Florida’s plan to drop school vaccine mandates likely won’t take effect for 90 days and would include only chickenpox and a few other illnesses unless lawmakers decide to extend it to other diseases, like polio and measles, the health department said Sunday.The department responded to a request for details, four days after Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, said the state would become the first to make vaccinations voluntary and let families decide whether to inoculate their children.It’s a retreat from decades of public policy and research that has shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among children. Despite that evidence, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed deep skepticism about vaccines.
Florida’s plan would lift mandates on school vaccines for hepatitis B, chickenpox, Hib influenza and pneumococcal diseases, such as meningitis, the health department said.“The Department initiated the rule change on September 3, 2025, and anticipates the rule change will not be effective for approximately 90 days,” the state told the Associated Press in an email. The public school year in Florida started in August.All other vaccinations required under Florida law to attend school “remain in place, unless updated through legislation,” including vaccines for measles, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, mumps, and tetanus, the department said.Lawmakers don’t meet again until January 2026, although committee meetings begin in October.Ladapo, appearing Sunday on CNN, repeated his message of free choice for childhood vaccines.“If you want them, God bless, you can have as many as you want,” he said. “And if you don’t want them, parents should have the ability and the power to decide what goes into their children’s bodies. It’s that simple.”Florida currently has a religious exemption for vaccine requirements. Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives globally over the past 50 years, the World Health Organization reported in 2024. The majority of those were infants and children.Dr. Rana Alissa, chair of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said making vaccines voluntary puts students and school staff at risk.This is the worst year for measles in the U.S. in more than three decades, with more than 1,400 cases confirmed nationwide, most of them in Texas, and three deaths.Whooping cough has killed at least two babies in Louisiana and a 5-year-old in Washington state since winter, as it too spreads rapidly. There have been more than 19,000 cases as of August 23, nearly 2,000 more than this time last year, according to preliminary CDC data.
Ed White, Associated Press
Corals live in oceans around the worldin shallow, warm waters and deep, cool waters, clinging to seamounts or sitting on continental shelves. They also grow in the home aquariums of countless hobbyistsand if youre someone who cultivates corals in your spare time, you can contribute to research to help save the oceans coral reefs.
Rising ocean temperatures and increasing acidification are threatening coral reefs. Between 2009 and 2018, the worlds reefs lost 14% of their corals. By 2025, 84% of the oceans reefs have been affected by bleaching, meaning theyve been so stressed by the changes to their environments that theyve expelled all the algae living inside them, turning them white. As climate change worsens, coral loss is expected to speed up. Corals are also threatened by activities like fishing and tourism.
Corals are crucial to ocean ecosystems; theyre home to all sorts of marine life, provide coastal protection from storms, and are even the basis of millions of peoples livelihoods. Scientists have long been working to save coral reefs, trying to figure out how to help them survive higher temperatures and to bring back their healthy microbiome. (All the bacteria that live in corals can affect how the organisms respond to heat or other environmental changes.)
Home aquarists can now be a part of this effort too, through a community science effort called Project ReefLink. A partnership between Seed Health, a microbial sciences company, and the Two Frontiers Project (2FP), a nonprofit that focuses on microbial research, Project ReefLink aims to identify what sorts of organisms protect corals, and what pathogens may harm them.
From home aquarium to the oceans’ coral reefs
Corals growing in a home aquarium, or even big aquariums like Monterey Bay, are in a closed ecosystem. That essentially makes them part of a giant, human-driven experiment thats already been going on for years, says Braden Tierney, a microbial scientist and executive director of 2FP
All these aquarists are trying slightly different conditions. They’re putting different things in the water. They are experiencing different disease outbreaks. Some corals are dying. Some corals are living, he says. They have all these different species all over the place, and so we’re really asking to plug into that network.
To get involved, an aquarist can visit the Project Reeflink website, where they can sign up to get a sampling kit. Then, they need to take pictures of their set up, documenting what species of corals they have, and send samples of some of their corals over to 2FP researchers.
From there, researchers will process the samples for DNA sequencing, and then look at the corals genome, as well as all the bacteria and viruses that live inside it. And dont worry if your corals arent the healthiestthe scientists want a sample of any diseased corals too.
Theres still so much to be learned about what actually causes coral disease, and this is an opportunity to get these samples back and say, here’s what’s causing the disease based on DNA sequencing, and ‘here’s what the healthy version of this species looks like, Tierney says.
Samples sent to 2FP will go into the nonprofits microbial culture bank, an open-source database that could eventually be used to find ways to help corals withstand bleaching or other climate threats. We’re going to be able to explore how the microbiome plays a role in sustaining your coral’s health and also how it can be used to treat coral disease, Tierney said.
And as we get more data, we can also say, oh, look, these species seem to really like these conditions that these aquarists are using in their tanks, whereas these other species don’t. And that can translate directly to understanding what causes disease in corals in the oceans,” he said.
[Image: Coral Morphologic]
The importance of microbiomes
Seed Health sells pro- and prebiotics for human microbiomes, and has conducted community science efforts for that focus before. Its #GiveAShitForScience project involved people sending pictures of their poop to help understand gut health.
But the company also has an environmental research division called SeedLabs that looks at microbes in all sorts of ecosystems, with the aim to address the challenges of climate change. The more you understand about microbiomes and systems biology, the more you start to understand the interconnectivity of all life on Earth, says Ara Katz, CEO and cofounder of Seed Health.
Microbiomesthe trillions of microorganisms that live in our bodies or on plants or even in environments themselvesare crucial to the health of their hosts. Seed Health has studied if probiotics could help honey bees, how bacteria could turn plastic into new material, and the ways microbes can enhance carbon sequestration.
