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Innovation doesnt happen in silos: it happens in systems. And yet many companies still rely on lone heroes to ignite transformation. They recruit visionary thinkers, celebrate bold ideas, and preach agility, but beneath the surface, their structures reward predictability and punish deviation. As a result, the very people most capable of driving innovationfast-moving, future-oriented changemakers known as catalystsare often left isolated, misunderstood, and burned out. Catalysts ignite possibilities. They challenge the status quo, connect seemingly unrelated dots, and accelerate momentum. But they dont thrive in traditional organizational ecosystems because they threaten bureaucracy, resist incrementalism, and without support, they either burn out or leave. According to Gallup, just 21% of employees strongly agree that they can take risks at work without fear of negative consequences. As Shannon Lucas and Tracey Lovejoy explain in their book Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out., these workers often struggle with intense isolation and exhaustion not because they arent capable, but because the system isnt designed for them to succeed. To unlock sustainable innovation, organizations must evolve from celebrating individual disruptors to cultivating ecosystems where diverse changemakerscatalysts, stabilizers, implementerscan thrive together. This isnt a culture tweak. Its a systems redesign. The 4 Layers of a Catalyst Ecosystem Shannon and I have seen how catalytic energy can drive exponential growth if the right conditions exist. This framework outlines the four interdependent layers that support thriving catalyst ecosystems. 1. Identification: Spot the Sparks Catalysts dont always stand out on paper. Theyre often the ones asking provocative questions in meetings, proposing ideas that seem off-script, or moving faster than the rest of the system. But without intentional practices, these traits can be seen as disruptive rather than visionary. To find them, leaders must look beyond the org chart. Psychometric assessments, cross-functional feedback, and structured self-discovery tools can help you to illuminate hidden change agents at every level in your organization. You can also train managers to spot curiosity, systems thinking, and pattern recognition. In her work with large organizations, Shannon uses her companys Catalyst Assessment Tool to uncover innate changemakers hidden throughout the business. This often-overlooked talent is frequently underutilized. At one company, 60% of the employees identified as catalysts were previously considered hidden talent by the C-suiteand they went on to solve some of the organizations most pressing challenges. 2. Integration: Design for Complementarity Once identified, catalysts need more than autonomy. They need meaningful integration with the broader system. Pairing them with stabilizers (who bring operational excellence) and implementers (who drive execution) creates cross-functional change pods that balance energy, tempo, and sustainability. In my work facilitating story-based leadership circles, catalysts often emerge through narratives of disruption, such as career pivots, reinventions, and vision quests. However, their breakthroughs become organizational breakthroughs only when they are translated into a shared purpose. This requires redesigned team norms: tempo-matching, structured conflict mediation, and deep respect for different working styles. Catalysts are the spark, but the team is the engineand the organization is the road they need to travel together. 3. Protection: Shield the Flame A large amount of pressure to innovate without adequate support is a recipe for burnout. According to Deloitte, innovation-driven employees are 2.5x more likely to leave if they lack proper support systems. Catalysts in particular are prone to emotional exhaustion, especially when their efforts are blocked by bureaucracy or misunderstood by leadership. Organizations must build containers that buffer catalytic energy. This means establishing sponsorship structures, recovery protocols (such as off-cycle sabbaticals or reflective retreats), and psychological safety as a norm. This could include internal coaching circles, energy mapping, or check-in rituals that normalize emotional processing. Investing in resilience practices isnt a perk; its a prerequisite for sustainable change. 4. Amplification: Scale the Spark Catalysts cant just be unleashed; they must be amplified. Invite them to inform strategic offsites, facilitate internal labs, or lead cross-functional storytelling initiatives. Establish formal channels, like Catalyst Councils, to elevate their insights into enterprise-level planning. Codify what they learn. Translate their experiments into onboarding content and playbooks. Make space for them to coach emerging catalysts in the system. When you treat catalysts not as rogue actors but as cultural accelerants, their energy becomes contagious. In a Catalyst program with a large healthcare organization, Shannon worked with the team to identify, train, and activate catalysts from across the business. The program participants were given the most pressing strategic initiatives to tackle. In just 16 weeks, the Catalyst participants helped the company reduce reimbursement times from eight weeks to just two days, a 96% improvement, driving significant gains in both customer and employee satisfaction. Additionally, the organization reported a 24% improvement in change leadership capabilities across the enterprise. This is the power you can unleash and amplify by engaging your catalysts. Innovation isnt a solo act; its an emergent phenomenon. It happens when diverse roles, energies, and mindsets interact in the right environment. That means building systems that reward exploration, reframe conflict, and move ideas from the margins to the center. The future wont be led by lone geniuses. It will be shaped by ecosystems that can accommodate differences, adapt rapidly, and nurture catalytic energy over the long arc of change. Dont wait for a crisis to value your changemakers: Design for them now, and your organization wont just survive changeit will shape it. The next time someone in your organization brings an idea that feels risky or too soon, pause before you dismiss it. Ask: What if this is the spark weve been waiting for, and how might we build the right conditions to let it burn bright?
