The AI, automation, and machine learning excellence category recognizes best workplaces for innovators that have thrived through innovative uses of new technologies.
Adobe, San Jose
The company’s Adobe Incubations, launched in 2024, develops and scales new products, such as a multiplayer mood board to enhance the conceptual process.
Alibaba Group, Hangzhou, China
Trade innovations, such as a new B2B AI search engine called Accio, help Alibaba Group move toward its mission to make it easy to do business anywhere.
Architech, Toronto
The cloud software firm held a three-month, company-wide hackathon where employees from different groups created AI-powered solutions to inefficiencies in their processes.
Generate:Biomedicines, Somerville, MA
Using generative AI models to program biology, the biotech company’s collaborative team aims to tackle diseasesand parts of virusespreviously considered undruggable.
IBM, Armonk, NY
A longtime leader in computing, IBM has spent the past year advancing its quantum computing technology and Granite, an artificial intelligence model that prioritizes open access and responsibility.
Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ
The 139-year-old company invested $17 billion in R&D last year, which funded its internal incubators and innovation hubs.
Lenovo, Morrisville, NC
Last year, Lenovo invested 3.6% of revenue in R&D, maintaining 18 R&D facilities and four AI innovation centers around the world.
Pella, Pella, IA
The centenary window and door company pushes employees at every level to innovate solutions, for instance, an engineer that made a new quality-control camera to make manufacturing more efficient.
Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati
After more than 185 years of innovation, Procter & Gamble has revolutionized its molecule discovery and product development process with its AI-powered Molecular Discovery Suite (MDS).
RIOS Intelligent Machines, Menlo Park, CA
The first AI platform for industrial engineering, developed by RIOS Intelligent Machines, aims to incorporate perceptive and focused technology solutions to help improve the work experience for engineers.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
The Innovative Team of the Year recognizes groups of employees at Best Workplaces for Innovators that have gone above and beyond, driving important innovations in their workplace.
Winner: Badge
Lewes, DE
Cofounded by Tina P. Srivastava and Charles Herder, cybersecurity startup Badge aims to revolutionize biometric authentication with its trademarked Identity Without Secrets system, which eliminates the need to store user credentials. The companys cryptography team worked with a CISO Council of outside experts to reduce the time for user authentication from multiple seconds to 22 milliseconds, a latency reduction that not only enhances user experience but also places less stress on computer resources. Since 2024, the team has secured more than 15 patents, and Badge technology is used by Microsoft, Cisco, Okta, and Ping Identity.
Finalists:
Hebbia, New York
Hebbias engagement team is redefining what it means to serve enterprise customers in the age of AI. The team helps customers scale usage across functions and regions, customizing AI strategy from the ground up.
Match Group, Dallas
Operating a portfolio of dating sites (including Tinder, Match, OkCupid, and Hinge), the company combines design and technical experimentation in its Art x Science Lab, innovating everything from prototyping systems to user games.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
This category recognizes companies that have implemented innovative and effective strategies to boost employee morale and engagement during challenging times.
FutureThink, New York
Quarterly Kill a Stupid Rule sessions empower employees at the business services and management consulting firm to streamline workplace processes.
Land O’Lakes, Arden Hills, MN
In the face of pandemic-era disruptions, leaders at the member-owned agricultural cooperative advocated to bring flexible work to its manufacturing team.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
The large companies category recognizes best workplaces for innovators with 1,000+ employees that have outpaced their cohort in fostering cultures of innovation.
American Red Cross, Washington, D.C.
The 144-year-old American Red Cross is embracing AI to save time and money generating questions for two of their training exams, babysitting and basic life support.
Ardurra, Miami
The engineering and consulting firm operates an Innovation Hub that functions as an internal incubator where employees can submit ideas that are evaluated by a diverse Shark Tank-style panel of senior experts.
Chipotle, Newport Beach, CA
Last year, Chipotle doubled down on its Cultivate Next venture fund, committing $100 million to the initiative, which is designed to make early-stage investments in companies that align with Chipotles mission of fostering sustainability, innovation, and culinary excellence.
