When it comes to market segmentation, I dont see truly well-documented cases often.
At a more simplistic level, we think of classic matrices such as BCG or McKinseys. But the real exercise of segmentation is far more complex. In certain contexts, it comes close to the behavior of a tensor: multiple dimensions, cross-dependencies, distinct weights, temporality, and contextual factors that shift the meaning of data depending on the axis being analyzed.
Thinking like a tensor is practicing Model Thinking, which remains, above all, an analog discipline. It requires a brain, not a machine.
The challenge is necessarily multidisciplinary, and this is exactly where executives suffer, spending enormous time compensating for immature teams.
Even when business operators manage to bring quantitative data from ERP, CRM, or sector reports (which are often scarce or methodologically fragile), the information set must be normalized. This process demands an additional set of competencies: statistical knowledge, data-cleaning techniques, sampling concepts, dimensional modeling, and even systems logic to avoid collinearity and redundancy.
When unstructured data is added, the challenge grows further.
This includes everything from more sophisticated sentiment analysis to qualitative inputs from field teams, customer recordings, or information mined from third-party sources. In these cases, the problem is not confined to normalization: It involves interpreting, validating, reducing noise, and converting natural language into structures that can interface with transactional data. It is epistemological, not just technical.
SERIOUS SEGMENTATION
Serious segmentation is not a mere snapshot of the market. It plots and overlays multiple layers: data on strategic human resources (both internal and competitive), asset acquisition history, technological maturity, revenues and margins, pricing elasticity, media activity, public opinion, and ecosystem maps revealing the true position of players.
Good segmentation uncovers unclaimed revenue, positioning errors, pricing failures, ignored clusters, asymmetries between capability and discourse, and even subtle competitor movements that go unnoticed at the tactical level.
The entire process demands other equally essential competencies: dataset modeling, command of relational tables, use of manipulation languages such as SQL, Python, or R, basic and applied statistics, visualization techniques, clustering, similarity analysis, and, above all, the ability to formulate hypotheses. Without hypotheses, there is no segmentation. There is only table sorting.
THE AGENT ERA
In the so-called era of agents (some already speak of the decade of agents) a complementary arsenal emerges to support these processes. Agents capable of cleaning and normalizing data, agents for web scraping and data enrichment, agents that classify and label content using LLMs as annotators, statistical automation agents able to perform clustering, PCA, or churn analysis, reconciliation agents capable of resolving deduplication and probabilistic matching, and competitive-simulation agents designed to test elasticity scenarios, pricing movements, or anticipated reactions of market players.
As a last resort, and not as the first option, as leaders outside tech hubs tend to believe, RAG enters the picture.
This article could list agents available in the ecosystem for immediate use, but it is fundamentally about the capabilities that precede automation.
Before any automation, there is foundational knowledge: truly understanding the discipline of segmentation, knowing principles of market behavior, and having clarity about the information models that generate strategic insights for guiding portfolio, productive capacity, and competitive advantage. No GPU, no matter how powerful, replaces this conceptual clarity.
And this clarity is not necessarily the exclusive responsibility of IT, the CTO, or marketing teams (understanding marketing here, according to the American Marketing Associations definition). Segmentation belongs to multidimensional leaders capable of moving fluidly across strategy, operations, data, behavior, and finance.
The provocative question remains: Do these leaders exist in the analog perspective, prior to automation? Many companies try to leap directly from subjective culture to algorithmic culture without building the intermediate methodological culture, and this is one of the silent sources of failure today.
There is robust literature on segmentation and, it must be said, it requires intellectual musculature. I appreciate Malcolm McDonald and Ian Dunbar in Market Segmentation.
Peter Fader, from the Wharton School, offers a more financial and pricing-oriented view in The Customer-Base Audit.
Naturally, these two works only give a glimpse of the thinking underlying the structured idea.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Finally, two observations.
First, what I have just written is not something that ChatGPTeven as a generative modelwould spontaneously produce. LLMs do not naturally form implicit assumptions across domains, nor do they articulate disciplinary layers whose connection depends on human repertoire and has not been previously mapped. They operate on existing corpora; they do not originate new paradigms on their own.