Category:
E-Commerce
For years, Heinz has consistently innovated in the ketchup space. Theres been jalapeo ketchup, chipotle ketchup, mayochup, and even pickle ketchup. Other sauces have gotten similarly modernized, with stunt products like a Taylor Swift-inspired ranch dressing and a hot-pink Barbie barbecue sauce. Notably forgotten amid this flurry of condiment exploration? Mustard. Now Heinz is rectifying that error, officially announcing the release of the condiment Heinz Mustaaaaaard, the brands first new mustard product in 10 years. The smoky-sweet chipotle honey mustard will debut for a two-week period at Buffalo Wild Wings, followed by a limited-time nationwide release at Target, 7-Eleven, Walmart.com, and Amazon.com. [Photo: Kraft Heinz] Heinz Mustaaaaaard was initially teased back in February, when Heinz revealed it would be collaborating on the sauce with record producer DJ Mustard (so named because of his given first name, Dijon). The timing was spot-onMustard had just exploded in the cultural zeitgeist after a callout of his name in Kendrick Lamars song tv off inspired memes and resulted in Mustard joining the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. At the time, Heinz named Mustard as its official chief mustard officer. But, according to the team at Heinz, this wasnt just a collaboration with Mustards name attached to it: The producer met with Heinzs R&D team in person to select the final flavor, down to the specific proportions of each ingredient chosen. [Photo: Kraft Heinz] DJ Mustard mixes a mustard Most people are probably familiar with Mustard through his music and his recently viral collaboration with Lamar. Fewer are aware of his side hustle as a grill master. Heinz pitched a potential collaboration with Mustard more than a year before the official partnership announcement in February. During that time the team learned that Mustard already had a love for Heinz, says Peter Hall, president of elevation for Heinz North America. Mustard shared that he had long used Heinz mustard as his go-to staple when grilling, and that he had a particular penchant for sweeter mustards. In a press release, the artist said Heinz mustard has always been the most important ingredient among his grilling secret weapons, noting, I knew I wanted to make my own sauce one day, something that wouldnt be like anything else out there. Adding mustard gives you that nice browning, bark formation, and grilling, but thats just step one. [Photo: Kraft Heinz] The actual creation of Mustards mustard was a four-month-long process, starting with the music producer personally visiting Heinz headquarters in Pittsburgh to help mix up the recipea kind of access that Heinz has never granted to a celebrity collaborator in the past. Richard Misutka, director of R&D for Kraft Heinz Elevation Brands, worked directly with Mustard during his visit. He says the team prepped around 10 different add-on flavors that might pair well with mustard, including honey, chipotle, jalapeo, bacon, caramelized onion, and even mango. Then, to ensure that they could replicate each potential recipe, all of the various combination components were weighed before they were mixed and tasted by Mustard. [Photo: Kraft Heinz] We started with our Heinz yellow mustard, and then we started playing around with some of the flavors, Misutka says. True to Mustards reputation, he liked the honey, so instead of playing around with the yellow mustard, we pivoted to the Heinz honey mustard. At that point, Misutka recalls, Mustard chose to add an extra shot of honey to the standard recipe. Then we looked at some of the other flavors to help accentuate the experience. We pushed him out of his comfort zone a little bit, because we knew he did not like spicy foods. So we’re like, Let’s just try the chipotle here and see what you think. He absolutely loved it. While bacon and mango were both possible contenders for Mustards top pick, the chipotle combination ultimately won out. I think it has tremendous balance. I mean, you have th sweetness, you have the vinegar tartness, you have the smokiness from the chipotle, as well as the heat, Misutka says. It’s really a great product, and it was a tremendous experience. Mustard summed up his estimation of the product in his own words: This is the one, the Mustard of all mustards.