Seed Health previously partnered with 2FP on its CO2 research, for which they studied microbes in extreme conditions. That work also identified some microbes that could help corals become resilient to ocean acidification, particularly in especially hot or acidic waters where some corals do thrive.
Project ReefLink takes this work further by tapping into community scientists. That doesnt only provide 2FP with diverse samples, it also helps connect people to science in general. Science has really been mischaracterized in recent years, and I think that there is probably the least engagement there’s almost ever been, Katz says. A community science project, though, spurs public engagement.
For an issue like coral bleaching or climate change in general, the issue can feel so overwhelming, or too complex to tackle. This project changes that, Tierney says. If you have an aquarium . . . you can actually do something. You can take a few minutes to help, he says. It gives people a chance to fight.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
In recent weeks, Ive been recommending and forwarding to friends and associates three smart stories that crossed my desk. Each ostensibly offers insightful or timely snapshots of modern American business. But upon deeper reflection, these very different pieces also shine a light on the state of middle-class U.S. workers and consumers, whose struggles may only intensify.
Together, these storiesalong with a number of economic indicators like stubborn inflation and slipping consumer sentimentoffer CEOs and business leaders a warning about the risks of capitalism that works for the few and not the many.
Mind the gap
Daniel Currells guest essay in The New York Times shows how Walt Disney World Resort has evolved from an accessible all-American vacation to a luxury experience targeting high-net-worth households. Wealthy visitors can pay for premium passes that let them bypass lines; one tech executive quoted in the article experienced 16 attractions in seven hours. Meanwhile, Scarlett Cressel, a bus driver who could not afford to pay for special ride reservations and other perks, managed nine attractions over 14 hours. Adding to her frustration, a mobility scooter she rented to help her navigate the park broke down. Its a powerful metaphor for the middle class quite literally being left behind.
Disney is hardly alone in pursuing rich customers. Currell, a management consultant, says hes worked with dozens of companies that are abandoning the mass market. Many of our biggest private institutions are now focused on selling the privileged a markedly better experience, leaving everyone else to either give upor fight to keep up, he writes.
Roger Lowensteins Wall Street Journal essay, Howand WhyU.S. Capitalism Is Unlike Any Other, helps us understand how we got here. The work is a sweeping review of the forces that shaped an economic system (bolstered by legislation that protects the sanctity of contracts and created public schools to educate workers) that focused on opportunity, individualism, and risk-taking. Those values led to the innovation and entrepreneurship that have long made America the envy of the world. And yet: Inequality 2.0 is alive and well, he writes. American capitalism remains fiercely competitive, remarkably productive, resilient in the face of a thousand doomsayersand the author of a persistent wealth gap.
Also in the Journal, Theo Francis offers an unsettling assessment of the disconnect between markets and the health of the middle class. He explains how the recent strong earnings seasonbuoyed by job cuts and higher pricesmay actually be hurting consumers, on whom the U.S. economy relies to keep spending. The gains enjoyed by companies and their investors arent softening the unease consumers and employees feeland might be obscuring signals that ordinary Americans are putting their anxiety into action, Francis writes.
And anxiety is likely to only increase with the deployment of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) solutions that are already replacing entry-level work.
Corporate support for the middle class
However, companies have an opportunity to strengthen rather than hollow out the middle class. They can invest in workforce development to train employees for jobs of the future and, like a previous generation of capitalists, champion policies that support this cohort and help them increase their spending power. Lowensteins article reminds us that the abolition of debtors’ prisons and the creation of forgiving bankruptcy laws essentially helped codify opportunity for Americans.
If companies dont move to address inequality by supporting compassionate and commonsense policies that can uplift Americans, they may find themselves dealing with more extreme correctives. Lowenstein writes that the response to the robber barons of the Gilded Age was antitrust prosecutions, reformist legislation, the Great War, and the Great Depression. He quips: Cures for inequality are sometimes worse than the affliction.
Is your company addressing income disparities?
Readers, do you feel companies have a role to play in addressing income disparities, and if so, what can business leaders do? Send your examples to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll feature some of the most compelling in a future newsletter.
Read more: Capitalism 2.0
Capitalism needs a rebrand to win over Gen Z
Darren Walker on how to save capitalism from itself
Is the middle class okay?
Were entering an era of computing that feels less and less human-centered. Paradoxically, tech companies remain fixated on mining every detail of our personal data. The familiar, task-specific interfaces we once used are being pushed aside, replaced by generative AI and LLM-driven chatbots that upend how we interact with software.
Instead of opening a dedicated app for writing, research, coding, or even emotional support, were funneled into a single chatbot window. OpenAI promises to, Let AI do the work for youdesigned to handle any task, while Anthropic touts Claude as a fantasy-fulfillment engine with the tagline “If you can dream it, Claude can help you do it.”
The pitch is clear: These tools are promoted as a one-stop shop for everything.
The shrinking interface
Search engines have trained us to expect answers from a single field. Now chatbots take this a step further: the text box has swallowed other applications, even as its output often requires endless refinement and fact-checking through a text box. And text isnt the endgame. Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant primed us to learn hands-free interaction, which is eventually coming to replace that text box. Tech companies are chasing a future where speech replaces typing, and the interface nearly disappears. The real prize isnt usability for us, but the value gained from capturing what we say and how we say it, by, and for, them.
This change marks a sharp departure from the last 45 years of interface design. Apple, inspired by Xerox PARC, championed user-centered design: graphical icons, so-called “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) editors, intuitive metaphors that empowered people to create and communicate. For decades, this approach made computing accessible. But with the rise of big data, priorities shifted, as people generated ever-larger archives of digital traces (emails, documents, photos, browsing histories), and were persuaded to store these in clouds for easy retrieval. Tech companies soon realized that, taken together, this data formed a vast global knowledge corpus that could be mined and monetized.