Fidelity Information Services, Jacksonville, FL
Giving employees a chance to create and collaborate at an annual 48-hour innovation event, Fidelity Information Services filed more than 300 new patents last year.
Jazwares, Plantation, FL
The toy company behind popular brands like Squishmallows inspires innovation with employee education programs and a twice-yearly initiative that brings new product ideas directly to company leaders.
Merck & Co., Rahway, NJ
Embracing future leaders within their ranks, the pharmaceutical giant has invested in leadership skill development and developed new learning opportunities for employees, such as on-demand content and an app.
Salesforce, San Francisco
Salesforce encourages employees to research and develop AI tools. The latest, Agentforce, allows clients to customize their own AI agents for business tasks.
Symbotic, Wilmington, MA
To streamline fulfillment of small-quantity orders, the robotics company developed an AI-driven system that can slash costs and improve efficiency in warehouses.
TIAA, New York
The centenarian financial services company is embracing new technologiessuch as its new generative AI platform, TIAA gAItto streamline customer experiences across the expansive business.
T-Mobile, Bellevue, WA
The telecommunications company collaborated across its networkand across employee teamsto develop T-Priority, a new 5G solution that improves first responders call connectivity.
Trimble, Westminster, CO
A 24-hour hackathon led a Trimble engineer to develop the global tech companys first internal AI program.
Wealthsimple Technologies, Toronto
Alternative investment funds with a low barrier to entrythe brainchild of a cross-functional team at Wealthsimple Technologieshave helped thousands of Canadians access wealth management services.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
The North America category recognizes best workplaces for innovators based in the North America region that have invested in human capital and innovation infrastructure in their home markets.
Alex Lee, Hickory, NC
This family-owned grocery company encourages employees to submit ideas each month to solve business challengesand winning ideas are not only developed through the Xcelerate pipeline program, but they also earn employees a cash prize and recognition.
Allied Steel Buildings, McGregor, TX
Borrowing from recent advancements in robotics and automation has helped employees at the construction manufacturing company revolutionize their assembly production of pre-engineered custom steel buildings, dramatically increasing efficiency.
Ampsight, Sterling, VA
Exploratory research from one of the tech company’s data scientists led to an idea for an imagery intelligence assistant that, once nurtured in the companys AmpArena internal incubator, quickly exceeded expectations.
Curinos, New York
A hackathon series and an incubator for college students are examples of the ways the fintech company helps innovate in the financial data intelligence field, bringing creative uses of AI to the forefront.
De-Yan Studio, New York
Supporting 220 projects per year, De-Yans Hyperion accelerator gives employees the chance to innovate from the ground up on creative marketing campaigns.
FutureThink, New York
Quarterly Kill a Stupid Rule sessions empower employees at the business services and management consulting firm to streamline workplace processes.
Haskell, Jacksonville, FL
Going beyond the typical hackathon format, Haskells Big Pitch event brings more than 1,000 employees together to compete for a cash prize and patent for their innovative idea.
Highnote, San Francisco
Developing simulations to anticipate the impacts of account aging and delinquency has helped the financial company empathize with clients and think of next-step solutions.
Homebase, San Francisco
To make training new workers less tedious, payroll and scheduling platform Homebase created Batting Cage, an AI-powered sales training platform that has already been integrated in company onboarding.
Maxar Intelligence, Westminster, CO
The company’s new drone navigation system, which protects against GPS jamming, sprang from an idea from the sales team.
Radio Flyer, Chicago
Radio Flyer, the classic red wagon company, encourages employees to branch into new territory, yielding fresh ideas like an electric cargo bike that can make simple trips an adventure.
TomoCredit, San Francisco
The fintech company gives employees the time and space to test new ideas and develop projects, such as 1:1 calls that a team member pitched after recognizing some customers were looking more for guidance than product information.
Waystar, Louisville, KY
Integrating AI across Waystars software is helping the healthcare tech company meet new challenges in healthcare payment, such as rising rates of denied claims, which providers spend about $20 billion to overturn each year.
