens when hot exhaust mixes with cold, humid air. At Google, researchers are using artificial intelligence to help predict where contrails will form so that pilots can adjust course. In a six-month test on dozens of American Airlines flights between 2022 and early 2023, the approach helped reduce contrails by 54%. While redirecting planes uses a little more fuel, the climate benefit far outweighs the extra CO2 emissions. The change would cost airlines little. Eventually, many airplanes will shift to sustainable aviation fuel, which can both reduce contrails and cut…

MADE FOR A WOMAN ••• EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST, A ND AFRICA IN MADAGASCAR, ONE OF THE poorest countries in the world, those on the margins of society struggle to break out of poverty. But fashion startup Made for a Woman opened a workshop in the capital, Antananarivo, in 2019 that now employs 350 people, the majority of whom are women with few other opportunities, including the differently abled, single mothers, survivors of abuse, and former sex workers. Made for a Woman offers workers more than a safe place to earn a living wage: It also hires doctors, psychologists, and childcare workers to support them. Workers can take courses that include art and music therapy. “We create a space where we focus not only on their financial stability but also on…

It’s the sobering—and all-too regular—experience for any cancer survivor: waiting for their doctorto revealthe testresults that show if the disease has returned. “These are themomentswhere everybody in the family takes a deep breath,” says ChrisHall, CEOofPersonalis, a biotechnology company based in Fremont,California. Quick and accurate results can help patients map more proactive treatments and hopefully improve their odds of survival. Personalis has taken major strides towards this goal with NeXT Personal, a new kind of blood test that can spot the unique DNA signature of a patient’s tumor. Hall says the ultra-sensitive test can potentially spot cancers months earlier and open the doorto an ever-widening array oftherapies. “The genetics of each patient’s tumor are unique, even for the same cancer type. We’re moving toward aworldwhere people will be getting diagnostic…

ESUSU ••• FINANCE MORE THAN 26 MILLION ADULTS in the United States are considered “credit invisible”—they have no credit history. Many are immigrants, people of color, and members of low-income households. Many are renters. The cofounders of fintech startup Esusu, Wemimo Abbey and Samir Goel, can relate. After Abbey immigrated from Lagos, his family struggled with finances and ended up with a predatory loan. Goel, the child of immigrants from New Delhi, watched his family struggle too. “We started on three core premises,” says Abbey. “Where you come from, the color of your skin, and your financial identity should not determine where you end up in the world’s wealthiest nation.” Historically, rent payments have not supported credit building the way that mortgage payments do, preventing renters from establishing credit profiles…

Shopping for skincare and antiaging products—a booming billion-dollar industr y—can be a bewildering experience: consumers are flooded with dubious “before and after” images, breathless marketing claims, and endorsements from peripheral celebrities. Offering a welcome alternative to the hype carnival is OneSkin, a San Francisco–based biotechnology firm that is growing a flourishing product line with the power of science. The scientistswho cofounded OneSkin —four women working in four different fields—did not set out to create a skincare company. Their original plan, in fact, was to provide a service to other companies in the market to validate the real and quantifiable effectiveness of anti-aging products. After extensive tests on lab-grown human skin, they could discover no signs ofrejuvenation at a cellularlevel—with some samples even shown to accelerate the aging process. The team…

Forward-thinking companies —facing the challenges of supply-chain disruptions and rising consumer demand for ever-faster deliveries—are paying more attention to the business of moving goods from place to place. Symbotic, a warehouse automation company based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, has emerged as an industry leader in developing innovative solutions for businesses looking to improve supply-chain efficiency. Its autonomous AI-powered mobile robots— called SymBots—are deployed in the warehouses of companies all over North America. Computer vision and sensing technology embedded throughout the system allows the robots to “see” (and immediately react). And sophisticated routing algorithms help choreograph a complex dance inwhich hundreds of bots can autonomously travel at speeds of more than 20 miles an hour. “Throughput, accuracy, and flexibility are huge differentiators for us,” says Bill Boyd, chief strategy officer at Symbotic.…

Ar tificial intelligence, for all its reputed might, is only as good as the data on which it trains. And an alarming amount of the data—up to 80%—that businesses generate on a daily basis is locked inside widely used file formats (including PDF, PPTX, and HTML) that AI models can’t read. Which means their AI models overlook the data-rich content contained within research reports, planning memos, regulatory filings, and many other businessrelated documents. Unstructured, a California-based data-processing firm, is out to change that. “The state of most companies’ data is the equivalent of oil that’s just been pumped out of the ground,” says CEO and founder Brian Raymond: “It’s unusable in its raw form.” The company’s revolutionary no-code platform works as a digital refinery, transforming once-inaccessible enterprise data into AI-friendly…

Large institutions are hardly known for nimble strategies, large financial institution even less so. But as digital technologies and customer expectations rapidly evolve, the smart players in the financial services industry are getting a handle on the fast-moving dynamics of consumer-focused innovation. Bank of Montreal (BMO)—the eighth largest bank in North America, with more than 13 million customers—is in the midst of a long-term digital-transformation program to develop a suite of tools that address customer needs across channels: connecting online, mobile, and in-person banking experiences. “For something as impor tant as personal finances,” says Peter Poon, head of digital product management for service, platforms and innovation at BMO, “we need to be easy to use, we need to be personalized, and we need to deliver value to the customer.” This…