The rise of surveillance-driven business models pushed firms toward increasingly quantitative forms of user profiling. The focus shifted from designing tools to help us get work done to extracting patterns that served corporate goals. We ceased to be seen as people with needs and instead became raw material for metrics, models, and market dominance.
As big data informed the models for AI and LLMs, this shift accelerated. These systems now operate on top of what we do, but without the capacity to understand why we do it. Stripped of the context discovered through qualitative research, quantitative analysis can easily misinterpret intent. Chatbots produce inconsistent answers depending on the prompt, and we must constantly refine queries just to get something useful. For those who mistake these tools as truth machines, the risks are profound: even fatal, as in documented cases where chatbots coached people to commit self-harm.
This lack of contextual, qualitative research isnt new. Appleoften held up as the gold standard for user-centered designinitially resisted user research. Early on, Steve Jobs insisted that people dont know what they want until you give it to them. Pieces of this bias eventually became imbued in Apples culture, where it has persisted in various ways over the years, spreading from Apple through the rest of Silicon Valley and beyond as former employees changed jobs and/or founded new companies. Media and business school case studies perpetuated this myth and as a result, there is a growing tech industry, a culture of quantitative-data-first product design, reinforced by a bias that big data mining is the only measurement for understanding people. Its not.
This quantitative big data collection movement comes with another syphoning of our free labor and time: the survey. Were also being used to nudge companies algorithms via the endless surveys sent to us after every engagement, with nagging businesses demanding our feedback on the agents, algorithms, services, and products that theyve already tracked us engaging withall to collect even more data about us. Its exhausting.
Scaling at our expense
Companies justify this approach as a way to scale an interface (for them). But scaling often means flattening differences among users and does not work well for cultural differences in a global context. The all-in-one chatbot promises universality yet introduces new frictions: translation errors when models are trained on mismatched languages, hallucinations from incomplete training sets, and endless cycles of prompt refinement. Instead of simplifying, these systems demand more labor from users in the form of prompt refinement.
The effect is recursive. We feed chatbots queries, they pass these queries to LLMs that pattern match words to generate answersright or wrongthat then circulate back into search engines, which are themselves increasingly infused with LLM output (making verification a nightmare). Meanwhile, our conversations with chatbots are now being mined to train future models.
The user interfaces on our devices have become less like tools and more like receptacles for collection. Where we once used a tool to get our work done, we now train tools to do the work so that we can, in turn, finish ours. This dynamic exploits our energy and labor, propping up systems that may one day replace us (if they haven’t already).
Todays design trajectory aims to erase the interface altogether, replacing it with conversation under surveillancemechanized eavesdropping dressed up as dialogue. Behind the scenes, algorithms sift and stitch together fragments of training data (not always accurate, not always complete) to generate songs, code, images, or advice pirated from humanity’s corpus built over lifetimes. Sometimes that LLM advice filtered through a chatbot extends into domains as risky as psychological counseling or nuclear operations, putting us in harms way and potentially at great risk. At scale, this is terrifying.
It isnt fair to say that user centered design is goneyet. Its still here, but the target users have changed. We used to be the users centered by companies; now the LLMs are their focus. And like it or not, our role now is to enable that success.
There is a troubling trend spreading across some of todays most recognizable tech companies. Spotify, Shopify, Dropbox, and others are cutting training programs and significantly reducing entry-level hiring. At first glance, the decision might seem sensible: reduce costs, restructure teams, and prepare for a future driven by AI. In reality, it is a short-term move that will cause long-term damage.
The numbers tell the story. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has climbed to 5.8%, higher than the national average and the worst in a decade outside the pandemic. More than 40% of graduates are underemployed, working in roles that do not require a college degree. Entry-level postings in the United States have fallen by more than 40% since mid-2022. Even graduates in traditionally safe majors such as computer science or engineering are struggling to find jobs that match their training.
Young professionals are not just looking for a paycheck. They want a chance to learn, to join a program, and to work with a team that believes in their potential. When companies dismantle these programs, they are not simply shrinking headcount. They are cutting off the future of their own talent pipeline.
AI is advancing rapidly, but despite the hype, it cannot replace human intuition, creativity, and judgment. These are the qualities that truly differentiate companies. What we need now are people who can work alongside AI: analysts who know how to use machine learning to make smarter decisions, design better products, and deliver more personalized customer experiences. That kind of talent is not built overnight. It is developed through years of deliberate investment.
The path forward is clear. We need a new model for workforce development, one that embraces what I call Human Digital Resourceshumans and AI working side by side, each playing to their strengths. Humans bring judgment, creativity, and empathy. AI brings speed, scale, and pattern recognition. Companies that design roles and training with this collaboration in mind will outperform those that treat AI as a replacement strategy.
The Danger of Short-Term Thinking
The labor market for new graduates is already challenging. Opportunities are shrinking. Unemployment among recent grads is high, and even industries once seen as secure are slowing their hiring.
Cutting analyst or associate programs may satisfy investors for a quarter, but it leaves companies with a weakened leadership bench for years to come. These programs have always been launchpads for promising talent. They build business acumen, sharpen technical skills, and embed cultural knowledge that cannot be hired overnight.
One financial services firm I know kept its analyst program during a period of layoffs. Today, it has a deep bench of AI-literate, future-ready leaders. Competitors that cut their programs are now scrambling to fill those same roles, paying more to hire externally and facing longer onboarding timelines.
The downside is more than a temporary talent gap. It is the slow erosion of institutional knowledge, innovation capacity, and cultural continuity. These are elements that cannot be replaced by technology or by hiring quickly from the outside.