Wisk Aero, Mountain View, CA
Each generation of Wisks electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircrafts has brought the company closer to autonomous electric flight, inspiring employees to think bigger with inventor training and patent incentives.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
The small and mighty category recognizes best workplaces for innovators with fewer than 100 employees that have outpaced their cohort in fostering cultures of innovation.
Burq, Richmond, VA
After merchants complained that rigid, one-size-fits-all workflows didnt capture their complex logistics needs, the delivery management platform company created a customizable delivery workflow that has had a 99.5% success rate since being implemented last year.
Juris Digital, Denver
A team member at the legal marketing company realized many law firm websites struggled to engage visitors and decided to leverage AI to enhance user experience and guide content creation, a feature that has since helped clients sign million-dollar cases.
Laborit, So Paulo
Transcending traditional problem-solving, Laborits Circle method brings employees together for a multiday immersive innovation session that uses principles of philosophy, neuroscience, and social psychology to solve todays challenges.
Output, Los Angeles
Conversations between Outputs sound designers and engineers led to Co-Producer, an AI-driven plug-in that listens to a musicians session and finds samples for their track.
Protelo, Folsom, CA
Investments in research and new product offerings attract professionals to the ERP consulting group Protelo, which saw a 15% increase in staff last year.
Third Plateau, San Francisco
Working with nonprofit leaders, the social impact and philanthropy consulting firm has helped direct more than $2 billion to a variety of causes while encouraging their remote employees to rethink their impact and pitch new ideas at yearly retreats.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
The midsize companies category of Best Workplaces for Innovators honors companies and organizations with 100 to 999 employees that have outpaced their cohort in fostering cultures of innovation.
Arkadium, New York
The online game company Arkadium not only invests in the professional development of its employees, but it also offers opportunities for creators worldwide through its Arkadium for Developers program.
Barbarian, New York
By creating customizable best practices and acquiring companies that enhance the client experience, the creative agency increased revenue 65% between 2023 and 2024.
GlossGenius, New York
An idea that emerged from a company hackathon yielded a new goal-setting and analytics feature, which has helped beauty and wellness clients who use the business management platform to increase revenue by an average of 51%.
Hover, San Francisco
Hover employees bring tech solutions to the construction world, such as Hover Instant Design, a tool that started at a company hackathon and now helps homeowners visualize their renovation projects.
Notable, San Mateo, CA
To help reduce burnout in healthcare, Notable developed Flow Builder, an interface to create AI agents for employees to avoid repetitive tasks and focus on patients.
Octus, New York
Generous professional development stipends give employees the tools they need to imagine the next shifts at the fast-growing financial insights company.
Pipedrive, New York
With inclusive options for taking PTO, such as leave for new pet parents and those going through breakups, the sales tech company fosters a sense of belonging that that helps power innovation.
Raft, McLean, VA
The defense tech company reinvests up to 15% of annual revenue into research and development.
Step Up for Students, Jacksonville, FL
A cross-functional team at the educational technology nonprofit developed MyScholarShop, a first-of-its-kind platform allowing families to shop directly from preapproved vendors using their scholarship funds.
Tailscale, Toronto
The remote-friendly software company promotes flexible office hours and hybrid work policies, focusing more on output than rigid work schedules.
Zest AI, Burbank, CA
Prioritizing both personal and professional growth, Zest AI provides its employees with a $1,000 annual education stipend, frequent workshops, and spaces to share experiences and spark collaborations.
This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
Fast Companys 11th annual Innovation Festival takes over New York City this September 1518. Though every year introduces new offerings to the Innovation Festival, were also bringing back an attendee favorite: Fast Tracks.
Fast Tracks are our immersive, experience-based sessions that are hosted in the offices and spaces of New York Citys most innovative companies. Think of them as field trips for adults.
