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Pharmacies are more than just stores. Theyre vital links between people and their healthcare. One of us, Patrick, witnessed this firsthand in 2003 while working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens in a midsize West Texas town. Each day involved handling hundreds of prescriptions as they moved through the systemmeticulously counting pills, deciphering doctors handwriting, and sorting out confusing insurance issues. The experience revealed that how pharmacies are owned and managed is as much a public health issue as it is a financial one. Fast-forward to today, and Walgreensone of the worlds largest pharmacy chains, which filled nearly 800 million U.S. prescriptions in 2024is at a turning point. In March, the company announced it would be acquired by private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $10 billion, just 10% of its peak market value. That deal takes the storied pharmacy chain off the public market for the first time in nearly 100 years. Were professors who study the intersection of medicine and business, and we think this deal offers a window into the future of pharmacy care. It matters not just to pharmacists but also to the tens of millions of Americans who rely on outlets like Walgreens to meet their everyday health needs. The rise and struggles of Walgreens A lot has changed in the pharmacy industry since 1901, when Charles R. Walgreen Sr. purchased the Chicago drugstore where he served as a pharmacist. The company went public in 1927, expanded rapidly throughout the 20th century and grew to 8,000 stores by 2013. By 2014, a merger with the European pharmacy chain Alliance Boots made Walgreens one of the largest pharmacy chains in the world. More recently, however, the picture for the pharmacy industry hasnt been so rosy. Labor costs have risen. Front-end retail sales (things like snacks, greeting cards, and cosmetics) have fallen. And financial pressures from pharmacy benefit managersthose third-party groups that manage the cost of prescription drug benefits on the behalf of insurershave grown. All of these things have significantly constrained revenues across the industry, leading stores to shutter. Some estimates suggest that as many as one-third of U.S. retail pharmacies have closed since 2010. Against that backdrop, Sycamore Partners March acquisition of Walgreens raises big questions. What does Sycamore see in this investment, and what might their strategies imply about the future of American pharmacy care? Framing the private equity bet Private equity firms typically buy companies, streamline their operations, and seek to sell them for a profit within five to seven years of the acquisition. This growing movement of private equity into the global economy is by no means limited to healthcare. In 2020, private equity firms employed 11.7 million U.S. workers, or about 7% of the countrys total workforce. The total assets under management by such investors have grown by over 11% annually over the past two decades, a trend thats expected to continue. In looking at Walgreens, Sycamore, like many of these businesses, likely sees an opportunity to buy low, cut costs and improve profitability. One survey of private equity investors found that the most common self-reported sources of value creation in these deals for companies of Sycamores size were changing the product and marketing it more robustly to drive demand, changing incentives for those within the business, and facilitating a high-value exit. While private owners may have more patience than public markets, critics argue that private equity firms tend to have a short-term focus, looking for quick, predictable services of margin improvementlike, for example, cutting jobs. Theres some evidence in favor of that claim. One study found that employment often drops in the years following a private equity buyout. And if the focus shifts to repaying debt or prepping for resale, long-term projects, such as investing in future innovation, can get deprioritized. The history of privatized public companies offers a mix of successes and failures. Dell Technologies and hotel chain Hilton are two prominent examples of companies that went private, restructured successfully, and came back stronger. In those cases, going private helped management focus without the constant pressure of quarterly earnings reports. On the other hand, companies such as Toys R Us, which was taken private in 2005 and filed for bankruptcy in 2018, show how high debt and missed innovation can lead to collapse. Whats next for Walgreens So, where does this leave Walgreensand the investors involved in the deal? If part of the returns will be driven by buying low (the easiest indicator of potential future success to measure as of today) Sycamore started well: Its purchase price represents a mere 8% premium over the market trading value on the day of the announcement, significantly less than the 46% seen across industries in 2023. That said, Sycamore financed 83.4% of the purchase with debt, a number on the high end for these kinds of transctions. Healthcare groups have pointed to this number while raising concerns that innovation-focused investments may take a back seat to debt obligations. As the dust settles on the purchase, Sycamore has indicated an interest in splitting Walgreens into three business units: one focused on U.S. pharmacies, one on U.K. pharmacies, and one on U.S. primary healthcare through its VillageMD subsidiary. Thats not unusual: Sycamore has used a similar approach before with its investment in the office supply retailer Staples, a strategy that has garnered strong financial returns but been called into question for its long-term sustainability. Given the significant financial challenges VillageMD has faced since its acquisition by Walgreens, this represents an opportunity to separately evaluate and optimize its performance. Meanwhile, Sycamores historic focus on retail and customer-focused businesses might help it modernize the in-store experience or optimize staffing. For more than a century, Walgreens has survived and adapted to sweeping changes in retail. Now, its entering a new chapterone that could reshape not just its own future but the role of pharmacies in American life. Will Sycamore help Walgreens thrive, using its resources to strengthen services and deliver more value to customers? Or will pressure to generate quick returns create problems? Either way, the answer mattersnot just for investors but for anyone whos ever relied on their neighborhood pharmacy to stay healthy. Patrick Aguilar is a professor of practice of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis. Peter Boumgarden is a professor of family enterprise at Washington University in St. Louis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