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you live in one of the 10 U.S. states with a bottle deposit program, youre probably familiar with the idea of feeding your empty plastic bottles or aluminum cans into a machine and getting a few cents back for your effort. But what if instead of earning a nickel or a dime, you could be entered in a lottery for a chance to win a bigger prize with each bottle you return? That option actually motivates people to recycle more bottles, researchers discovered when they tested it out on a small scale. Not only did people recycle more often, but they actually felt a little happier after doing so (compared with when getting a regular 10-cent return). And, it turns out, Norway already offers this incentive and also has one of the highest rates of recycling for plastic bottles in the world, at about 97%. This idea that people prefer a small chance at a bigger prize to a small reward is a common one in behavioral economics, says Jiaying Zhao, a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia and one of the authors of this study, which was recently published in the journal Waste Management. She wanted to see if the same principal could help spur sustainable behavior changes. Bottle deposits already help increase recycling rates. In the U.S., beverage containers (including plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans) that are eligible for a bottle deposit have an average recycling rate of 64%, but beverage containers that arent eligible for a refund have a recycling rate of just 24%. That latter figure includes all the bottles in states without deposit laws, and containers that are exempt from deposit lawslike in Massachusetts, for example, where regular plastic water bottles arent eligible for a deposit. Offering a chance at a bigger prize could increase recycling rates even more. The researchers set up bottle return locations in British Columbia and Alberta in Canada, offering people the option of a 10-cent return or a 0.01% chance at a $1,000 prize. With that lottery option on the table, people brought 47% more bottles to recycle. The researchers also surveyed people on their happiness levels after returning the bottles, and they found that the people who chose the lottery option were slightly happier, even when they didnt win. The same people even came back multiple times to return bottles, says Jade Radke, a PhD student at UBC and the study’s coauthor. In Alberta, the researchers set up their bottle return at a rib festival, and people were even walking around to collect cans on the tables and try again, she says. (The bottle return in British Columbia through this study was located at a food court and set up for two months.) The potential impact of increasing recycling rates this way is huge. Creating new bottles comes with a lot of carbon emissions, and not recycling bottles also comes with a lot of pollution, so it can be a meaningful way to decrease all of those things, Radke says. If we could scale the results from the study to the entire U.S., that would mean an additional 2.1 million tons of containers recycled here. That would also save carbon emissionmore than 4 million tons, or about the same as taking 1 million cars off the road per year. And for any legislators that may be concerned a lottery system would cost more money to run, the researchers say it ends up being the same average payout as per-bottle deposit systems. When the researchers set out to test this incentive, they didnt know it was already available in Norway. Now they see it as further proof of a recycling solution. Norway began offering a bottle recycling lottery in 2009 (a bottle lottery has also been available in Finland since 2011), and now, 97% of all plastic beverage bottles there are returned. In Norway, people can use a reverse vending machine to either choose between the guaranteed refund, or the chance to win 5, 10, 100, or 100,000 euros. The system also doesnt encourage gambling, its creators say, because theres no way to enter with cash and there are no near misses, like with other kinds of gambling. The Norway bottle lottery has another twist: Some of the lotterys proceeds go to the Norwegian Red Cross. This chance to donate to a charity through bottle returns could be another motivator. Instead of 10 cents back to you, what if the proceeds go to a food bank or charity? Zhao says. Her team actually tested the effectiveness of this option as well, with results soon to be published. The researchers also plan to test how the lottery incentive impacts people who bring giant bags of bottles to big bottle depots, in order to see if the incentive increases their recycling rates as well. It’s important that municipalities that may want to offer a bottle lottery still give people the option of the regular 5- or 10-cent return, Zhao says. In cities across the U.S. and Canada, people known as canners or binners actually rely on bottle returns for part of their income to get by. We don’t want to take the short gain option away, she says. Instead, we want to give people the option to choose.
