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A small Finnish startup says it has done what the world’s biggest automakers are still struggling to do: put a solid-state battery into a production vehicle, starting with a motorcycle that can charge to more than 100 miles of range in as little as five minutes. For the last 15 years, the entire battery industry in automotive has been talking about solid-state batteriesthat theyre the future, says Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Donut Lab, the startup that makes the new battery. But up until today, despite all the talk, theres never been a single production vehicle that uses solid-state batteries. Theyve only been used at lab level. [Image: Verge Motorcycles] Verge Motorcycles, an electric motorcycle startup, is using the new battery in a bike thats shipping to customers this quarter. Donut Lab, which originally launched as a spin-off of Verge, is also in talks with about 100 electric vehicle companies that want to shift to solid-state batteries. [Image: Verge Motorcycles] Solid-state batteries have big advantages over the typical lithium-ion batteries that are in use now. The batteries, which use a solid electrolyte instead of liquid or gel, are safer, without the risk of catching fire. Theyre also more efficient and can charge much faster, making charging an EV more like filling up with gas. (Verge advertises that its motorcycle’s new battery can add 186 miles of range in 10 minutes, though it can technically charge in as little as 5 minutes with a high-power charger; the vehicle offers up to 370 total miles of range.) Solid-state batteries also don’t degrade as quickly. And in Donut Lab’s case, the battery is made from low-cost materials that are abundantly available around the world. [Image: Verge Motorcycles] The new battery could help avoid the problem of EVs quickly losing resale value. “This battery lasts multiple lifetimes of a car or motorcycle,” Lehtimäki says. “So that’s another very important thing. You can rest assured that there’s zero degradation over time in the lifetime of a motorcycle. If there’s a new model and you want to sell the previous version, you know it’s as good as new from the battery perspective.” [Image: Verge Motorcycles] The startup is still in the process of patenting the technology, and declined to share its specific chemistry or production methodology. (Automakers interested in using the batteries have seen more details under a nondisclosure agreement, Lehtimäki says.) But it argues that it was able to outpace other companies working on solid-state batteries because it’s more nimble. [Image: Verge Motorcycles] “When you have smaller groups of very talented engineers working on a single vision, where it’s okay to take risks and think outside the box and try out new thingswhich is quite hard in corporate environmentsit’s typically the young companies that actually bring new technologies and innovations to the market,” Lehtimäki says. Donut Lab previously designed a high-performance motor for EVs that fits inside wheels. [Image: Verge Motorcycles] The batteries each have cells roughly the size of mobile phones, arranged in larger modules. In the motorcycle, the full battery pack is around the size of a suitcase; for energy storage at a power plant, the system can scale up to fill a shipping container with battery cells. [Image: Donut Lab] The batteries, which Donut Lab produces at its own factory in Finland, can also be made in custom shapes, meaning they can easily be swapped into the design of current electric cars or other vehicles. In one demonstration, the team took a swappable battery pack out of a scooter popular in Southeast Asia and re-created it. [Image: Donut Lab] “We just took the dimensions and we created a battery in that exact shape and form,” Lehtimäki says. “That means that it can fit in the 100 million scooters in Asia as a drop-in replacement. And we can literally make these in any size so that the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] building cars doesn’t need to make any changes.” Of course, some automakers have already invested heavily in making their own conventional lithium-ion batteries, and couldn’t immediately make the switch. But Lehtimäki says others are considering quickly adopting the new batteries. Cova Power, a company that electrifies trailers for semitrucks, plans to use the new batteries. Several automakers are also in the process of putting them in cars, Lehtimäki says, though his company can’t yet name the manufacturers. In the past, one of the major challenges for solid-state batteries has been cost. But Donut Lab says its costs are competitive because it uses readily available materials. “The materials are the biggest driver for cost in batteries,” Lehtimäki says. “That’s why we are able to produce them already today at prices that are cheaper than lithium-ion for the end customer, which is the OEM. So that means that if you have a well-established company that produces, say, 100,000 SUVs a year, and they have negotiated the cost of their batteries for a decade, we can go to them and we can immediately offer them these better batteries at the same price than what they pay today.” Companies that need energy storagelike data centers, EV charging stations, or solar farms, for examplecould also quickly adopt the new batteries. “They can have three or four times faster charging than what they have today, Lehtimäki says, with lower costs.