For lovers of vintage Apple devices or anyone who grew up in the ’80s, a retro tech company just designed the ultimate throwback gadget: a working replica of the original 1984 Apple Macintosh that stands at just 62 millimeters tall. The device, called the pico-mac-nano, was created by retro tech enthusiast Nick Gillard for his website, 1-bit rainbow, which specializes in sourcing vintage Apple components. The mini computer is about half the size of a Coke can, comes in an ultra-detailed 3D-printed case, and has a single USB port that can be used for power and to connect a keyboard or mouse. Currently, its available online for backorder at just over $63, though Gillard has also compiled a detailed breakdown of all the components he used for any intrepid DIYers at home. In a blog post on the pico-mac-nano, Gillard explains that he was inspired by the early days of computers, like the first Macintosh, when pioneers achieved remarkable things within the technological limitations of the day. His version of the computer is a testament to just how much those technological limitations have evolved in the last 40 years. [Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow] Rebooting the first-ever Macintosh design Gillard, who is now 59, says his interest in vintage Apple products began when personal computers first started appearing during his school days. “My school had a Commodore PET, and I bought an Acorn Atom, so Ive lived through this revolution and Im pretty nostalgic about those early days of computing,” Gillard says. In 2006, Gillard started his own Apple parts company, The Bookyard Ltd., which sold modern Apple components for 15 years. After selling the company in 2021, Gillard started 1-bit rainbow this past November as an offshoot that focuses on Apple tech 25 years or oldera specialty that led him to conceptualizing the tiny 1984 Macintosh. [Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow] According to Gillards blog post, the idea to build a pico-mac-nano came from fellow retro tech enthusiast Matt Evans. In 2024, Evans created a system he called the Pico MicroMac, which could emulate the capabilities of the earliest Macintosh 128K (including applications like MacPaint, MacDraw, and MacWrite) on a modern desktop computer. Gillard followed Evans explanation of the revived Macintosh to build his own version at home. Needless to say, I set about building a pico-mac and am not ashamed (slightly ashamed) to say I giggled like a little girl when that black & white, 512 x 342 pixel Macintosh desktop appeared on my VGA monitor and I launched Lode Runner, Gillard wrote in a blog post. Still, he said, the experience had him thinking: How much cooler would it be if pico-mac could drive a small LCD panel in a miniature replica Macintosh case? The concept of building a scaled-down version of the design seemed possible, given that Evans Macintosh emulator was powered by Raspberry Pis RP2040 chipa tiny microcontroller measuring just 7 by 7 millimeters. “As soon as I had it working and connected to a VGA monitor, it just screamed to be put in a little Macintosh case with an LCD,” Gillard says. [Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow] Designing the pico Mac nano, a 2″ computer To build his pico-mac-nano, Gillard started by searching for a mini LCD display screen that could load an approximation of the original Macintosh screen buffer, which featured a resolution of just 512 x 342 pixels (todays 13-inch MacBook Air, by comparison, boasts a resolution of 2560 x 1664 pixels.) After some trial and error, Gillard ended up with a two-inch screen featuring a slightly less accurate resolution of 480 x 342 pixels, with the trade-off being that this option also allowed him to make the whole Macintosh even smaller. [Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow] With the LCD display as a touchpoint for scale, Gillard then used a 3D printer to make a 62 millimeter-tall plastic casing based on the structure of the original Macintosh, down to the ridges on top of the computer and the floppy disk slot on its front panel. On the inside of the rear case, Gillard added an embossed 1-bit rainbow logo where the original Macintosh teams signatures wouldve been. The finished pico-mac-nano comes with a micro-SD card slot for memory storage and a single USB port, which, using a special splitter cable (also available at 1-bit rainbow), can both charge the device and make it compatible with a keyboard at the same time. Gillard has also designed a separate battery power module specifically for the device, so you can whip it out of your pocket and wow your friends at parties. The computer even comes packaged in a tiny version of the instantly recognizable Picasso box that the original Macintosh 128K shipped in. For those interested in purchasing the pico-mac-nano, Gillard warns in his blog that the device was designed as a proof-of-concept, not a finished product, and that its not necessarily guaranteed to run all early Macintosh software. Even so, chances are the pico-mac-nano is destined to become the ultimate collectors item. In an era when iPods have become a popular example of “vintage tech,” the world’s tiniest workable Macintosh is a concept in a league of its own.