Category:
E-Commerce
At colleges and universities across the country, older adults are roaming the quads. These are not emeritus professors or late-blooming freshmen, though. They’re residents, living in an increasingly common type of senior housing. A growing number of colleges and universities have started augmenting their campusesand boosting their revenuesby building senior living facilities right alongside lecture halls and student dorms. Dozens of projects are either built or planned in and around campuses all over the U.S., from Stanford to Notre Dame to the University of Florida, providing a much-needed source of housing built specifically for the needs of older adults while creating new sources of revenue for colleges that are seeing their student enrollment numbers fall and their futures in doubt. They’re also creating a surprising social synergy between two demographic groups that don’t often mix: college kids and senior citizens. That unconventional pairing is becoming a draw for older adults, and making more universities think seriously about converting parts of their campuses from educational spaces to retirement communities. “In the past, maybe people would move to Florida and retire from society. But now people want to stay engaged and involved,” says Cynthia Shonaiya, a partner at the architecture firm Hord Coplan Macht (HCM), which has designed several senior housing projects on university campuses, sometimes known as university-based retirement communities. “Lifelong learning is something that is important to seniors nowadays.” Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography] One of the firm’s newest senior living projects is Broadview, located right across the quad from the administration buildings on the campus of the State University of New York’s Purchase College. The project includes 174 independent living apartments, 46 villas, 36 assisted-living residences, and 32 memory care suites. It’s anchored by a 10,000-square-foot building called the Learning Commons that features lecture halls, a performance space, arts studios, and a maker space that are all accessible to both residents and students. Each serves as a conventional gathering area for retired residents, but they’ve also become impromptu learning and teaching spaces, with projects led by both residents and students. “It’s symbiotic,” says Shonaiya. “You have to have a space where people come together that is intentional.” Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography] It’s also an attractive concept, particularly to people with a connection to the college. “As soon as we went to market, we saw so many ex-teachers and current teachers automatically sign up for units in the building,” says Chad Bederka, a principal at HCM. “Within the first 15 minutes, the largest units were gone.” Broadview is a $398 million development, arranged through a ground lease from the college to a third-party developer. As state-owned land, the deal was shaped by state legislation, which requires 75% of the proceeds to provide scholarships and 25% to support new faculty. The college receives $2 million in rent payments annually. The financial viability of such projects has caught the attention of university administrators across the country. Alejandro Giraldo, senior living practice leader at the architecture firm Perkins Eastman, says this project type has grown in popularity since emerging about 20 years ago, offering an unconventional source of revenue for higher education institutions. Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography] “In many cases, there’s not an option to sell the land because of endowments or because it’s a public school,” he says. “They’re asking what is the product that is going to help us fulfill our educational mission, maintain it, but also expand it and bring some revenue to the school.” Perkins Eastman is a firm that has specialized in senior living since its founding in 1981. In recent years, it has been hired to design more senior livin projects on or adjacent to universities and colleges, including Vincentian Schenley Gardens, an assisted living facility next to Carlow University and the University of Pittsburgh. It’s a privately developed project that’s using its