From Pickleball at Life Time, to augmented and virtual reality demos at CBS Stations, to a coffee tasting and tour with 787 Coffee, here are a few Fast Tracks you dont want to miss this year:
Brewing Coffee and Creativity: A Shot of Storytelling
Fast Track hosted by 787 Coffee
[Photo: 787 Coffee]
Join the team at Puerto Rican coffee company 787 for an in-depth exploration of how your morning cup of joe is transformed from bean to brew. From planting coffee seeds, to roasting a batch of beans, to making your own beverage, youll walk away with a deeper understanding of the life cycle of coffee and the stories it can be used to telland how that notion applies to your industry.
Peak Performance: From Mindset to Match Point
Fast Track hosted by Life Time
[Photo: Life Time]
Join Life Time at Penn 1 for an energizing Fast Track experience blending sport and self-optimization. Come ready to listen and play in this interactive session starting with a motivating discussion with Life Time senior vice president Jessie Syfko and Life Time vice president and founder of HPLT Brian Mazza, on how to fuel peak potential through discipline, mindset, and movement. Then grab a paddle (Life Times got em for you) and hit the court for hands-on pickleball instruction and/or straight up play with Life Times elite pros. Come in your workout gear and change after. With full dressing rooms on-site, youll be ready to power into the rest of your Innovation Festival day.
From Demos to Deals: How Building an AI Startup in NYC Gets You Closer to Your Customer
Fast Track hosted by The Refinery
[Photo: The Refinery]
As the second-largest startup hub in the world, New York City gives founders a unique edge: faster paths to revenue by building alongside the customers and industry heavyweights who can propel their growth. Join Tech:NYC president and CEO Julie Samuels for a conversation with leading AI entrepreneurs on how the citys density, diversity, and access to decision-makers turn ideas into partnerships and prototypes into revenue. Following the discussion, Fast Track attendees are invited to network with panelists and fellow guests, enjoy light bites, and take in the waterfront views.
How Oscar Mayer Won the Race to Cultural Relevance and Ignited a New Summer Tradition
Fast Track hosted by Johannes Leonardo
[Photo: Johannes Leonardo]
For decades, Oscar Mayer was a household staple that lived on the tip of peoples tonguesquite literally. Everyone could sing an Oscar Mayer jingle (or two), and the brand would spark smiles anywhere the Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles went.
As Oscar Mayers core audience matured and its pop-culture resence waned, the iconic Wienermobiles remained beloved. The challenge was clear: spark new brand conversation during the kickoff to grilling season, leveraging a nearly 100-year-old brand asset. The result: the Wienie 500. What began as a one-page idea in a brainstorm quickly evolved into a campaign that made marketing history and the Kraft Heinz record books. Generating more than 6 billion impressions and securing the No. 2 trending hashtag on X, the Wienie 500 took the world by storm, with fans demanding it become an annual tradition.
Featuring speakers from the Oscar Mayer brand and Johannes Leonardo, this session will give attendees a deep dive into how Oscar Mayer and Johannes Leonardo crafted Americas newest obsession and pastime in a way that sparked smiles and spread love for Oscar Mayer hot dogs across the nation.
The Business of Art and Creating a More Inclusive Space
Fast Track hosted by GPGallery
[Photo: GPGAllery]
As the art market shifts, a new generation of galleries is embracing a leaner, more intentional approachprioritizing authentic relationships over volume and aligning economic success with community investment. Join us for a timely conversation between artist and gallerist Jessica Ann Peavy and acclaimed painter Guy Stanley Philoche, hosted at GPGallery (GPG) and exploring how GPGs hybrid modelmerging the artist-centered mission of a nonprofit with the sustainability of a commercial galleryis creating measurable economic and cultural impact in Harlem. This conversation will unpack how GPG is at the forefront of that movement, offering a real-time case study on how culture and capital can evolve together, from the inside out.
Why We’ve Fallen Out of Love with the Biggest (Beloved) Brands, and How We Fix It
Hosted by Design Bridge & Partners
[Photo: Design Bridge & Partners]
The same brands that once made us fall in love have somehow fallen into fatigue. In a world where private labels deliver both dupes and desire, and digitally native creator brands are dropping every day, what role do the OGsthe traditional, established brands that built whole categories but are now fighting for differentiationplay today?