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E-Commerce
We all think that we have great ideas. And we all tend to fall in love with our own ideas because, well, theyre ours. But most of my ideasand yoursare probably mediocre. And no, thats not an insult; its just a fact about the way most ideas are generated. I mean, if we were all genuinely spewing game-changers the world would be in a much different place than it is today. Most ideas are created without much thought or insight or pushbackand could probably benefit from people challenging them a lot more. Way too many ideas get approved that shouldnt have made it out of the conference room, but with lack of time, energy, and questioning, they move forward at an alarming rate. It doesnt have to be this way. Imagine if you had someone whose job it was to voice concerns about those ideas; someone whose sole purpose was to poke holes, identify flaws, and challenge assumptions. A Devils Advocate isnt there to be negative just for the sake of it. The role exists to make your ideas sharper and more bulletproof before they ever get the green light. The purpose isnt to tear down or be difficult; its to help you move forward more confidently with the best version of your idea, an idea that has been stress-tested and refined to withstand real-world challenges. A stress test The reason you need a Devils Advocate is simple: its the only way to make sure your ideas are ready for the real world. It should be common practice to stress-test your assumptions, invite dissent, and build real critical thinking into your process. Constructive debate is a cornerstone of the innovation process and should be embraced. Personally, I love it. Heres why: it makes me, and my ideas, better. The Devils Advocate role creates honest discussion, and pushes people to elevate their work by considering: Is this really the best we can do? They encourage people to say the hard thing: what others may be too afraid to express. Id much rather have someone help me think through all the potential angles early so I can win versus being blindsided later. I tell my team when Im introducing an idea: Please argue with meI need your brain on this! I dont have all the knowledge or ideas, so I dont make a decision until weve done that, says Tracie Ybarra, VP of talent at Avantor. Without someone willing to push back, your ideas may never reach their full potential. Instead, theyll simply be okay ideas, good enough to get by, but not strong enough to disrupt, innovate, or leave a lasting impact. And thats a shame. Because were all here to live a life of meaning, not mediocrity. Make Your Ideas Stronger How does being a Devils Advocate actually work? The goal isnt to be contrarian or difficult just for the fun of it. Its about creating a process that welcomes balanceseeing the potential and the problems in an idea, and generating solutions to overcome issues that arise. When you know that someone will challenge your ideas, you work harder to defend them, to improve them, to find the flaws before anyone else does. A good Devils Advocate is a professional skeptic: They don’t just point out what’s wrong; they ask why its wrong, and they offer alternative solutions. Engaging with you like this forces you to reflect, to rethink, and revise with the goal of improvement, not failure. Jarret Kleppél, VP, talent and organizational development at NBCUniversal, agrees: Inviting critique and cynicism throughout our process keeps our team less emotionally attached to the proposal and more focused on the outcome. This process also builds an important skill: resilience. You cant prepare for every problem in advance, but you can certainly stress-test better things before you go live. The Power of Constructive Conflict Constructive conflict is what makes a successful team. But we often take conflict as a negative thing. I like to think of constructive conflict to be more like a contrastit creates productive friction by giving a different perspective, not a divisive one. Without that, we settle into mediocrity, where comfort ensures everyones happy, but nobody really grows. Real innovation happens when different perspectives collide, when people arent afraid to challenge each others ideas in a productive way. A MIT Sloan-affiliated piece emphasizes that having a critical reviewer in meetings improves outcomes. One company that they studied experienced a 25% improvement in their project success rates when this role was active. What does that mean? It means that the Devils Advocate creates a stronger foundation for your ideas by challenging them before they face the real world. Devils Advocates also eliminate some of the fatal flaws of some collaboration: groupthink and the tendency to favor consensus over critical thought. People are scared of scrutiny so we avoid it, and thats how “good enough” takes hold. A Devils Advocate Doesnt Kill Ideas. It Protects Them A good idea that hasnt been tested isnt goodits vulnerable. Its like sending a fighter into the ring without any practice or training, expecting them to win. Doing that is naive, and somebody just might get hurt. The Devils Advocate is the trainer that makes your idea go a few rounds in the gym before its ready to compete. At X, Googles innovation lab, teams designate employees to act as devils advocates, identifying flaws in ideas to make them better before launch. IBM thoroughly tests ideas for weaknesses during high-stakes project planning to dramatically increase its chances of success. Christine Tricoli, group executive vice president and chief human resources officer at H.W. Kaufman Group advocates for this approach: One of the benefits of having someone ‘call you out’ or share the ‘unspoken concerns’ of the group is that it spares the team the embarrassment of having someone external discovering the issue for you. It saves time and money and helps you be more productive sooner rather than later. Leaders need to cultivate an environment that encourages this type of disruption or challenge within the team. How Do You Implement the Devils Advocate? Its easier than it sounds. Start by assigning someone the role of asking (or rotating the role among the team) tough questions during brainstorms or project planning. This person should have the power to challenge assumptions, ask what could go wrong, and offer alternative solutions without repercussions. Their job isnt to just criticize; its to actively work with the team to solve problems and refine ideas so theyre more likely to succeed. Ask yourself: when was the last time you let someone challenge your ideas in a constructive way? And if you dont have a Devils Advocate on your team, how could you benefit from having one? Let Dissent Be Your Friend My closest friends are the ones that can be most honest with me. I need them because they make me a better person, and their intent is to help, not to harm. Its the same here with ideas. By challenging your ideas early and often,you help move them forward and give them the best shot at success. Stop avoiding the hard questions, and stop letting groupthink win. Instead, build the Devils Advocate into your process and let it turn your good ideas into great ones. Because in the end, the only thing worse than a bad idea is an unexamined one.
