The AI revolution is redefining business and tech leadershipand no one is standing more squarely on the front lines than product leaders.
Once seen as a behind-the-scenes role, the CPO is now one of the most powerful voices in the executive suite. In 2020, only 4% of the Fortune 1000 had a CPO, a number that has since ballooned to almost 50%. In the next few years, we expect to see that figure grow to 70%.
At Products That Count, the nonprofit for product managers I chair, weve spent the past year talking to almost 1,000 CPOs at companies ranging from startup unicorns to Fortune 100 giants like Salesforce, Walmart, and Microsoft. What weve heard is clear: The organizations that are winning with AI arent just using it to move faster. Theyre rethinking how product is fundamentally built, who builds itand who leads the charge.
Heres what the top product leaders are doing differently to get and stay ahead in the AI era.
1. They see AI as acceleration, not just automation
While headlines focus on job replacement, leading CPOs are focused on capability expansion. Theyre not asking, How can we do the same work with fewer people? Theyre asking, How can we build something completely new and disruptive in a fraction of the time it used to take?
One CPO at a global retailer told us that PMs using their internal generative AI platform are almost doubling their efficiency. These AI-powered product managers are running competitive research, generating specs, mocking up interfaces, and even writing basic codewithout waiting for a 10-person engineering team to get looped in.
This shift is also reshaping org charts. The once-standard 10-to-1 engineer-to-PM ratio is giving way to a new reality where PMs are full-stack strategists. AI isnt replacing the workforceits supercharging it.
2. Theyre hiring business builders, not tech nerds
Todays most effective PMs arent former engineers. Theyre high-context thinkers who know how to ask the right questions, not necessarily write the code themselves. A computer science background was pretty important 20 years ago, one B2B SaaS CPO told us. Now? Only one of my PMs has one.
This new breed of generalist Super PM blends product instinct, customer obsession, and AI fluency. Theyre cross-functional by design and comfortable leading without a road map. And theyre rising fast because they can adapt fast and they deliver business value right off the bat.
3. M&A is central to their strategy
Product velocity has become the currency of innovationand most CPOs know they cant build everything in-house. More than 75% of the CPOs we surveyed say M&A will be a critical growth driver in the next one to three years. But unlike in the past, product leaders arent just involved after the deal closestheyre often the ones scouting, evaluating, and sponsoring acquisitions.
As one healthcare CPO put it, AI and data are fast becoming the central focus. M&A will be critical to assembling that solution suite. Another said, As CPO, Im the sponsor of acquisitions.
That shiftfrom M&A as a finance function to M&A as product accelerationmarks a massive evolution in how CPOs are expected to operate.
4. Theyre obsessively focused on success metrics
Revenue still matters. As Checkr CPO Ilan Frank told us, At the end of the day, most of us are working for a for-profit company. If that’s the case, then the metric is profit. That’s what we’re here to drive.
Particularly when assessing how to implement and leverage AI, product leaders are keenly aware of the bottom line. And they know that revenue and profit are not the only numbers that tell the story. Todays top CPOs are expanding their focus to include metrics like time-to-value, customer retention, and long-term engagement. Theyre not just looking at quarterly ARRtheyre looking at how quickly customers see value, and how long they stick around once they do.
That shift isnt just philosophical. Its structural. It encourages smaller, faster product experiments, tighter feedback loops, and stronger cross-functional alignment. As Frank put it, NPS wont tell me if we have the right pricing or packaging, but time-to-value will.
Defining the AI Era
All told, product leaders are winning the AI era by working smarter, not harder. Theyre moving fastbut not just by working more. Theyre reimagining what the product function can be: a strategic growth engine, a talent magnet, and a seat at the very top of the company. Theyre prioritizing adaptability over pedigree, collaboration over control, and outcomes over ownership. Rather than stripping down head counts, theyre doubling down by investing in more generalists and product professionals to keep their feet on the accelerators. Theyre blending human instinct with AI horsepowerand building teams that can ship smarter, not just faster.
The companies that empower this kind of leadership arent just navigating the AI era. Theyre defining it.
People are often under the false impression that making their language complex or using jargon enhances their credibility.
That might be true in certain circumstances. If youre an academic talking to other academics or a software engineer talking to other software engineers, using jargon makes sense. However, if youre talking to people outside of your field of expertise, it can alienate them.