Category:
E-Commerce
Some days, the idea of going to work can feel like a heavy weight you have to carry. If you wake up yearning for something more, youre not alone. Many professionals reach a point where they question whether their career aligns with their values, passions, and goals. They ask themselves whether theyre living the life they imagined, and if theyre doing fulfilling work. It makes sense that we ask ourselves these questions at different stages of our lives. Your career goals at 40 shouldnt be the same as when you were 20. Something needs to change. As two executive coaches who help people discover their purpose and achieve success, weve noticed that this challenge is on the rise. The good news is, you can take steps to mitigate this feeling of purgatory when youre so comfortable doing what you are doing and craving a challenge. The problem: feeling stuck Take Susan, for example. Every morning, she had to peel herself out of bed to face a job she could do in her sleep. There was no challenge, no spark, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Susan had reached the top of what she could achieve in her organization. As a loyal employee who spent 18 years at the organization, she struggled to imagine leaving the company she had grown up with over the years. But deep down, she knew it was time to explore a new challenge. Susans story isnt unique. A recent 2024 study revealed that nearly half of the workforce feels burned out or dissatisfied with their current job. The reasons vary, but the outcome is the same: a gnawing sense that theres something more for you out there. The solution: Ten steps to take action Moving forward when you dont know your next career stepbut knowing that you want more and something needs to shiftcan be a very uncomfortable crossroads. It can evoke feelings of overwhelm. Thats why weve created a road map to help you navigate the uncertainty and move toward clarity and action. Step 1: Admit youre ready for change The first step is acknowledging that its time to make a move. Susans inflection point came when she admitted to herself that her current role no longer served her growth or happiness. Naming the problem is the first step toward solving it. Step 2: Find a guide Hire a career coach or find a mentor to help guide you through the process. They can provide clarity, accountability, and a structured path forward. A good coach can help you break down what feels overwhelming into actionable steps. Step 3: Tap into what energizes you Pay attention to the moments when time flies, and youre in a state of flow. What work energizes you? Keep a journal or use the notes app on your phone to track these moments. Over time, patterns will emerge, revealing what excites you most. Step 4: Do a passion audit Evaluate your passions and interests to identify what lights you up. Use tools like Ruths Passion Audit framework to assess where you draw your motivation, excitement, and where you can best spend your energy. What kind of work makes you feel alive and fulfilled? The Passion Audit helps differentiate between work youre good at, enjoy, would give up, or would do for free. It offers clarity on what work you should keep and what responsibilities you should shed. Step 5: Create a target list using the 3 Ps Build a target list of potential companies or roles by focusing on the 3 Ps: Prospects, Pivots, and Passions, like Marys MVP 360 Degree Pivot Program This 10-step program uses a proven approach to ensure alignment between your values, your passions, your purpose, and your needs at this stage in your life, including your future career goals. Step 6: Assess your skills and build a learning plan Evaluate your current skills and identify gaps that you need to address. Start developing those skills through courses, certifications, or hands-on experience. Platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy are great resources for building new capabilities and even have AI tools to help craft your learning plan based on skills you want to learn. Step 7: Network before youre ready Begin exploratory conversations with your trusted network even before youre fully ready to make a move. Networking creates momentum and opens doors to opportunities you might not have considered. Step 8: Look within Sometimes, the best opportunities are closer than you think. Are there roles within your current company that could reignite your passion? By showing initiative and a desire for growth, you might be surprised at the doors leadership is willing to open for you. Marys client, Adam, explored external opportunities but ultimately decided to stay at his company. His initiative paid off: he was promoted twice and now finds fulfillment in his work. Step 9: Update your résumé and LinkedIn profile Polish your résumé and LinkedIn profile to reflect your most relevant achievements and skills. Reconnect with your extended network and make it easy for others to find and engage with you. Your online presence should showcase the value you bring to the table. AI can help you here too. Step 10: Create clarity around your next steps As you refine your search, focus on roles that align with your values, passions, and skills. Having a clear vision for whats next will help you recognize the right opportunity when it comes your way. Navigating career uncertainty is challenging, but its also an opportunity to reassess what truly matters to you. By following these steps, youll not only gain clarity but also set yourself on a path toward work that excites and fulfills you.