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E-Commerce
Hi there! My name is Marcus Collins, DBA, and I study culture and its influence and impact on human behavior at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Each week, this column will explore the inner workings of organizational culture and the mechanisms that make it tick. Every entry will be accompanied by an episode from my podcast, From the Culture, that digs deeper into the culture of work from my conversations with the organizational leaders that make it all happen. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you are not having. Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you dont miss a beat. ___________________________________ Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Weve all heard this misattributed Peter Drucker quote and instinctively understand the disproportionate influence culture can have on an organizations business. However, if you asked five people to define organizational culture, youd likely get 55 different answers. Chief among them would be something along the lines of organizational culture is how we do things around here, the behaviors and norms that make up how a company engages in the collective production of work. Sounds about right, right? Sure. However, a centurys worth of literature on the matter would say otherwise. A social operating system According to Émile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, culture is a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like us do. Its a social operating system by which we collectively see the world and, subsequently, behave in it . . . together. What we wear, how we talk, what we dotheyre all byproducts of our cultural subscription. The same goes for organizational culture, the shared operating system for an organization that helps employees collectively see, so that they might collectively do. Therefore, reducing our concept of organizational culture to merely what we do around here ignores half of what makes culture . . . well . . . culture. Its this half, the way the organization sees the world and makes meaning of it, that dictates what we do. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"","subhed":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Take Airbnb, for example. The company sees the world as a place where everyone belongs, so its behaviors are demonstrative of this perspective. Thats why Airbnb adheres to a No Meetings Wednesday tradition to accommodate team members who tend to be more introverted, so everyone belongs. They practice radical acts of transparency so that information is available to everyone, not just those in the know. They also provide employees with an annual $2K travel credit to encourage people to go out and experience the world the way other people do. For everyone at Airbnb to feel like they belong, its important that employees see themselves as a part of a global community, not just as coworkers. World travel helps this endeavor by fostering the kind of empathy that drives connection. These ways of doing things around here at Airbnb are byproducts of how the organization sees around here. Together, the seeing and the doing constitute the organizations culture. Culture isnt just values Of course, there are those of us who understand this distinction. However, far too often we mistake the organizations perspective for its values; but the two are not analogues. Values are what an organization deems to be important. The way the organization sees the world, on the other hand, defines the truths that the organization holds about the world and why certain things have any importance in the first place. For instance, Patagonia believes in “climbing clean.” The company envisions a world with minimal human invasiveness on the planet and, therefore, it values environmentalism and integrity, which, ultimately, inform its ways of working. Its valueswhich the organization deems importantare informed by its perspective. Values alone are hollow without the deeply held truths of the organizations perspective that undergirds them. Its no wonder that research from the MIT Sloan Management Reviews 2020 Glassdoor Culture 500 study found no correlation between a companys stated values and the lived experiences of its employees. Culture is not a companys values; its the system upon which these values are constructed. So, without a clear perspective of the world, an organizations values are typically meaningless and have no impact on its behaviors. Theyre merely pretty words beautifully stated but rarely integrated. This is a significant challenge for business leaders who have reduced organizational culture to a set of rituals, rules, and words. Culture is so much more than these components, but since so many of us have defined culture so narrowly, we have not yet fully realized its impact. Culture, as Durkheim asserts, is an operating system, and this system is the most influential external force on human behavior that we arent fully leveraging. Not because of a lack of skill, intelligence, or technology, but because of a lack of understanding. Thats why this column existsto examine the whys and hows of organizational culture so that we might get better at it. Its also why I created a podcastin a world where there are probably too many podcasts, quite frankly. Culture is an organizations biggest cheat code, but the only way to use it properly is to understand it deeply. So thats what were here to do . . . together. And this is our first unlock, with many more to follow. If we want to get better at the way we do organizational culture, it starts with getting better at the way we see it. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"","subhed":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores th inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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