Human Plus AI Is the Real Advantage
AI is changing the game, but it is not replacing the players. It can process vast amounts of data in seconds, yet it cannot create culture, uphold values, or build trust within teams. Think of it as an open-book test. Without skilled humans who know how to use the book, it is useless.
Even AIs own development proves the point. ChatGPT was trained by thousands of human reviewers, most of them college-educated, who provided judgment, context, and feedback to improve the tool. AI is powerful, but it still depends on human expertise to evolve.
Forward-looking companies are already building Human Digital Resources. They are hiring and training employees to integrate AI into their daily work. At one firm, Gen Z analysts were given early access to AI tools. Within months, they became the companys internal AI experts, streamlining processes, improving efficiency, and teaching senior staff how to use the technology effectively.
A New Shape for Organizations
For most of the 20th century, companies were shaped like pyramids, with a large base of junior employees feeding into progressively smaller layers of management. More recently, some consultants have suggested a diamond model, with a narrower base, a wider middle, and a slim top.
The future will likely be something else entirely: a fluid blend of consulting-style apprenticeships, the flexibility of the gig economy, and AI-enabled work. Professionals will contribute to multiple projects across different companies, with AI acting as a force multiplier.
This model rewards adaptable, multiskilled people who can work across ecosystems. Gen Z is well positioned to thrive in this environment. They are digital natives who grew up with technology and are already experimenting with AI tools. Instead of sidelining them, companies should tap into their curiosity and comfort with technology, reduce administrative work, and give them meaningful problems to solve earlier in their careers.
One leading financial institution recently offered an example of getting this right. It has invested in both culture and technology, treating AI as a tool for empowerment rather than a threat. This approach strengthens talent pipelines while others risk letting theirs dry up.
AI Changes Work, It Does Not Remove It
History offers perspective. The industrial revolution created new kinds of skilled labor. The calculator replaced manual math, yet we still teach math, so people know how to use calculators effectively. The internet reshaped communications without eliminating the need for communicators.
AI will follow the same pattern. It will redefine roles, raise the bar for human skills, and amplify those who are trained to use it well. Technology may become the baseline, but people will continue to create value in ways that are unique and hard to replicate. A competitor can match your tools, but they cannot match your culture, your innovation, your trust, or your ability to execute through people.
Companies that continue hiring and training early-career professionals will be better positioned for this transition. They will have AI-literate teams with deep knowledge of the business. Those that do not will face leadership gaps they cannot fill quickly or cheaply.
Competitive advantage
Learning compounds over time and so does neglect. I have seen companies that invested in analyst programs years ago now benefiting from leaders who came up through the ranks. Those early investments paid off in loyalty, expertise, and competitive advantage.
Cutting these programs today is like removing the foundation from a building to save on maintenance. It might hold for a while, but eventually it will collapse
The future of work is not less human. It is more human. It is more mentorship, more learning, and more collaboration between people and machines. Companies that embrace Human Digital Resources now will lead the next decade. Those that do not will be left wishing they had thought furher ahead
The Fast Company Innovation Festival returns to New York City this September 1518.
Hosted at Convene Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan, attendees can expect four days packed with informative panels, interactive networking sessions, engaging workshops, signature Fast Tracks that offer a behind-the-scenes look at the citys most cutting-edge companies, and intimate dinners at the city’s buzziest restaurants.
It’s a lot to take in. So we’ve compiled the top 11 reasons you should attend the 11th annual Innovation Festival.
1. Candid conversations with leaders
Headliners hitting the Innovation Festival stage this year include:
Jimmy Fallon, Executive Producer and Host, On Brand With Jimmy Fallon; Host, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Bozoma Saint John, Chief Marketing Officer and Mentor, On Brand With Jimmy Fallon
Brené Brown, Research Professor, The University of Texas at Austin; Author, Strong Ground
Tracee Ellis Ross, Host, Solo Traveling With Tracee Ellis Ross; Founder and CEO, Pattern Beauty
Damian Kulash, Lead Singer, OK Go
Jonathan Haidt, Author, TheAnxious Generation
Norma Kamali, President and CEO, Norma Kamali
Justin McLeod, Founder and CEO, Hinge
Myechia MinterJordan, CEO, AARP
Shay Mitchell, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Béis Travel
Brian Niccol, Chairman and CEO, Starbucks Coffee Company
Ego Nwodim, Actress, Comedian, and SNL Cast Member
Artemis Patrick, President and CEO, Sephora North America
Joy Reid, Journalist, Political Analyst, Best-selling Author
Hailee Steinfeld, Cofounder, Angel Margarita
Luis von Ahn, Cofounder and CEO, Duolingo
2. Field trips for adults
Our signature Fast Tracks offer attendees an behind-the-scenes look inside some of New York City’s most innovative companies. There are over 50 Fast Tracks this yearhere’s just a glimpse:
A brownie baking class with Tonys Chocolonely
Playing Pickleball at Life Time
An office tour and pop-a-shot tournament with TNT
An intimate gallery walkthrough highlighting Harlems economic and cultural impact on the arts at GPGallery
A look at the art of hiring and understanding when to kill a product with Ramp executives.
3. Food for thought
Taste of Innovation is a unique dining experience showcasing powerhouse chefs and restaurant executivesnot to mention some of the best food in the city. At each Taste of Innovation experience, youll dine, drink, and mingle with fellow attendees and Fast Companys editorial staff, as well as hear intimate conversations with leaders in the food space. This year’s Taste of Innovation lineup features:
Sofreh Cafe
Metropolis by Marcus Samuelsson
Manhatta
The Bazaar by José Andrés
Naks
4. Workshops to solve work’s biggest problems
Another signature of the Innovation Festival are our workshops. These are sessions that create space for a more hands-on approach to problem solving. Just some workshops this year include:
What Does Your Brand Sound Like?