Category:
E-Commerce
People like to say that change happens gradually, then all at once. That pattern seems to be holding with respect to AI in search, and we may be at the beginning of the “all at once” part now that Google has officially launched AI Mode, which turns internet searches into conversations where you get answers instead of links. The point of AI Mode is for Google to act as an assistant to help you accomplish what you were trying to do with the search in the first place. Need to book a flight, find a sushi restaurant nearby, or grab a statistic that supports the email pitch you’re authoring? AI Mode will simply find what you need and even complete the action for you in many cases. And those cases will continue to expand: The company showed a future shopping capability where Google completes checkout for you without ever needing to leave the search page. Potential for Disruption The potential disruption to industries is staggering, not just for the media but also for marketing, e-commercethe whole web, really. For now, however, it remains mostly potential. AI Mode primarily lives as a button on the Google homepage and one of the tabs on results pages (alongside tabs for News, Photos, Videos, etc.). Users need to deliberately engage with it. And the omnibox in Chrome, where most Google searches occur, still defaults to regular search. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} So despite the hype and panic emanating from Google’s I/O conference over AI Mode, Google isn’t going all-in just yet, and with good reason: Its existing business model depends greatly on the search results page. AI Mode can display ads, too, but it’s going to take time for the product to mature as a business. There’s also the simple fact that it costs Google more to serve up an AI answer versus a search pageit needs to move slowly in order to keep from tanking its own profits. The undeniable rise of AI search Make no mistake, though: The AI Mode summary will be the new battleground for attention. It’s fundamentally more engaging than even Google’s AI Overviews that appear at the top of search results pages. Whereas Overviews are a kind of “extra” to the list of links, AI Mode effectively creates a bubble around your Google experience, one that you deliberately enter and stay within. It’s designed to “fan out” from your initial query, turning search into something that’s more like a collaboration with Google on a task that search is just one part of. While that may sound like work compared to just getting served a search query, you have to remember: Once you had those results, you had to do the workthe navigating to sites, judging which were credible, and then manually absorbing information, filtering the irrelevant stuff. Now AI Mode does most of that work for you, greatly reducing the friction or “cognitive load” involved in getting information. I see this all the time in my own experience: Over the Memorial Day weekend, I ended up looping in AI assistants for several different projectshanging outdoor lights, what those metal ring-thingies are called, and how to optimize my cooking methods for pork ribs versus beef ribs. In all those interactions, no list of links was required, and in many cases, I got the information verbally, reducing friction even more. I’m a sample size of one, but studies suggest I’m far from alone. A recent study revealed 17%, or one in five consumers, now rely on AI answers more than traditional search. Referrals from generative AI to websites surged over 1,200% between July 2024 and February of this year, according to Adobe research. The AI search wave is real. When knowledge goes flat AI search experiences are more convenient, but it comes at a cost. If the AI summary is the new place for information brokers to conquer, there’s less land to fight over. Summaries simply can’t meaningfully cite dozens of sources in a curt answer. Moreover, if one or two sources change, the effect on the summary will be minimal. If an AI answer gets a new site fueling it, it’s still an averaged, homogenized consensus built from several sources. You don’t have the unusual link suddenly gaining prominence on a results page, inviting users to go down a rabbit hole. An AI summary is made to pave over those holes. This tendency toward singular, concise answers may have the inadvertent effect of flattening knowledge diversity. Mainstream perspectives will get prioritized, and niche or contrarian voices will have a tougher time standing out. Signal generators This shift puts a burden on journalists and media organizations to act not just as content creators but also as distinctive signal generators in a noisy, compressed ecosystem. In a world where AI systems synthesize information from thousands of sources, what gets retained are the most statistically common patternsnot necessarily the most insightful or original voices. That’s why it’s going to be essential for media sites to be able to do both: structure content to acknowledge and align with the mainstream view, but also provide original and unique perspectives that will offer real value for those who go deeper. It’s an updated version of a diverse content strategy, only in the AI world it can mean serving those ingredients in new ways: possibly by remixing content into formats recognizable by a multimodal AI that cares just as much about sound and video as it does about text. One thing’s for sure: AI answers are here to stay, and “winning” them is going to be the game to master. What’s unclear is what will be harder: influencing readers through what the summary says, or getting them to click through the AI ode bubble so you can influence them yourself. Let the games begin. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