Second, most business schools today, aside from a small group of highly specialized institutions, tend not to emphasize this mode of thinking. Not by fault, but by design. Their structure was built to serve the needs of upward-moving managers, not to cultivate the broader, integrative perspective required of executive-level decision makers.
This gap in knowledge for top leadership has a structural explanation: The audience is relatively small, and therefore not the core economic engine of educational institutions. As a result, many executive leaders find themselves without ongoing renewal of their knowledge matrix, even in an era that promotes continuous learning.
A paradox of our time.
Rodrigo Magnago is researcher and director at RMagnago Critical Thinking.
A recent New York Times headlineDid Women Ruin the Workplace?sparked a firestorm across social media. Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives, is pushing back on this notion with data and nuance. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, the impact of market disruption, and why women-centered spaces remain vital.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
The environment that you’ve come into with the Trump White House is kind of heightened; discussions about diversity are heated. The term DEI has become kind of a negative. How do you frame what Chief is about in this kind of climate?
There’s certainly more scrutiny on things today perhaps than there were in the past, but I think at the end of the day, there’s a desire for creating better, stronger leaders, better outcomes, better decision-making, more agile thinking. While there are different contexts being held and conversations being held around DEI and the nuances of that, the truth is when you cut through the big headlines, the realities remain the same, which is supporting leadership at a time of high velocity of change is always beneficial, and we happen to build that in a way that supports women leaders, and I think there’s a lot of support for that.
Chief recently published a report in partnership with Harris surveying over a thousand senior level women, and it pointed to a sort of changing definition of maybe ambition and success, a shift away from playing it safe toward bolder career moves, which was in some ways more optimistic and more empowering than I’d expected.
There had been a slew of articles that had come out focusing on changes in the workforce and finding the negative nugget in there to kind of put that on blast. And I’m not denying that there aren’t those factors at hand, but the she-cession is coming, women are being dumped out of the workforce. The return to office doesn’t work for all women in the polarity that we’re in today of big headlines being the only definition. We lose all nuance.
And so for us here, I come in February and I’m looking at this incredibly energetic Chief membership and thinking, “This is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing people reacting and responding to change in ways that are innovative and curious and thought-provoking, this level of optimism that’s sitting in Chief, that they’re communicating together.” This is not just Chief telling women to be optimistic, this is the energy that you’re feeling from conversation.
And so the genesis of this poll was how do we validate that? And so in the women that we surveyed, they’re citing that they’re more ambitious now than ever, and in fact they’re energized by the professional growth ahead because they feel like they can have more optionality and more of a hand on the wheel of their own career design than what they used to have. This is where that metaphor of the ladder and the stay rung to rung to rung and keep the course and stay the path and then something happens at the top. Everyone can see that’s not necessarily the case anymore.
How much of the boldness do you think might be economy driven? I noticed that over 80% of the executives cited market disruption as a motivator. It’s almost like disruption is, I don’t know, forcing action?
I think the economy is certainly always going to be a factor, but it’s also like, look at industry consolidation. You can look at what’s happening in the media business, you can look at what’s happening across retail. You can look at what’s happening in every vector and AI, which has a through line all the way across all of these industries, and a common thread of this duality of opportunity and threat of change.
Is that rung as a metaphor again, for just career direction, not necessarily the corporate ladder as much as it is just the up a ladder? Is that the right path for me? Do I want other options? Do I want different kinds of flexibility? Do I have the sort of tools at my fingertips to actually do that? And that is what happens at Chief and that’s what’s been very interesting for me to see and come back actually from a founding membership in 2019 to where we are today.
Women are building, scheming, meaning business is scheming, partnering, collaborating differently now. I think the lids off on a lot of that stuff for women. And so you do feel the optimism coming out in this survey, even though I think there’s a pragmatism and recognizing it is coming from disruption, but disruption does bring opportunity.
So much of Chief is built around in-person connection and community, but in-person it’s so hard to scale. And I know when I was talking to your predecessor, Carolyn, she talked about the potential to have a LinkedIn-like product and a Masterclass-like product and a dating-app like product. How do you think about todays digital tools for community versus the IRL experiences? Where do you balance those things?