The Return of Creative Craft
If Your Brand Isnt Awake, Its Dead
Unscrambling the Productivity Paradox
Humans, Machines, and the Art of Teaming
5. New experiential moments
There’ll always be a place for informative panels and one-on-one conversations at the Innovation Festival. But we’re making room for something to really engage your senses and emotions. New this year are our experiential sessions. From using sound to reset your nervous system to reconnecting with play and self-celebration through confetti, these sessions are designed to be highly interactive and deeply personal:
Why Intuition Is the Leadership Advantage AI Cant Replace
The Celebration Lab
Discover and Design Your Personal Sound Care Ritual
6. New breakout sessions
Sometimes 30 minutes isn’t long enough to dig into the topic at hand. Also new this year at the Innovation Festival are breakout sessions which are an extension of our workshops created to give attendees more access to workshop hosts and more time work through their questions and gain deeper insights:
A Deeper Dive into Bettering Your Brain
Networking That Works
Turn a Burning Question into a Bold Next Step
7. Celebrating good times
It wouldn’t be the Innovation Festival without celebratory moments! In addition to our Kickoff Party and Closing Night Party, we’re having exclusive parties for honorees on our recognition lists Innovation by Design and Best Workplaces for Innovators, as well as a dinner for our Impact Council members.
8. Activations and giveaways
Throughout the Innovation Festival Hub are activations including custom bandana embroidery from Teton Ridge and an AI-powered racing simulator powered by IBM. There are also several giveaways at different sessions. On the Innovation Festival schedule page, click the “filter by feature” option and then “giveaway” to make sure you’re in the right place at the right time!
9. Insights on today’s biggest topics
The Innovation Festival is all about exploring the driving forces of business, technology, and creativity. While there’s ample choices in programming, here are some topical sessions worth putting on your radar:
Will AGI Be a Realityand Are We Ready?
From Automation to Autonomy: Navigating the Rise of Agentic AI
On the Front Lines: Inside the ACLUs Fight for Civil Rights
Digital Defense: The Battle for an Open and Secure Internet
How Workforce Inclusion Sparks Innovation
More for Less: Maximizing Social Impact with Minimal Resources
The Changing Face of Aging
10. Networking with your fellow attendees
One of the main attractions of the Innovation Festival is how widely you can expand your network. Year after year, attendees have said this is one of their most valuable takeaways from the event. We have sessions that are specifically catered to networking. However, just hanging out and working in the Innovation Festival Hub is the perfect place to meet someone new.
11. Becoming a better you
The Innovation Festival is a place for you to learn. We pack in a lot during the event, so you can create a robust agenda that’s tailored to your interests, whether that’s in leadership, creativity, branding, technology, or beyond. We hope you take the insights and knowledge you’ll gain over the week and apply it to your work lifeor even your personal life.
Visit our event page to buy your Innovation Festival passes and to stay up-to-date on our session agenda and speaker lineup.And a special thanks to this years Innovation Festival sponsors: IBM, Lilly, NYU Langone Health, Texas A&M University, Delta, Esri, Fetch, GS1 US, Huge, Hyland, Innovate Alabama, Maven AGI, Penske, PepsiCo, Project Management Institute, SAP, Synchrony, Teton Ridge, Uber for Business, Virginia, The Weather Company, Webtoon, Wellhub, and Williams.
More than a decade ago, the real estate developer Woodbury Corporation took stock of a site in Vineyard, Utah, that had been home to a WW II-era steel mill. Surrounded by mountain views and overlooking Utah Lake, they saw possibility and a blank canvas, so they began studying growth patterns and infrastructure needs in the area. They quickly realized it would be the perfect site for a new developmentand not just a plot of houses. Woodbury bought 700 acres of land and partnered with Flagship Homes to build a city from the ground up.We had the right land in the right location at the exact moment Utah was experiencing unprecedented growth, says Nate Hutchinson, a partner on the project.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]What they didnt have was a name for the new city they were building.So they made a call to Pentagram partner DJ Stout, who was tasked with creating an identity for a city that was still just an idea.There are 23 Pentagram partners, Stout says. And in our storied history, I don’t think anybody’s actually named a U.S. city before.Cities get their names in various ways. Oftentimes, a community is named for its founder, or to highlight a local geographic feature. Modern developments tend to take a more marketing-centric approach. For every unnecessary e deployed to class up a place (think Wolfes Pointe), theres a vague gesture at historical lineage (Views at the Old Mill) or a moniker so watered down that the branding exercise becomes obsolete (Waters Edge).At the outset, Stout says the Woodbury team was clear that they didnt want their project to sound like a gated community. For one thing, the scale of Woodbury’s ambitions was much bigger. The development was conceptualized as a walkable community that could cater to Utah’s rapidly expanding population, which is slated to surge by 58% to 5.2 million by 2060. Some 30% of that is in Utah County, where the former steel mill sits. Woodbury decided its new city would feature complete neighborhoods with multiple types of housing; shopping, dining and entertainment; a range of business, civic and cultural spaces; plazas, parks; transit connectivity; and an overall focus on walkability. [Image: courtesy Pentagram]Were building an entire urban district on the front door of a transit station, along a lakefront, with healthcare, education, retail and residential all integrated from the start, Hutchinson says.The breadth of the vision gave Pentagram a lot to play with. Stout says his team started with research: Given the nearby Wasatch Mountains, which, like Utah, derive their name from the indigenous Ute people, Pentagram explored similar elements before deciding to avoid plumbing the culture for nomenclatures sake. The area also had a significant railroad history, so coupled with the transit plans for the development, Stouts team ideated some names around that; they explored names tied to Mormon settlers and the Mormon population in the area; they probed nature themes tied to Utah Lake, which is the states largest freshwater body.Stout says they wound up with more than 100 potential namesbut then he had a thought. Texas has a Texas City. Colorado has a Colorado City. Theres Kansas City. Oklahoma City. Hell, New York City. Was there really no Utah City?In Pentagrams first call with the developers, Stout says, they had mentioned that they wanted to some day be as well-known as Salt Lake City or Park Cityand, well, when it came to Utah City, I was like, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe nobody has it.