proximity to universities as a selling point. Other projects of this type are developed directly by universities and link senior residents to continuing education opportunities. Sometimes projects are led by third-party developers who emphasize the link to the universities’ programming and student population. “Every school has different approaches and strategies. That’s what is interesting about this. There’s no two that are the same,” Giraldo says. “Unless you have a very close partnership between the operator and the university, that is a recipe for disaster.” Vincentian Schenley Gardens [Image: courtesy Perkins Eastman] Drew Roskos is an associate principal in Perkins Eastman’s senior living studio, and in addition to being an architect, he has a master’s degree in gerontology. He says senior housing at universities works best when projects create an active connection between the residents and the university. That can take the form of an assisted living facility that partners with a university’s nursing program, or an active adult community that has programming tied directly to classes or curricula. Being on a campus helps make those connections even stronger. “The closer the proximity, the more rich and more meaningful the relationship can be,” Roskos says. Vincentian Schenley Gardens [Image: courtesy Perkins Eastman] Building connections between residents and students is also a goal, and one that’s of increasing concern. In 2023, the Surgeon General put out a major report highlighting the negative health and social consequences of isolation and loneliness. Older adults are particularly vulnerable, according to the report, but so are young people. “The idea of having seniors moving to a community that’s on a college campus, with young adults who can mentor them, and they can learn from each other, I think it has significant social benefits,” says Shonaiya. When designing these projects, Shonaiya says architects and senior housing providers must consider what types of amenities they need to include to forge better connections between residents and a university’s students and programs. Some things are already built into a typical college campus, like dining halls, performance venues, and craft-centric spaces like woodshops, and senior housing projects can piggyback off their close proximity. But some facilities built for 20-year-old college students won’t meet the physical needs of older adults, so amenities like a swimming pool or a nearby restaurant are often added. “It’s a balance of what can be shared, what is accessible, and what needs to be duplicated so that it remains convenient for the seniors,” Shonaiya says. NewBridge on the Charles [Photo: courtesy Perkins Eastman] Other design considerations include general accessibility requirements like short walking paths between residences and university amenities, wide hallways, brighter lighting, and interior color schemes that don’t create jarring contrasts. Shonaiya says the Learning Commons at Broadview required special attention to acoustics in order to ensure older users are able to hear and participate in lectures and classes held in the space. “All of those aspects are baked into the design, but in such a way that the students don’t feel like they’re coming into a nursing home,” she says. Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography] The projects also need to fit into the surrounding campus, which can sometimes be difficult. Bederka says the Broadview project at Purchase College was added to a campus made largely of concrete brutalist buildings designed in the 1950s and 60s. “Trying to integrate a senior living community into a brutalist design was very challenging,” he says. Instead of mimicking the campus aesthetic, the designers looked to the surrounding community and designed the project to reflect the Georgian-style buildings in the area and the campus’s roots as former farmland. These projects work best whenthey embody the unique character of the university they’re associated with, says Roskos, noting, “You need to find the story that’s behind the relationship. It’s really a reflection of what the university campus feels like. It’s got to operate as a business, but it should be cohesive with its environment.”