• NO STARTUP FOUNDER likes to learn they’re being sued. But when Elizabeth Gore received an email this past summer letting her know that her company was being targeted, it was who was suing her that really made her blanch: Stephen Miller. Miller made his name as the aide to former president Donald Trump who devised the administration’s restriction on Muslim visitors to the U.S. in 2017 and later championed the separation of migrant families at the border. After leaving the White House, Miller launched a litigation factory called America First Legal (AFL), which has been waging a campaign against progressive policies in the Biden administration and, increasingly, corporations. Now Miller’s group was suing Hello Alice, the online platform for entrepreneurs that Gore had cofounded. AFL was taking legal action…

Last year, a New York City–based law firm, after having pored over thousands of documents in a complex employment discrimination case, turned to Casetext—a San Francisco–based tech startup now part of Thomson Reuters—and its remarkable AI-powered legal assistant technology, CoCounsel, to review the copious pages of text. As CoCounsel electronically sifted through the mountain of files, it discovered and flagged multiple uses of a two-word expression: Club Fed. As a term that mocks the relative comforts of a minimum-security prison, its use clearly indicated thatthe defendants knew their activity was criminal. It was the break the attorneys needed. CoCounsel, released in 2023, does more than flag consequential words and passages. It can read, analyze, and even summarize legal material at a postgraduate level and can perform about 60% of the…

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a form of dementia that affects the parts of the brain governing memory, thought, and language. It afflicts an estimated 6.7 million Americans—and is incredibly difficult to treat. The failure rate for clinical trials for Alzheimer’s treatments during the past 10 years is 98%. But such discouraging results have only intensified the efforts of Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company Eisai in its unwavering mission to bring relief to the millions touched by AD. From the research and development of a symptomatic treatment in the 1980’s, to its continued development of antiamyloidbeta and anti-tau antibodies, Eisai has built its rich neurology pipeline during the past four decades. Even when faced with complexities and challenges that caused others to exit the effort, Eisai has never given up on developing therapeutic…

Navigating the healthcare system can be an overwhelming experience. Whether it’s finding a trusted doctor, tracking down medical records and test results, or making sense of bewildering insurance forms, taking care of your health too often means jumping over hurdles. Included Health wants to remove those hurdles— and raise the standard of healthcare for everyone. Through its AI-powered, all-in-one app, the San Francisco–based healthcare company offers healthcare navigation and advocacy services alongside comprehensive virtual care (covering everyday urgent care, mental health support, virtual primary care, and specialty care, with referrals to in-person care when needed). This fully integrated, tech-enabled approach to healthcare delivery has earned Included Health a place on Fast Company’s list of the world’s Most Innovative Companies for 2024. Here, Included Health CEO Owen Tripp talks about how…

Silvio Kutić, cofounder and CEO of full-stack communications platform Infobip, is familiar with failure. He can quickly rattle off a list of his early business ventures that flamed out—some ofthem spectacularly. But he doesn’t regard these entrepreneurial false starts as dead ends. In fact, Kutić thinks ofthem as stepping stones on a path crucialto today’s version of Infobip, which provides a broad array of capabilities at scale—from AI-enabled chatbots to customer engagement and security solutions—on a platform built for speed and deliverability. “If you’re a surgeon, failure isn’t a good thing,” Kutić says. “But if you want to build innovative things and disruptindustries,failure is an important part of the journey.” An ambitious (and often wildly daring) approach to redefining omnichannel communications has helped the Croatia– based firm, a bootstrapped unicorn,…

Virtual-reality experiences tend to be solitary and isolating. Even the gear—which requires, at the very least, the wearing of a large headset—discourages physical interactions. Sandbox VR has changed all of that. The San Francisco–based company builds and operates multi-room locations that offer socially immersive experiences—involving up to six players per room—that utilize an impressive array of proprietary technologies (including high-resolution headsets, full-body motion capture, and haptic-feedback gear). Stories and situations, created by Sandbox, put groups of players in virtual worlds, transporting them to eye-popping fantastical lands—or even in the middle of a fan-favorite TV show (where they must choose to compete as friends or enemies). The company currently operates more than 40 locations around the world and is expanding rapidly. “What makes Sandbox unique is that we’re providing highly immersive…

Thousands of deaf and hardof-hearing (DHH) athletes play football in games with only a few modified rules. In addition to the obvious obstacles they face, these players have to contend with the lightning pace of today’s game and the prevalence of hearing-based technologies (like radio-equipped helmets) that excludes the deaf. Missing, forthem, was a crucialtechnology that would facilitate clear and instantaneous communication between players and coaches. A new kind of football helmet—the first ever with 5G connectivity—is that solution. These helmets have tiny digital displays mounted inside the visors on which coaches can now send plays. They were developed with the input of advisors from Gallaudet University, long recognized for serving deaf and hard of hearing students. This technological innovation was the result of a partnership between AT&T and Translation,…

"GETTING" THE QUESTION Perplexity’s answer engine harnesses advanced natural language processing capabilities to parse through the user’s query, analyzing its context and subtle nuances to extract its real meaning and intent. CHECKING THE WEB The engine locates the most relevant web pages or articles from its web index, then selects specific content snippets within them to provide context around the user’s question. WHEN YOU GOOGLE THE TERM PERPLEXITY AI." YOU GET A FAMILIAR-LOOKING RESPONSE: A LINK TO THE COMPANY'S WEBSITE FOLLOWED BY FOUR OTHER RELATED POPULAR QUERIES, A HANDFUL OF PUBLISHED ARTICLES, RELATED SEARCHES, AND AN ENDLESS SCROLL OF LINKS THAT IF PRINTED OUT MIGHT EXTEND FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO AUSTIN. PERPLEXITY'S ANSWER MACHINE, HOWEVER, PROVIDES A VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE: ENTERING THE PHRASE "WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT PERPLEXITY…