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]THE OBVIOUS SOLUTIONAt the pitch meeting, Stout says his team presented around 50 names. When they got to the end of the list, he recalls saying, I think I have your name. And here it is: Its Utah City.He says he received a quizzical, unconvinced reaction from the head of Woodbury. And then I made the case that if you really want to be that well-known of a city, if that’s your ambition in the state of Utah, just like Oklahoma City or Kansas City, you should grab this name. Nobody has it.That initial reaction wasnt entirely isolated. When the name went public online, it took some hits on Reddit and elsewhereand Stout has seen it. But here he cites Pentagram legend and friend Michael Bierut.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]He’s really good at just basically looking at something and saying, This is the obvious solution. A lot of times the best solutions are right there in front of your face, and they’re obvious, Stout says. And I think sometimes creatives or designers in general wouldn’t even look at that name because it seems too obvious; there’s this thinking that we’re being paid to do a fancy logo or to come up with a fancy name. He notes Bieruts work with United Airlines. When the company was on the hunt for a new logo, Bierut suggested they hold on to the Saul Bass original. There’s this kind of lack of ego of that kind of ownership . . . and so I’m not afraid to think about things that just seem obviousbecause that’s the best solution.At the pitch presentation, the team snapped up the Utah City URLs in real time. Ultimately, says Hutchinson, Pentagram helped us distill the projects ambition into something clear.[Image: courtesy Pentagram]VISUALIZING A BRAND (OR NOT)Pentagram usually delivers a comprehensive identity system, but Stout says the Utah City team didnt want that because they still had a long runway to the project being realized. Nevertheless, Stout and his team created a logo. The team pondered the idea: If this really was a city that could end up on a U.S. map, what would stand the test of time and not look like a mere trend blip?Stout says they played with a few ideas that nodded a bit at the vernacular, but eventually seized on the ubiquitous Us found across the state, with the University of Utah being dubbed the U, the Utah Utes, and other cultural touch points. [Image: courtesy Pentagram]For the logo, Stout took a U and modified it into the shape of the state itself.Again, it’s just a simple solution, he says. If they’re going to own the Utah in their name, then they might as well own the state.Given the intended city emphasis, Stout added the typeface Gotham, owing to its roots in one of the most famous cities in the worldand the branding was complete. Until it wasnt. While the mark can still be seen on the Utah City website, a new logo has emerged on its social channelsa “C” somewhat awkwardly nestled within a “U.”[Image: courtesy Pentagram]After years of development, Utah City has just opened the projects first residential building, a 40,000-square-foot market is nearly complete, and the Huntsman Cancer Institute has broken ground on a 20-acre care and research center. According to Hutchinson, the first phase of Utah City is on track to deliver within the next couple of years, featuring additional housing, a promenade, retail village, wellness center, and miles of bike and walking trails.As the project shapes up, the team behind it says the identity will also shift. A representative for Utah City said they have been working with a local team to refine and expand the brand with a new monogram and wordmark, noting, We saw the need to evolve from an East Coast font and view of what Utah is and can be, and moved into claiming our Western roots.And, well, heycities are by nature amorphous, living things. Perhaps branding one is, too.
As social media users continue to spend more time in their direct messages than posting to the main feed, companies are beefing up their features for private chats.
TikTok recently said it will soon offer users the ability to send pictures and voice notes up to a minute long in its direct messages (DMs) and group chats, while Meta announced filters to sort Instagram DMs by categories like “Story replies,” “Unanswered,” “Followers,” and “Verified Users” for professional and personal accounts with more than 100,000 followers.
[Image: Meta]
The intent is to make the DMs more engaging. TikTok’s DMs will soon be more media rich, while Instagram’s could see more engagement from bigger accounts that would otherwise drown in new message notifications. Both updates are part of wider push to reengineer social media apps for the way people use them now, which is more private and less posting.
A 2023 Morning Consult poll found 61% of adults with a social media accounts were more selective about what they posted online, and 28% said they posted less on their preferred platform than the year before. It’s a change Instagram head Adam Mosseri called “a paradigm shift,” in May, and the implication for social media app design is a greater emphasis on improved messaging.
Meta’s X-clone Threads, which launched without DMs in 2023, finally added them in July. Meanwhile, Instagram has made a flurry of improvements to its DMs since 2024, including editing messages, pinned chats, longer voice messages, location sharing, and scheduled messages. Spotify has added DMs, too, just in case you wanted to use yet another closed platform to connect with someone.
Social media might feel far less social than it once did, but it seems a lot of the conversation is simply going on away from public view. As people spend more time chatting one-on-one than posting publicly, social media apps are becoming a lot more like messaging apps, too.
Blank Street started in 2020 as a coffee shop operated out of a single cart in Williamsburg. Just five years later, its a chain with more than 90 global locations thats become almost more well-known for its over-the-top matcha drinks than its actual coffee. Now, its getting a subtle rebrand that makes the whole identity look like an ice-cold glass of green tea latte.
The new branding, crafted by the agency Wolff Olins, includes a new logo symbol inspired by that original coffee cart, new custom fonts, and a greater focus on green. It stays true to the brands quintessential neutral aesthetic while adding a few original touches to be just a bit more distinctive. George Lavender, creative director at Wolff Olins, says that, given the brands massive growth, Blank Street was due for a visual touch-up.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
The company currently operates locations in New York, Boston, D.C., London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and is gearing up to expand into L.A. soon. According to a June profile in the The Wall Street Journal, Blank Streets current valuation is around $500 million, and it earns an estimated annual revenue of $149 million.