What I think about Chief today, and I think that was a very accurate description that Carolyn gave when that started. I think we’ve morphed into this space where there are a couple of different components. There are intimate experiences. By that, I mean small space experiences where you talk and see and share about leadership challenges that can be in a virtual experience, very rewarding, but in certain places and markets, we can make that happen in real life.
It doesn’t have to be either-or, coaching, one-to-one coaching, so that happens on a virtual piece sometimes, that can be very rewarding, but if I’m going to have a cocktail party around other senior marketers, that should be at the clubhouse in real life. I’m about to go to LA this week for my eighth and then San Francisco in two weeks for the ninth. Nine ChiefXs this year, and this is where nine locations across the country, we’ve had members come, and it’s in real life, and they’re like rallies, and I get so much energy out of these things.
It’s unbelievable. We have some speakers, some programming, but it’s really about this kind of connecting energy between Chiefs with other Chiefs, big corporate people talking to founders of small things, folks who are in transition, all senior leaders in various parts of their journey, and these large rallies are definitely IRL and then peppered between that are the right size virtual experiences.
My next tranche of focus is really on the digital experience, the Chief app, the Chief digital experience in terms of, how do we make that as bes of a member companion? The networking piece, the connections piece, whether that was the LinkedIn analogy that Carolyn meant, that’s where that really comes to life, but it comes to life in service of a lot of in real life experiences across multiple use types.
Many of the things that a woman leader is interested in are things that any leader is interested in. It doesn’t have to connect to the fact that it’s a woman, and then there are a tranche of things that may be more applicable to women than to men, although you could argue they’re applicable to everyone. I always struggled with this when we mentioned you being in Fast Company.
It was for a package we did on the most creative people in business and there were men and women on it, and we didn’t do a most powerful women in business like Fortune did. But there is something different when women get together without men there that maybe as a man I don’t quite appreciate or I want to, but I don’t really know.
Listen, I think for women in leadership roles, there is a place and a time for being together and learning from each other that’s just different. It’s additive. The conversations are because a woman’s career journey is tied to that 360 view of who they are in life, it just makes those conversations different, but not necessarily better. I’ve been in multiple coworking environments where it’s male, female, that’s all great too. I’m a big believer in the bothI really am.
Its the first week in December. If you don’t already have the Christmas tunes blasting in the office, what are you waiting for?
The debate over listening to music while at work, however, often divides offices. Some love to crank up the music while toiling away, and find silence to be deafening. Others can only listen to background music or instrumental playlists like coffeeshop jazz in the background or LoFi Girl, a genre featuring low-fidelity, calming beats. Some insist on complete silence.
As the countdown to the holidays begins, Google searches for Christmas playlist 2025 have spiked this past week. But could listening to Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé on loop be sabotaging office productivity?
A study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience found that pleasurable music triggers dopamine release, creating a natural high that can boost energy for mundane tasks. But while listening to music can boost focus and productivity, the BPM, or beats per minute, matter: Research has shown music with a tempo of 50-80 beats per minute is optimal for focus and productivity. When background music at a workplace is out of sync with what workers need to get on with their jobs, it can affect their energy, mood and even performance.
So what does this mean for your favorite festive tunes? TopResume analyzed Spotifys most popular Christmas songs and ranked them by BPM to reveal the tracks most likely to derail office concentration in the final weeks of 2025.
Bad news for Ariana Grande stans. Grandes Last Christmas takes the top spot as the most distracting Christmas song, with a 206 BPM. This comes in at over triple the recommended BPM of 60-80 for maintaining focus during tasks.
Employees may also find Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters’ “Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas)” and Shakin’ Stevens’ “Merry Christmas Everyone” somewhat distracting with a 203 BPM.
Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (202 BPM), another Ariana Grande Christmas classic, “Santa Tell Me” (192 BPM) are also best left for lunch break listening.
On the other hand, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” emerged as the most productivity-friendly holiday track, clocking in at just 67 BPM, the optimal tempo range for maintaining concentration.
Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” and Whitney Houston’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” tied at 73 BPM. The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s beloved “Christmas Time Is Here” comes in at 75 BPM. Festive favorite Ella Fitzgerald claims two spots with “Frosty The Snowman” and “Sleigh Ride,” both at 77 BPM.
The end of the year is an especially demanding time for many professionals. Between wrapping up projects, juggling tighter deadlines, managing holiday commitments at home, and navigating the colder weather and shorter days, its easy for stress levels to creep up, Amanda Augustine, a certified professional career coach and the resident career expert for TopResume, says. Thats why its so important to create a festive atmosphere at work that doesnt sacrifice anyones focus.
p>Thats not an excuse to be a Grinch and insist on silence (after all, its Christmas and noise cancelling headphones exist for a reason). Simply swap out Ariana Grande for Ella Fitzgerald in shared spaces and everyones happy. Maybe.
A powerful advisory group within the CDC voted Friday to overturn a longstanding precaution designed to protect newborn babies.
If the change is approved by the acting director of the agency, the government will no longer universally recommend the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The shot, which provides protection from the leading cause of liver cancer, has been standard practice for newborns since 1991.
Fridays 8-3 vote is a milestone for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who quickly began reshaping the public health agency to reflect his personal views on vaccines after being sworn in early this year. Kennedy has long been a prominent voice among anti-vaccine activists, a position that sparked broad concern that the CDC might break with scientific consensus around vaccines under his guidance.
In August, the FDA narrowed its approval for the COVID vaccine to people 65 and older or those with underlying health conditions. In spite of the FDAs changes, many insurers said that they would follow previous guidance and cover the shots widely for anyone who wanted one
In a press release following Fridays vote, the CDC defended its decision to support individual-based decision-making which would encourage parents and their doctors to opt into childhood vaccines based on the risk of infection. The committee will now only recommend the vaccine at birth for newborns born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B.
“The American people have benefited from the committee’s well-informed, rigorous discussion about the appropriateness of a vaccination in the first few hours of life,” CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill said.
Battle at the CDC
O’Neill, an entrepreneur and investor with prior experience at HHS, was chosen for the post after the dramatic ouster of former director Susan Monarez, who was herself nominated by Trump. Monarez was fired after refusing to back Kennedys preferred changes to the agencys vaccine policy, prompting a wave of high profile resignations at the CDC.
They are essentially trying to undo a lot of the science that has been settled for vaccine policies, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said following the flurry of resignations.
Former CDC Director Susan Monarez testified in the Senate in September, issuing grave warnings about Kennedys influence on U.S. health policy. Given what I have seen, if we continue down this path, we are not preparednot just for pandemics, but for preventing chronic health disease. And were going to see kids dying of vaccine-preventable diseases, Monarez said.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP, has been a particular nexus of concern given Kennedys history of spreading vaccine misinformation. Kennedy fired all of the committees previous members earlier this year and installed new members friendlier to anti-vaccine policies.
At the time, Kennedy stressed that the agency should care as much about every child who could be injured by one of these products as we do every child who could be injured by an infectious disease, referencing a talking point common in anti-vaccine misinformation.
Doctors reject the CDC changes
In spite of Kennedys claim that the remade panel would feature no ideological anti-vaxxers, its new members include vaccine skeptics and other members with no prior vaccine experience. The changes were consequential enough to prompt a lawsuit from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest professional association of pediatricians in the country.
Pediatricians have seen firsthand the harm created by the disruptive and politicized decisions to overturn decades of evidence-based federal guidance on immunizations, AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D. said. These changes have caused fear, decreased vaccine confidence, and barriers for families to access vaccines.
Fridays vote wont be official until the CDCs acting director signs the new recommendations, which is very likely to happen. At least one Republican expressed his concerns about the rollback to 30 years of U.S. vaccine policy on Friday, encouraging the acting director to reject the changes. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who supported Kennedy to lead HHS, also called the ACIP totally discredited on X leading up to the vote.
As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake, Cassidy wrote on X. … Before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B. Now, its fewer than 20. Ending the recommendation for newborns makes it more likely the number of cases will begin to increase again.
Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.
Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica, California, after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.
Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed and brought him a measure of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect.
Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin, Germany.
He also designed an expansion of Facebooks Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the companys CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the fields top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as refreshingly original and totally American work.
Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native countrys highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.
Years after he stopped designing ordinary-looking buildings, word surfaced in 2006 that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project that had led to his career epiphany might be headed for the wrecking ball. Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused.
Theyre going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had, he said with a laugh.
Eventually, the mall was remodeled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, its no Gehry masterpiece.
Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world.
The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York Citys Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building (now known as 8 Spruce), once one of the worlds tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.
That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia universities.
Not everyone was a fan of Gehrys work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.
Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as oppressive, arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.
Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhowers family, who objected to Gehrys bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nations 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhowers life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.
If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.
He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpsons letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, Frank Gehry, youve done it again!
Some people think I actually do that, he would later tell The Associated Press.
Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on February 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.
Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasnt until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.
It was like the first thing in my life that Id done well in, he said.
He went on to earn a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954. After serving in the Army, he studied urban planning at Harvard University.
His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.
Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
By John Rogers, Associated Press
In South Korea several weeks ago, the U.S. and China came to a temporary agreement, in which theyll kick a rare-earth can down the road.
The agreement took the form of a one-year pause in the dispute between the two nations over rare earth elements (REEs): China postponed imposing newly announced export controls on 17 different REEs and, in turn, the U.S. announced it would reduce certain tariffs on Chinese goods.
For years, the United States and its allies have grappled with a troubling resource reality: China dominates the global supply of REEs and critical raw materials (CRMs)the essential ingredients of our digital age. From smartphones to electric vehicles, from solar panels to advanced weapons systems, our dependence on these materials has left the U.S. economically and strategically vulnerable.
While this new deal provides a short-term relief from supply-chain stress, it also deepens the case that we cannot forever rely on Chinas good will or geopolitical timing. Rather than doubling down on negotiations and hoping for stable access, what if we could build a parallel, resilient, and circular system here at home?
We actually can. Call it urban mining.
ELECTRONIC WASTE
Every year, millions of tons of electronic waste and batteries pile up in landfills or languish in drawersold laptops and broken phones, obsolete keyboards, and rusty routers. These discarded gadgets may be junk, but theyre also laden with circular ore. They contain cadmium, lithium, cobalt, and other valuable elements that can be extracted, refined, and reused. Recovery rates on materials in lithium-ion batteries, for example, can reach as high as 98% for cobalt, 95% for nickel, and 90% for copper and aluminum.
According to recent studies, the amount of precious and rare metals embedded in global electronic waste is enough to supply many industries for decades. We can leverage that here. If properly recovered, the materials in our existing e-waste could sustain electric vehicle and other manufacturing needs for the next 70 years. Urban mining offers a domestic supply of REEs and CRMsone that doesnt depend on any single foreign states capricious decision to keep exporting.
A NEW KIND OF SUPPLY CHAIN
Urban mining is more than recycling. Its about re-engineering the supply chain, turning structurally excluded communities into decentralized resource hubs where waste becomes a renewable source of critical materials.
Imagine a network of regional recovery centers across North America and Europe processing old electronics with advanced separation and extraction technologies. These urban hubs could feed the domestic market with a steady stream of critical materialsno freighters, no tariffs, no geopolitical strings attached.
We know the great potential of this approach because the Circular Supply Chain Coalition (CSCC) has tested these efforts already. As the founding convener of the CSCC, my company, Pyxera Global, conducted a pilot effort in Tennessee with leading circular supply chain partners who know a thing or two about reverse logistics.
Developing a robust urban-mining ecosystem could also create green jobs, boost local economies, and reduce our carbon footprint. More importantly, it would grant the countries in which the CSCC operates and its partners true mineral sovereignty. Instead of negotiating access to foreign mines, we could mine our own cities, transforming dependence into resilience.
In that light, urban mining stands out as a strategic insurance policy. If we build capacity to recover and reallocate critical materials domestically, we reduce external providers bargaining power.
We cant just dig our way out of this problem, nor do we have to. The minerals we need arent just buried deep in the earth. Theyre sitting in our homes, offices, and landfills, waiting to be reclaimed. Urban mining offers us a future of independence, innovation, and sustainability. The next gold rush isnt in them thar hills. Its in our landfills, garages, and junk drawers.