CosMcs, the glimmering, retro, space-agey concept restaurant from McDonalds, is no more. In 2023, McDonalds announced the spin-offbilled as the next frontier for the fast-food chain to test its most otherworldly specialty beverage ideasto a deluge of marketing fanfare. CosMcs was a drive-through-only concept with a pared-down menu of neon-colored drinks and a few snack items. The first CosMcs restaurants opened with lines around the block before the sun was even up. Now, less than two years later, McDonalds is jettisoning the stores back into the ether. According to a press release published late last week, McDonalds plans to shut down all five of its CosMcs locations (one in Illinois and four in Texas) in late June, as well as delete the restaurants associated app. In the coming months, CosMcs-inspired flavors will be landing in hundreds of U.S. McDonalds locations as part of a wider beverage test. The announcement comes in the wake of McDonalds first-quarter 2025 financial report on May 1, which revealed that the chains sales dropped at the beginning of the year, marking its second consecutive quarter of declines. Experts say there are a few main reasons why CosMcs didnt work out as a stand-alone conceptbut that doesnt necessarily mean the spin-off was a failure for McDonalds. [Photo: Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images] Bubble tea, energy drinks, functional soda, oh my! From the beginning, it was fairly clear what McDonalds hoped to gain from CosMcs: an entry point into the speciality beverage category (dominated by players like Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin) thats been on the rise in recent years. As Gen Z has become increasingly interested in beverages like bubble tea, functional soda, and colorful energy drinks, other quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have moved to catch up. In 2024, Starbucks experimented with adding bubble tea to its menu; Dunkin introduced an energy drink lineup; and even Taco Bell opened its own beverage-only spin-off called Live Más Café. Meanwhile, McDonalds beverage offerings have remained largely limited to its soda machines and McCafé coffee menu (which, interestingly, also originated as an Australian spin-off concept). CosMcs was McDonalds answer to this gap in its offeringsa space to, as the restaurant put it at the time, perform a limited test of otherworldly beverage creations at a safe distance from its main restaurants. Within CosMcs blue-and-yellow beverage test kitchen, the chain was free to trial-run concepts like Tropical Spiceade and Island Pick-Me-Up Punch to a smaller audience of consumers. On the companys first-quarter 2025 earnings report, CEO Chris Kempczinski called this strategy quarantining the complexity in a stand-alone concept. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] According to Matt Michaluk, executive creative director at the branding agency JKR, CosMcs made sense as a viable innovation for McDonalds. With an increasing share of occasions within QSR now solely drinks-only missions, and the diversification of menus by the big coffee chains, this should be a competitive yet fertile ground for growth, Michaluk says. In spite of that promise, he says, there are three reasons CosMcs fizzled out as a stand-alone: brand contradiction, absence of experience, and decline of hype. To start, Michaluk notes, CosMcs was shaped around a pseudo-nostalgic play on historic McDonalds brand characters, like the oft-forgotten 80s alien CosMc. But the spin-offs menu failed to align with that conceit. Further, the pilot format’s focus on drive-through architecture takes away from the overall brand experience, leaving consumers overwhelmingly underwhelmed. And, to cap it off, he says, Innovations and pilots work best when theyre new, exciting, and highly salient. McDonalds seemingly didnt invest in sufficient marketing efforts to support CosMcs. Hence, the hype died far too quickly. Within weeks of launch, there was nothing more to talk aboutnothing new, nothing to get people to come back. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] Why CosMcs hasn’t failed yet Michaluks assessment might seem like a fairly bleak one, but Danny Klein, editorial director of the trade publication QSR, says the failure of CosMcs as a stand-alone doesnt necessarily equate to a failure for McDonalds business. From its inception, Klein says, McDonalds likely viewed CosMcs as more of a test run for a potential beverage expansion on its main store menus than a restaurant in its own right. Now that CosMcs recipes are rolling out across stores in the U.S., it appears that the initial experiment was a success. Hundreds of locations are going to start testing [CosMcs beverages], and I think from the general McDonald’s system standpoint, a beverage extension is what they all wanted, Klein says. I don’t think its a failure. People are going to say that because it was such a big deal, and then it just flamed out into the universe. But in my opinion, it was always a marketing test with the potential to be something else, and that just didn’t materialize. In addition to broadening the availability of CosMcs beverages, McDonalds also announced last week that it would create a new beverage category team dedicated to gaining share in the space. As Kempczinski told investors in early May, There’s a lot of growth that we see in beverages, and the profitability of beverages is very attractive, adding, frankly, we think there’s more that we can be doing to capture our fair share of that. Ultimately, Klein says, the true test of CosMcs will be whether the average McDonalds customer is interested in supplementing their Big Mac and fries with a Sour Cherry Energy Burstor if they choose to stick with a plain old Coke.
Category:
E-Commerce
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