A large chunk of that income is thanks to the monumental popularity of Blank Streets matcha creations, which includes flavors like its best-selling strawberry shortcake matcha, blueberry matcha, and cookies-and-cream matcha. Matcha’s popularity has exploded in the U.S. in recent years, with some reports estimating that the beverage’s sales have reached beyond $10 billion over the past 25 years.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Mohammad Rabaa, Blank Streets global creative director, says that matcha now accounts for more than 50% of the business.
It started as a coffee cart in Williamsburg and snowballed, becoming this thing that was much bigger than they ever thought it might become, Lavender says. I think it was a good moment for them to stop, reflect, and try to reestablish who they are.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Refining a brand designed to be neutral
Blank Streets former branding centered around the idea of its identity being almost an empty vessel, Lavender saysa metaphorical blank space that customers could fill with whatever drink they like best. To that end, their logo was an ultrasimple sans-serif wordmark, complimented by a palette of black, white, and fern green.
With Blank Street, you have a company that’s highly creative and expressive in their creations, Lavender says. In order to have a sense of balance to that, their own identity needs to be so neutral, because every seasonal campaign is so wildly different.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
He adds that the existing identity was clearly working, but it was veering into a territory that was almost too neutral. That’s why, through this process, we really wanted to make the evergreen Blank Street brand just a little bit more special.
Lavenders team started by adding a literal blank space as an added symbol in the logo. It’s a plain rectangular box thats designed after the dimensions of the window on Blank Streets original coffee cart, and it will start to appear on the brands cups, signage, packaging, and socials this fall.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Alongside the box motif, Wolff Olins also swapped out Blank Streets former public domain fonts for two custom sans serifs, developed in partnership with the type foundry Due Studio. The refresh also includes a warmed-up version of Blank Streets signature green hue, paired with a palette of various other greens that the brand can use in secondary applications. The goal is to eventually phase out any former black and white branding (which still remains on the outside of some small format stores) in favor of the new green and cream logo.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
A more matcha-forward brand
Blank Street, which used to be called Blank Street Coffee, is also in the process of dropping the coffee from its name, including by moving the word to a secondary position on signage. The branding changes, alongside the name edit, seem to point to the idea that Blank Street is embracing a new identityperhaps one that emphasizes its fan-favorite matcha over its coffee beverages.
They are shifting away from Blank Street Coffee to Blank Street, and I’m sure that’s a very conscious move based on the strawberry shortcake matcha being their most popular seller ever, Lavender says.
[Image: courtesy Wolff Olins]
Lavender adds that the companys creative direction was never to explicitly mimic matcha, but the drinks growing popularity was more of an unspoken thing throughout the process. According to Rabaa, green was the company’s core color even before introducing matcha, and any similarities between the new branding and the green tea drink itself are not a nod, but more like a happy coincidence.
Either way, Blank Street’s sales numbers show that matcha is definitively its stand-out productand now, it has an identity that looks the part.
For most of his career, Mike Kelland worked on software. But after selling his last startup in 2016, he decided to focus on climate change instead.
He zeroed in on one key part of the problem: Cutting emissions is no longer enough to address climate change on its own. He’d read an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that explained that well also need to remove hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. We’re 30 years beyond the point where decarbonization alone was enough, Kelland says.
He spent nearly a year meeting with scientists to learn about potential new carbon removal technology, and eventually met a researcher working on ocean alkalinity enhancementthe process of adding alkaline minerals to the ocean to help it store more CO2. The method can also help reduce ocean acidification. But the tech was stuck in the lab.
I said, this is the moment to take this and turn it into something, Kelland says. In 2019, he cofounded Planetary, a startup focused on commercializing the idea. Now, at a site in Nova Scotia, the company is actively adding its antacid to the ocean.
Earlier this year, it sold independently verified carbon credits to British Airways, Stripe, and Shopify for CO2 that it had already removed. And in a recent deal, Frontiera coalition of tech companies and others that are trying to help the nascent carbon removal industry grow committed $31 million to buy more than 100,000 tons of carbon removal from the startup over the next four years. It hasnt yet been tested at a large scale. But the goal is to scale up to remove gigatons of CO2and do that at a very low cost.
How Planetarys ocean antacid works
The method works by adding small amounts of minerals like lime (calcium oxide) or magnesium oxide into the ocean near the coast. Making the water more alkaline accelerates a natural process so the ocean can absorb more CO2 from the air. The CO2 reacts with the minerals to form bicarbonates that are dissolved in the water and can lock up carbon for thousands of years.
The company works with power plants and other industrial facilities that already discharge water into the ocean, and then adds its minerals via those existing pipes. “Our philosophy is really the more that we can reuse existing infrastructure, the cheaper and more scalable this is going to be,” says Kelland.
[Photo: Planetary]
In Nova Scotia, the startup works with a power plant that circulates ocean water through its systems for cooling. On a tiny corner of the power plant’s property, the startup produces the minerals for the process, and then adds them to the power plant’s pipes before the water goes back in the ocean. The size of its operation is roughly 8% of a direct air capture plant, but can capture more carbon, Kelland says.
The minerals aren’t unique. “This is literally Tums,” Kelland says. But because the standard way to make the product has a relatively large carbon footprint, the company couldn’t buy it off the shelf. Instead, the company uses alkaline byproducts of existing industrial production and mining that would otherwise end up in landfills. Then it purifies them so no harmful heavy metals or other pollutants are added to the ocean.