Deirdre White is president and CEO of Pyxera Global.
When film cameras were invented, people didnt become filmmakers overnight. We pointed cameras at theater stages, digitizing what already existed. It took us a while to reimagine what film cameras could unlock. The real opportunity wasnt recording theater plays. It was stepping outside and inventing cinema.
Thats where many nonprofits are with AI today. Most still layer it on top of existing processes, not because they dont care about innovation, but because they lack both the frameworks to identify the right use cases and the capacity to act on them.
True innovation starts when organizations have the space, skills, and confidence to reimagine how impact itself is delivered in an AI-native way.
By AI-native, I mean rethinking how we solve problems with AI from the get-go, so impact becomes ultra-personalized, timely, scalable, and radically more effective. This is while humans focus on empathy, trust, and complex judgment. AI isnt just a tool. It becomes part of the social impacts operating system.
THE FUNDING GAP IS STRUCTURAL, NOT TECHNICAL
Fast Forwardthe U.S.-based organization focused on growing the tech and AI-powered nonprofit ecosystemrecently published data in their 2025 AI for Humanity report confirming that AI-powered nonprofits are emerging in the social sector. Nearly half of AI-powered nonprofits surveyed say adopting AI has already raised expenses, though. To unlock their full potential, 84% say additional funding is necessary to continue developing and scaling their work. The truth is that while the for-profit sector moves full-steam ahead on AI, nonprofits are at risk of being left behind the tech curve. Many are being asked to solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century tech, Kevin Barenblat, cofounder of Fast Forward told me. The good news is that this is a problem money can solve. There is already momentum among funders who are kickstarting AI in the nonprofit sectorGoogle.org, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and the folks behind Humanity AIbut we want to see more philanthropists investing in AI for good. It is our best chance at a future where AI improves our global well-being.
And the impact curve highlighted in the report is impressive:
At the smallest budgets (under $100,000), AI-powered nonprofits serve a median of just under 2,000 lives. By the time annual budgets cross $1 million, median reach jumps dramatically to half a million people. At $5 million and above, these organizations are reaching a median of seven million lives.
But funding alone wont close the gap. Nonprofits also need accessible, safe ways to start building, without six-figure budgets or advanced tech teams. Thats why Tech To The Rescue builttogether with Hugging Face, the worlds largest open-source AI communitya practical, free AI Open Source Q&A Guide. It helps nonprofits navigate more than two million open modelssafely, affordably, and without needing a data science team. Its a living, community-built resource that saves organizations time, money, and confusion by giving them clear frameworks for evaluating models, understanding licenses, and building responsibly. For many nonprofits, open models can reduce AI costs dramatically compared to commercial toolssometimes all the way to zero.
The next 1224 months will determine which organizations lead the AI-for-good era.
WHAT AI-NATIVE TRANSFORMATION LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
Organizations breaking the scalability barrier arent just using AI. Theyre redesigning how mission delivery works.
Build once, deploy everywhere
Brazil-based Flying Labs built an AI platform for fire-damage assessment using drone and satellite imagery, and made it open source so it can scale globally. Supported by Lenovo hardware and training, the team processed high-resolution Sentinel-2 data to help Brazils Forest Foundation monitor over 50 protected areas in So Paulo. One build, infinite deployments, and compounding returns for the planet.
Capacity first, technology second
In India, Reap Benefit used Lenovos support under the umbrella of Tech To The Rescues accelerator to build internal AI capability first. Today, their youth-led civic platform has engaged over 120,000 participants and logged more than one million hyperlocal data points. They automate civic-action analysis and personalize programs without growing headcount. They didnt buy tools, they built muscle.
Automate education
For UK-based Reboot the Future, AI reduced resource-classification time from about 2 hours to 5 minutes for a content library serving 22,000 teachers, freeing the team to scale impact. Automation didnt replace educators; it freed their time to focus on more fundamental issues.
These breakthroughs werent only about the tools. They were about readinessinfrastructure, expertise, and strategic design.