And when you alienate someone, it can cause them to switch off. It also reduces the likelihood that they take away anything useful or do what youd like them to do.
Thats probably the last thing you want to happen when communicating with someone. So if youre prone to using jargon, you might want to consider taking the time to figure out how to communicate in simpler language.
Why people use complex language
Many people often use complex language because theyre insecure. When a person ties a big part of their identity to academic prowess, but they dont feel particularly successful, they can use complexity to serve as a security blanket that hides them.
Its a way of making people perceive them as clever, or even obfuscate the truth. After all, its a lot harder to question or challenge something that your conversation partner doesnt understand.
Secondly, many gifted executives simply lack social awareness. Unfortunately, many leaders dont give emotional intelligence the same weight they assign to developing technical expertise when climbing the corporate ladder. Quite simply, that means that theres a disconnect between what you find meaningful and important as the communicator, and what your audience finds meaningful. And when you choose to ignore the audiences perspective in your communication, issues arise.
If you want the audience to listen to what you have to say, you need to consider how your audience would prefer to consume the information. Once you have that information, you can present the information in a way that will engage them and make them more likely to listen to you.
The best communicators communicate simply
Ive heard the argument before that history, physics, software engineering, and so on, are too complex to explain in a nontechnical way. I disagree. It is always possible distill complex subject matter down to simple language for a nontechnical audience.
My argument is to look at Professor Brian Cox, who is a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester. Few subjects are as complex as astrophysics. Yet Professor Cox explained it so well and so simply that he filled auditoriums on a Friday night with people wanting to learn about physics.
If he can do it, anyone can do it. It simply comes down to whether youre prepared to put in the effort to learn the art of simple communication.
The acid test for simple communication
I often use this question with my clients: Would a 10-year-old child understand what you just said?
If the answer to that question is no, then, I encourage my clients to go back to basics. In the same way that childrens stories often contain an underlying message, you can use analogies and stories to engage your audience, evoke emotion, and simplify complex topics.
Understanding what matters to your audience
If youre trying to convince people to take a specific course of action, it will benefit you to walk people through it in a clear, step-by-step way.
To do that well, you need to get into the mind of the audience and use the language that they use, not the language that you are comfortable with.
Whether you are talking to the board or trying to convince a customer to buyyou need to understand the factors that will convince them. Make sure to find out whats important to them and structure your communication around those key things.
Being a successful executive shouldnt be about being the smartest-sounding person in a room. Rather, its about being able to persuade and influence others to buy in and work towards your vision. No amount of jargon is going to do that, but distilling complex concepts down in a way that your employees understand can go a long way.
On Main Street in the village of Freeville, New York, on a 2.8-acre lot where a dilapidated single-family house once stood, there are now a dozen tiny storybook-like cottages surrounded by the property’s pine trees.
The development, completed last year, is helping bring new life to the village. Its one example of whats possible when towns dont have overly restrictive zoning. Its charming. The design encourages neighbors to know one other. And it offers housing for far more people on the same amount of land.
The project is the third tiny house village in the region from a local developer, Bruno Schickel. His career started as a typical general contractorhe built and renovated single-family homes. But in the late 1990s, while reading a childrens book to his daughters, he was inspired by an illustration of a Gothic cottage in Maine. I said, You know, I gotta design something that looks like this, he says. And so thats what I set out to do.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Boiceville Cottages (@boiceville_)/a>
140 fairy-tale cottages on 40 acres
Schickel owned a large property in a rural area nearby that had been part of a farm. One winter 29 years ago, when regular work slowed down, he asked his crew to build three rental cottages on the site, each with the same gingerbread design as the house in the childrens book. People loved them, so he built another three the next winter. The cottages range in size from 540 square feet to 1,100 square feet, but even the smallest units have a second-story loft for a bedroom and feel relatively spacious. There are now 140 of the homes, called Boiceville Cottages, on the 40-acre site.
“The more I built, the better people liked them,” he says. “It was an interesting dynamic, because originally people were drawn to the fairy-tale cottage. And then people started being drawn to the community that was created.”
[Photo: Bruno Schickel/courtesy Boiceville Cottages]
A sense of community
When I visited on a recent spring day, a group of neighbors was sitting at a picnic table next to the community’s meeting house while children played on a playground. While I was talking to a retired woman, teenagers playing basketball called out a greeting to her. Everyone seemed to know one another.