[Photo: Planetary]
The impact on marine life
One benefit for marine life is clear: Locally, in the parts of the ocean where the minerals are added, the process can help reduce acidification. Extra CO2 in the ocean creates acid that makes it hard for species like oysters to form shells. (The bicarbonate formed by Planetary’s process, by contrast, helps form shells and coral.) Since the industrial revolution, the ocean has become around 30% more acidic.
“That has really nasty effects on ecosystems, from the base of the food webthe tiny little plankton that form shellsall the way up to shellfish that we eat,” says Kelland. Fisheries are already being impacted by ocean acidification. Because of the ocean’s enormous scale, Planetary’s process can’t bring its pH back to pre-industrial levels. But if it’s done at scale in coastal zones, it can help counterbalance the pressure from human emissions.
Like any form of geoengineering, this type of work also has risks. “Unintended consequences from ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) are still an active area of research, and the risks depend largely on the mineral used and how much alkalinity is added,” says Melissa Meléndez, an oceanographic researcher at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. “Some minerals could introduce trace metals that might be harmful to marine ecosystems, and certain organisms are more sensitive to abrupt chemical changes than others.” Because there’s still uncertainty, she says, field testing and monitoring are critical.
Kelland argues that the risks can be controlled. There’s a risk to marine life if the water becomes too alkaline, but that’s already been well studied for the billions of tons of water that industry discharges into the ocean each day, which has to meet certain pH requirements. The levels can be monitored, and the system can stop immediately if needed. It’s also possible to carefully measure the amount of undissolved particles that go into the water and control that. The company can meet existing regulatory limits.
Since Planetary is doing something new, though, it’s also continuing to work with scientists to do in-depth research on potential impacts. One large ecotoxicology study, for example, looked at the potential impact of the antacid on lobster larvae, and found no effect.
Kelland argues that the science is already well enough understood for the copany to scale up to larger projects, though more research will be needed before the gigaton-scale would be possible.
Even if there’s some environmental risk, the risk to marine life from climate change and ocean acidification is larger. With ocean acidification, for example, “we know that it poses very significant risks to any creatures that form shells in the ocean, which are a substantial portion of the food base,” says Brad Ack, CEO of Ocean Visions, a conservation organization that works on climate challenges to the ocean and studies approaches like ocean alkalinity enhancement. “So we’re already running a very signifiant risk just by letting this happen. You have to weigh the risk of doing things against the risk of not doing things.” (Ocean Visions has no relationship with Planetary or financial interest.)
[Photo: Planetary]
Scaling up
Ocean alkanity enhancement has the potential to scale quickly, says Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier. “We think you can get to gigatons of scale,” she says. “It has a minimal physical footprint. It requires very little energy and it piggybacks on some existing coastal infrastructure. So from a pathway perspective, we are really excited about this category.”
In the carbon removal industry, companies are aiming for a cost of $100 or less per ton of captured CO2. But Planetary has calculated that it could get as low as $17 per ton. The low cost depends on sourcing its byproduct very close to its coastal operations. (In a pilot that it had planned earlier in the U.K., the startup ended up canceling the project because the cost of delivering materials was too high; now, material supply is one of its key criteria.) In an analysis of locations where it could access the right supply chains, it calculated that it could eventually scale up to around 2.9 billion tons of CO2 removal per year. Right now, society’s total global emissions are around 40 billion tons a year.
[Photo: Planetary]
Community opposition could be a challenge. In the U.K. pilot that the company scrapped for supply chain reasons, protestors fought the project, saying that they were concerned about marine life. Right now, the company operates under existing regulations for discharge from industrial plants, but it’s possible to imagine that some communities might pass new legislation banning the new practice.
Still, the company managed to get widespread support for the project in Nova Scotia, including from indigenous communities like the Mikmaq. In some cases, Bebbington says, communities may actively want the company to set up operations. “We’ve actually seen that a lot of fisheries have been interested and engaged in this sort of ocean alkalinity enhancement,” she says. The technique can help support populations of oysters and other important food species.
Business support is necessary to help the work grow, since carbon removal companies need to sell that service. While environmentalists often argue that supporting carbon removal is a distraction from the work of cutting emissions, Bebbington says that both are necessary.
Frontier is working with Stripe, Google, Shopify, McKinsey Sustainability, Autodesk, H&M Group, and Workday to purchase carbon removal from the startup. (Other companies, from Canva to Zendesk, are participating through a partnership that Watershed, a corporate decarbonization program, has with Frontier.)
“We make these commitments to proactively ensure that there will be carbon dioxide removal solutions in place to meet our net-zero target at the end of the next decade,” says a spokesperson from H&M. “As the first fashion retailer joining Frontier as a member, we want to inspire others in our industry to follow our example and become early buyers of carbon removal.”
“When you look at what the IPCC report says, in order to limit global warming to either 1.5 or two degrees, we are going to need to both radically reduce the emissions we emitthat’s sort of 80% of the challenge ahead of usand then also proactively remove carbon dioxide permanently,” Bebbington says.
Scientists estimate that we’ll need to remove between 5 billion tons and 10 billion tons of CO2 a year by 2050 (and even more if we miss targets for cutting emissions.) So far, we’ve only removed a paltry 100,000 tons.
Getting to the goal “requires deploying technology, refining technology, scaling technology, bringing technology down the cost curve, which takes time, takes capital, takes talent,” says Bebbington. “The mandate today that we encourage corporates and countries alike to adopt is a dual mandate: You both need to radically reduce your emissions and starting today, work on proactively scaling carbon removal. Because if we wait until 2050, you can’t just flip a light switch and expect that we’ll have gigaton scale carbon removal that is safe, responsible, cheap, effective. That market, that technology, takes time to develop.”