5 FUNDING SHIFTS TO UNLOCK THE AI MULTIPLIER
Across our work at Tech To The Rescue, five shifts emerge as the difference between pilots and transformation:
1) Fund people and process, not just pilots
Support technical talentengineers, data staff, product leadsand board-level AI literacy. Fast Forward found that 41% of AI-powered nonprofits surveyed cite lack of in-house expertise as a major barrier when adopting AI.
2) Reward responsible experimentation, early
Fund ethical AI testing before outcomes are perfect. For organizations that are just getting started, Fast Forward recommends developing an AI policy to guide usage. They made creating a policy easy with their free AI policy builder for nonprofits.
3) Make governance a first-mile investment
AI strategy is organizational strategy. Fund leadership capacity before scale, not after.
4) Fund the prototype stage
Unrestricted capital unlocks data infrastructure and experimentation. Lean innovators often build the future, if given room.
5) Pay for shared infrastructure, not parallel efforts
Forty-three percent of AI-powered nonprofits surveyedby Fast Forward already use open-source tools. Fund shared layers where one build benefits many.
PHILANTHROPYS MAKE-OR-BREAK MOMENT
The issues we care aboutfrom global health to climate resiliencewont wait while we digitize analog models. Tools follow capacity, not the other way around. Thats the shift philanthropy must make. Closing this gap isnt optional. Its philanthropys hidden multiplier for millions of lives.
Jacek Siadkowski is cofounder and CEO of Tech To The Rescue.
In April 2000, Elsevier published an article in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which claimed that the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) from the Monsanto Company didnt pose a risk of cancer or other health issues for humans.
Twenty-five years later, the publisher has retracted that paper, citing litigation that revealed it was based solely on unpublished studies by Monsanto itself.
Furthermore, Elsevier states that the article (titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans) appears to have been co-written with Monsanto employees, despite no explicit accreditation.
Monsanto might have also compensated the articles authors: Gary M. Williams, Robert Kroes, and Ian C. Munro, the article states.
“Significant impact on regulatory decision-making”
Its impossible to overstate the influence this article had over the more than two decades since it was published.
The paper had a significant impact on regulatory decision-making regarding glyphosate and Roundup for decades,” Martin van den Berg, the journal’s co-editor-in-chief, writes in the retraction notice.
Van den Berg adds that the lack of clarity regarding which parts of the article were authored by Monsanto employees creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn.”
“Specifically, the article asserts the absence of carcinogenicity associated with glyphosate or its technical formulation, Roundup,” Van den Berg wrote. “It is unclear how much of the conclusions of the authors were influenced by external contributions of Monsanto without proper acknowledgments.
According to Elseviers metrics, the article has been cited 779 times, including 66 policy citations.
Revelations widely covered in 2017
While Van den Berg has just now taken action to retract the paper, the litigation he cites dates back to 2017. The revelations were widely covered at the time, yet the landmark paper remained untouched.
This decision has been made after careful consideration of the COPE [Committee on Publication Ethics] guidelines and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the authorship and content of this article and in light of no response having been provided to address the findings, Van den Berg states as an explanation.
Van den Berg reached out to Williams, the sole living author, for an explanation but received no response.
In recent years, Monsanto has paid billions of dollars across numerous lawsuits alleging that Roundup causes cancer. Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant, acquired Monsanto in 2018 and retired the brands namewhich had become a liability.
Fast Company has reached out to Williams and Bayer for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has continued to state that glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen, based on study reviews.
This week, the Trump administration pushed the U.S. Supreme Court to curb lawsuits against Bayer that allege Roundup causes cancers.
Shares of Bayer AG (ETR: BAYN) jumped more than 12% in response to the Trump administrations brief.
The Federal Reserves preferred measure of inflation changed little in September, likely easing the way to a widely expected interest rate cut by the central bank next week.
Prices rose 0.3% in September from August, the Commerce Department said Friday, in a report that was delayed five weeks by the government shutdown. It matched the increase recorded during the previous month. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2% in September from August, the same as August, and a pace that if it continued for a year would bring inflation closer to the Feds 2% target.