Using their proprietary, people-driven brand analysis platform, the top strategists at branding agency Design Bridge and Partners will explore how big brands are becoming a cautionary tale by overly relying on the feelings people already know and love them for. Theyll also demonstrate another way forward, revealing how these tried-and-true OGs can reinvigorate for a new eratapping the audience to offer additional insights and suggestions before revealing ideas for a revamped brand or two.
Mobilizing Capital to Tackle Climate and Poverty
Fast Track hosted by Acumen
[Photo: Acumen]
Around the world, the poorest communities are on the front lines of climate change, yet they have the least access to the resources needed to adapt and thrive. In this immersive Fast Track session, founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz will share Acumens pioneering approach to deploying the right mix of capital to solve the toughest problems at the intersection of climate and poverty, from assembling a $250 million capital stack to bring clean energy to the hardest-to-reach people living without electricity to raising $300 million for agricultural adaptation for smallholder farmersone of the largest such commitments in the world. Attendees will get to play investor and assess investment opportunities through Acumens framework of poverty focus and business viability. This Fast Track will explore what it takes to build systems rooted in dignity and challenge you to rethink investment as a tool for moral as well as economic transformation.
Reworking the Workplace with Ryan Anderson and MillerKnoll
Fast Track hosted by MillerKnoll
[Photo: MillerKnoll]
Join Ryan Anderson, VP of Global Research and Planning at MillerKnoll, for a new look at todays workplace. Ryan and the MillerKnoll team are known for rethinking how workspaces can best support people at every stage of their careers. Hell share insights on how the physical environment can be thoughtfully designed to reduce loneliness and social isolation, while enabling the relationship-based work thats essential for everyone to create meaningful interactions, from those just starting their careers to those preparing for their final career moves.
Guests will have the opportunity to tour MillerKnolls New York showroom (which opened just a year ago), where these ideas come to life. Discover how residential and hospitality-inspired design is making offices feel less institutional, how individual workspaces are evolving to support both focus and social connection, and why thoughtful workplace design is more essential than ever in an era of rising life pressures. Light bites and drinks will follow the session.
Life on the Edge: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Resilience
Fast Track hosted by Edge of Earth
[Photo: Edge of Earth]
For three years, the Edges of Earth team has lived and worked in some of the most remote and rapidly changing ecosystems on the planetabove and below the waterline. From disappearing kelp forests to off-grid coastlines and deep jungle research stations, this global expedition set out to document collapse, but more so, to understand resilience.
What they uncovered is called the edge effecta phenomenon where progress takes root in the margins, led by the people and systems that mainstream climate narratives often overlook.
This session features a screening of their short-form documentary, followed by a conversation and Q&A with expedition lead Andi Cross and special guests whove been part of this journeyfrom subsistence fishers and coral scientists to forest guardians and underwater engineers. Expect raw footage, grounded insights, and a reframing of what it means to make change in a world that often feels too big to fix.
Reimagining Local News: How CBS Stations Uses AR/VR to Tell the Story Within the Story
Fast Track hosted by CBS Stations
[Photo: CBS Stations]
Step inside the future of broadcast journalism with CBS New York, where innovation meets impact. In an era when local news is more vital than ever, CBS Stations is leading the charge in transforming how stories are toldleveraging cutting-edge augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology to bring viewers deeper into the why behind the weather, elections, and major breaking news. This immersive session offers a behind-the-scenes look at how CBS New York is redefining the traditional newscast. Attendees will meet the journalists and technologists driving this evolution, explore interactive demonstrations of AR/VR storytelling, and tour the legendary CBS Broadcast Center. From dynamic weather visualizations to real-time election data rendered in 3D, discover how CBS is making news more engaging, informative, and future-ready.
How Designing for Queer Audiences Fuels Unique Innovation
Fast Track hosted by Local Projects
[Photo: Local Projects]
Amid growing political and cultural headwinds, LGBTQ+ communities continue to shape culture through bold self-expression, mutual care, and creative resistance. Designing for queer audiences today isnt just about inclusionits about unlocking new ways of thinking, building, and belonging.