Category:
E-Commerce
AI hallucinations are one of users’ biggest concerns when utilizing large language models (LLMs). And while many might expect front-runners like OpenAI and Anthropic to lead the way in addressing the issue, it’s a travel and expenses platform that may be breaking new ground. On Wednesday, Navan revealed its new AI platform, Navan Cognition, which goes beyond single-purpose chatbots and basic AI tools to create an AI workforce capable of automating complex tasks. “We never do cool technology for the sake of it,” says Ilan Twig, Navan’s cofounder and chief technology officer. “We use the best technologies to drive the best user experience.” On June 20, the company confidentially filed for its initial public offering. Navan was last valued at $9.2 billion in 2022 after raising $304 million in equity and debt financing. Navans Cognition-powered virtual travel agent, Ava, can book and reschedule flights and hotels, manage upgrades, process expenses, and provide 24/7 support through a conversational chatbot platform. But early in development, the company realized that for AI to be truly reliable, it must work unsupervisedand more importantly, with no critical hallucinations. “A critical hallucination is when the user somehow, or the bot somehow, gets to the point where something undesirable happens,” Twig says. A hallucination can impact both the user and the company, particularly in terms of travel, whether by booking a flight that doesnt exist to satisfy a request, or offering a free upgrade the user isnt entitled to. With this in mind, Navan began using Cognition through Ava in 2023, ultimately finding that instead of using one generalist chatbot, a network of specialized agents working together produced more accurate and reliable results. “We focused on a real-life problem, and we built the infrastructure to support that real-life problem,” Twig says. Working as an organization Inspired by the neural connections of the human brain, Navan Cognition deploys a modular multi-agent framework, with AI specialized in different areas, supervised for accuracy. In a way, Cognition works as a company org chart, breaking down AI into various departments with particular specialties, like booking flights or issuing refunds. Other “departments” serve as compliance for logic, and “managers” answer questions and liaise with others if a question is unknown. Itamar Kahn, a neuroscience professor and principal investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute says Navan identified the conditions that cause LLM hallucinations and developed solutions to eliminate them. Kahn, a close friend of Twig, first heard about Cognition in its early stages three years ago, following the framework’s development. He also provided support for Twig’s recent white paper detailing how Navan Cognition works and what problems it aims to solve. “I have a shared research interest with Ilan: high-order cognition. Essentially, any kind of system, artificial or biological, can react to changing circumstances in its environment, and respond to those efficiently,” Kahn says. When a user asks Ava a question or assigns a task, Cognition routes it through several specialized agents to determine the best course of action. Meanwhile, a supervising AI agent checks responses for accuracy and credibility, acting as a safeguard. Twig says he was inspired by the way supervisors in call centers review and learn from agent calls. So I said, okay, I’m going to have a supervisor,” he tells Fast Company. “But instead of waiting for the end of the week and sampling two calls, I will actually do it for every response that the agent wants to send back to the user. It will first go to the supervisor to ensure that it doesnt feel or smell like a hallucination. Navans departmental-like approach has proven effective, with Ava now handling around 8,000 chats daily, reportedly with zero critical hallucinations. The systems lack of need for human oversight has also helped Navan scale without having to expand its travel support agent workforce. Why is a travel platform at the forefront of AI innovation? Innovation requires curiositya trait Twig has carried from childhood into his work at Navan. At age 15, Twig became obsessed with light, building a virtual harp using mirrors, resistors, and the south-facing window of his childhood home in Israel. “I ended up having eight virtual beams of light connected to the computer. Whenever you disrupted any of the lights, it would generate a note. And it was the Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol . . .” He has nurtured that same inventive spirit on his engineering team at Navan, encouraging fresh thinking on common problems. “We are curious. We are not afraid of making mistakes,” Twig says. But it wasnt just out-of-the-box thinking that led to Cognitions development. Being a smaller company without a sole focus on AI forced Navan to innovate differently. “They’re not an AI company that is trying to solve the problem of large language models,” Kahn says. “They wanted to solve this problem for all of these customers. And I think this is why this system is working.” With fewer resources than giants like OpenAI, Navan had to take a creative approach. “It’s a choice of architecture,” Kahn says. Rather than building another LLM to replace one with errors, Navan changed the inputs and outputs that inhibited the hallucinations. With promising results, Navan is now preparing to scale its platform, making the Cognition framework available to other developers and companies to sign up for later this year. “It is an amazing opportunity, because LLMs are new thing,” Twig says. “It opens the door to pretty much follow your imagination. And if you are persistent and curious, there is an opportunity to do something that no one else on the planet did.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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