Compared with a year ago, overall prices rose 2.8%, up slightly from 2.7% in August. Core prices also rose 2.8% from a year earlier, a small decline from the previous months figure of 2.9%.
The data indicate that core inflation was muted in September and will bolster the case for a cut to the Feds key interest rate at its next meeting Dec. 9-10. Inflation remains above the central banks 2% target, partly because of President Donald Trumps tariffs, but many Fed officials argue that weak hiring, modest economic growth, and slowing wage gains will steadily reduce price gains in the coming months.
At the same time, there were some warning signs in the figures. Omair Sharif, chief economist at Inflation Insights, said that Friday’s report overall will likely reassure the Fed that core inflation is mostly cool. But he noted that a measure of services inflation in the report remains elevated and could raise concerns among some Fed policymakers, since the higher figure doesn’t stem from tariffs, but instead broader inflationary pressures.
It hasnt really shown any sign of slowing down, Sharif said. That has to be concerning for them.
The Fed is facing a tricky decision next week: It would typically keep rates high to fight inflation. At the same time, it is worried about weak hiring and a slowly rising unemployment rate. It hopes that reducing rates will spur more borrowing and boost the economy.
Fridays report also showed that consumer spending grew, though at a slower monthly pace in September than the previous month, suggesting Americans were willing to spend despite high prices and stagnant hiring. Spending rose 0.3% in September, down from 0.5% in August.
More recently, Americans appeared to step up their spending on Black Friday and the weekend after Thanksgiving, which could boost growth in this years fourth quarter. Online spending jumped 7.7% during the five days after Thanksgiving, compared to the same period last year, according to Adobe Analytics.
Incomes, meanwhile, rose at a solid 0.4% in September for the second straight month.
The economy is sending unusually mixed signals, as growth appears solid even as the unemployment rate has ticked up to a four-year high of 4.4%. Home sales are moribund and factories have been cutting jobs, yet a boom in investment in artificial intelligence data centers has boosted the broader economy.
But on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that businesses shed 32,000 jobs in November, a sign that companies are starting to lay off workers. Should job cuts continue, consumers would likely rapidly dial back their shopping, weakening the economy.
The government will issue its own jobs report for November on December 16, which for now is forecast to show a small gain, according to data provider FactSet.
Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
The Trump administration will be expanding its ban on travel for citizens of certain countries to more than 30, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, in the latest restriction to come since a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members.
The expansion would build on a travel ban already announced in June by the Republican administration, which barred travel to the U.S. for citizens from 12 countries and restricted access to the U.S. for people from seven others. In a social media post earlier this week, Noem had suggested more countries would be included.
Noem, who spoke late Thursday in an interview with Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham, would not provide further details, saying President Donald Trump was considering which countries would be included.
In the wake of the National Guard shooting, the administration already ratcheted up restrictions on the 19 countries included in the initial travel ban, which include Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and Haiti, among others.
Ingraham asked Noem whether the travel ban was expanding to 32 countries and asked which countries would be added to the 19 announced earlier this year.
I won’t be specific on the number, but it’s over 30. And the president is continuing to evaluate countries, Noem said.
If they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States? Noem said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about when an updated travel ban might go into effect and which countries would be included in it.
Additions to the June travel ban are the latest in what has been a rapidly unfolding series of immigration actions since the shooting Thanksgiving week of two National Guard troops in Washington.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who emigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, has been charged with first-degree murder after one of the two victims, West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died of wounds sustained in the Nov. 26 shooting. The second victim, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, was critically wounded. Lakanwal has pleaded not guilty.
The Trump administration has argued that more vetting is needed to make sure people entering or already in the U.S. aren’t a threat. Critics say the administration is traumatizing people who’ve already gone through extensive vetting to get to the U.S. and say the new measures amount to collective punishment.
Over the course of a little more than a week, the administration has halted asylum decisions, paused processing of immigration-related benefits for people in the U.S. from the 19 travel ban countries and halted visas for Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort.
On Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it was reducing the time period that work permits are valid for certain applicants such as refugees and people with asylum so they have to reapply more often and go through vetting more frequently.
Rebecca Santana, Associated Press