Join Local Projects, the Fast Company award-winning experience designer of the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, for a short tour of the exhibition with the founders. Following the tour, visitors will hear from a panel of LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs at the forefront of inclusive design, curated and moderated by communications agency Camron. Panelists will share personal stories and lessons learned from buildng forand withinqueer communities.
In an era of quiet, subtle brand refreshes, Trump is embracing a full-on rebrand with an executive order that seeks to rename the single largest U.S. government agency.
Trump’s 200th executive order of his second term, signed September 5, gives the Department of Defense the “secondary title” of “Department of War,” an old name for the U.S. military’s government agency before the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force were consolidated and renamed the Department of Defense in 1949.
“We’re going Department of War,” Trump said. “I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”
But like getting people to call Twitter “X or use the phrase “Gulf of America,” Trump could find his attempt at renaming the Defense Department easier said than done. You think changing a logo is hard? Try changing an entire brand name for one of the biggest U.S. employers.
“Changing a name doesnt change how people feel about you overnight,” brand name expert and Eat My Words founder Alexandra Watkins says.
It’s one thing to change a logo. It’s another to change a name. Trump can’t rename a department on his own without Congress, hence his executive order giving “Department of War” as a secondary name. Still, he’ll face hurdles to implementation that any brand would expect to encounter to undergo a name change.
“Big organizations don’t, or shouldn’t, take the decision to rebrand lightly,” Ben Weis, a strategy director at the naming and writing studio A Hundred Monkeys, tells Fast Company. “The bigger the organization and the more widespread the name, the bigger the lift and the higher the risk for blowback and confusion.”
For the Department of Defense (DOD), with its nearly 3 million military and civilian employees, the risk for blowback and confusion is uncommonly high. Pentagon officials are already fuming over the costs and work that could come with a branding change for an organization that has more than 700,000 facilities across every state and in 40 countries, according to Politico.
Not the first rebrand
The DOD was briefly called the National Military Establishment, but the name had the unfortunately aggressive acronym NME, which sounds like “enemy,” and it was changed less than two years later. Trump’s impetus for changing the name now is less pressing.
The DOD isn’t a company, so it doesn’t have to play by the same rules as a corporate rebrand, but Scott Milano, founder of the brand naming agency Tanj, says it fits into one of the buckets he often sees with renaming efforts.
“Normally, when businesses try to rebrand, there’s either a problem, like some sort of brand-specific problem, or in the case of naming . . . there’s a trademark issue, like you can’t use it moving forward,” he says. “Obviously that’s not the case with the Department of Defense.”
The more relevant way to frame it, he says, is when businesses outgrow their name and want to signal something new to the market, as he sees Trump doing with the change from “Defense” to “War.”
“It’s intentionally intimidating and it’s in your face, and I assume that was on purpose,” he says.
But being obvious isn’t always seen as a virtue when it comes to picking a brand name. In fact, experts say, it can undermine the message the organization is trying to send.
“Honest people don’t tell you that they are honest, cool people don’t talk about how cool they are, and truly strong people don’t puff their chests outthe world knows this,” Igor Naming Agency cofounder Steve Manning says. “It’s a reaction to feeling we are being seen as militarily impotent. Since this rebranding is nothing more than a surface treatment, it will be ineffective for the three years it will be in place.”
You think you know Patagonia, the apparel brand beloved by crunchy hikers and finance bros alike. But the company is more than half a century old, and it has taken many unconventional turns to become an icon of sustainable business.
[Cover Image: Simon & Schuster]
A new book digs into this history, offering lots of untold moments about the company that even die-hard Patagonia fans may not know. In Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away, author David Gelles provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Patagonia was built. Through in-depth interviews with Chouinard, we learn about the many conflicting pressures the Patagonia founder faced as he tried to create an apparel brand that does more good than harm in the world.
Here are three surprising things that happened along that journey.
Patagonia Once Partnered with the Pentagon
In the 1970s, the U.S. military was one of Patagonia’s biggest fans. It began with climbing gear. Chouinard, an avid rock climber, first came up with the idea of starting his company because he wanted to make better climbing gear. He couldn’t find metal spikes that he liked for wall climbing, or ice axes for ice climbing, so he developed them himself.
When the military got wind of these functional climbing tools, they began buying them for soldiers who would need to scale walls during military missions. In the decades that followed, Patagonia introduced innovative new fabrics that were moisture wicking and thermoregulating. By the 1980s, the military was buying off-the-shelf Patagonia base layers and fleeces for enlisted personnel working in cold climates.
“The [A]rmy’s 3rd Infantry Division was soon handing out full kits of Patagonia off-the-shelf long underwear and dark blue pile suits to its long-range surveillance teams to ward off the cold,” Gelles writes. Then, Patagonia was enlisted to create a custom cold-weather layering system for soldiers.
Today a close partnership between Patagonia and the U.S. military seems odd: Patagonia is associated with hippies and environmentalists, and yet the gear was being used to train soldiers for combat. And indeed, over the years, the brand’s antiwar employees and fans often criticized Patagonia for this collaboration. But Chouinard wasn’t bothered by the complaints, Gelles says, partly because he was a veteran of the Korean War and understood how hard life was for soldiers. In the end, Chouinard argued that Patagonia wasn’t making weapons or ammunition. “Bras don’t kill people,” Chouinard told Gelles. “People kill people.”
Patgonia and Walmart Were Once Unlikely Bedfellows
In 2005, Walmart invited Chouinard to speak to its top executives at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Rob Walton, Walmart’s then CEO, had been connected with a sustainability expert who had worked closely with Patagonia, and he was intrigued by how Walmart could potentially be a force for good.
Chouinard, in turn, was intrigued by the invitation: He believed that if he could convince a company of Walmart’s scale to improve its practices, this could create enormous impact. Chouinard and his wife, Malinda, traveled to Arkansas from their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a private jet sent by Walmart.
In the book, Gelles paints a picture of what happened when Chouinard took the stage wearing a ratty wool jacket with leather elbow patches. He didnt mince words. He accused Walmart of not using its influence for good. In a striking example, Chouinard pulled out an enormous pair of jeans, designed for a morbidly obese person, with billows of fabric. According to Gelles, Chouinard said, “I have to hand it to you. How do you sell something like this for $8.99? The fabric alone must cost that much!”
Despite the confrontational nature of Chouinards talk, Walmart executives were eager to learn more. So they started making regular visits to Patagonia HQ to learn what they could. The two companies collaborated to create the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to develop a common set of standards called the Higg Index for fashion brands to sign on to. But after the index launched, the partnership petered out. Chouinard believed Walmart execs were willing to do a few easy things to improve the companys supply chain, but not what was required to actually clean up the entirety of that supply chain.
Patagonia accidentally sickened its Boston store employees
In the late 1980s, Patagonia opened a store in Boston. But after a few days in operation, Gelles writes, workers began complaining of headachesand the symptoms didn’t go away. So Patagonia brought in an expert to see what was going on.
The determination was that the companys new clothes were covered in formaldehyde. As workers unboxed the merchandise, they were breathing in toxic fumes. (Formaldehyde is a carcinogen.) The expert recommended a better HVAC system as a solution. Instead, Chouinard wanted to rid his product of toxic chemical treatments.
Over a long process aimed at getting rid of toxins that harm both people and the planet throughout the supply chain, Patagonia eventually landed on cotton farms that often use large amounts of pesticides. Cancer rates in regions where cotton is grown were 10 times higher than normal. So Chouinard asked his team to explore sourcing organic cotton. By the mid-1990s, Patagonia was among the first apparel brands to use organic cotton.
By the time Walmart’s executives partnered with Patagonia in the early 2000s, they too became interested in organic cotton, and began placing large orders with farmers. Some Patagonia employees worried that the relationship would harm the formers business, since organic cotton was part of what differentiated Patagonia from Walmart and other competitors. But over time, Patagonia grew into its leadership role in the apparel industry and realized that when other brands followed its lead, it was a win for all.