“I lived in a suburb of Chicago for 45 years,” one resident, Christine Uliassi, told me. “My husband and I raised our kids there. But I know my neighbors here much better than I knew my neighbors there.”
The cottages in the development are clustered in groups of three, each carefully angled so that when someone looks out their own window, there’s still a sense of privacy. But they’re so close together that people continually run into each other. At the meeting house, neighbors pick up their mail, use the on-site gym, and gather for book clubs and other events.
The road between the cottages winds around curves, so people drive slowly, and it feels safe to walk. Despite the rural location, there’s also a bus stop at the property, so it’s technically possible to live there without a car. The development doesn’t have the density of a large apartment complex. But the specific layoutand the bucolic country setting, which draws people outsidemakes it more likely that neighbors become close.
[Photo: Bruno Schickel/courtesy Boiceville Cottages]
‘Zoning chokes off innovation’
In many places, it would be impossible to build. “The one reason why I ended up building there was because there was no zoning in Caroline [the rural town where the site is located],” says Schickel. “I am a guy who thinks zoning, by design, just chokes off innovation, creativity. It creates uniformity. If you go to existing cities or towns or villages around the country and you say, ‘Oh, look at this, this is great,’ I can almost guarantee you their zoning would not allow that to be built today.”
It also wouldn’t be possible in Caroline now. Last year, after a bitter fight, the town passed a zoning law that required large lots for any new home. Longtime rural residents opposed the law; wealthier transplants to the area tended to support it. “People said, ‘We love Boiceville. We want to make sure Boiceville can be built.’ But the fact is that they don’t,” Schickel says. “The result will be that they’ve preserved it for large suburban housing.”
In Freeville, a zoning ordinance existed, but was flexible enough that it allowed for the conversion of the single-family lot. Neighbors were happy to see the former rundown house replaced, Schickel says, even if they were initially taken aback to learn that they’d suddenly be living next to 12 tiny houses. (The Freeville houses, in a departure from the original gingerbread design, are inspired by old railway stations and Freeville’s rail history.)
In a third location nearby, where Schickel built 60 tiny cottages on a hillside overlooking a lake, the community passed a zoning law after the project happened. “There’s a complete discrimination against rentals,” he says. “And there’s a discrimination against small [houses].”
[Photo: Bruno Schickel/courtesy Boiceville Cottages]
Tiny house villages can help struggling communitiesand the housing crisis
In the rural areas where Schickel built, the neighborhoods can help struggling economies. Caroline would have lost population without Boiceville Cottages; a popular local store, Brookton’s Market, probably couldn’t survive without it. And the approach can add more housing as rents continue to rise. (To be fair, the cuteness of the cottages means that Schickel can charge a premium for rent, but as in any housing market, adding supply helps moderate prices.)
It’s a model tha Schickel says others want to replicate in other parts of the country. He continually fields calls from potential developers and city officials. “I just heard from a senior planner on Long Island,” he says. “He called me up and said, How can we do something like that down here?’ I said, ‘I can tell you right now, your biggest problem is zoning.
Last week, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington shocked the internet by announcing they’ve discovered a new color that can be experienced only when firing a laser into your retinas.
Only five people have seen this color, a blue-green shade called olo. But over the weekend, artist-provocateur Stuart Semple decided to widen the pool by synthesizing olo into an acrylic paint color he named Yolo.
Ironically, Yolo is a color you cannot seeat least not accuratelyunless you buy a bottle of the acrylic paint and see it with your own eyes. A 150-milliliter bottle costs $10,000 ($35 if you’re an artist) and is decidedly more accessible than olo. But can it ever be the same?
[Photo: courtesy Culture Hustle]
Liberating color
This isn’t Semple’s first foray into the superlative world of colors. Over the past few years (fueled by various feuds with the artist Anish Kapoor) Semple has created the world’s pinkest pink, followed by the world’s blackest black. In 2021, he hacked Tiffany’s trademarked blue and made his own version, Tiff Blue, which everyone could buy.
[Photo: courtesy CultureHustle]
A self-described color nerd, Semple has been on a mission to liberate color, as he puts it. If olo really is a new colora claim that’s been contestedhe believes more than five people should be able to experience it. Can’t everyone have a go?
Apparently, theyd like to. Within minutes, my DMs were crazy, he says of the requests that poured in from artists and friends alike. Semple spent all night developing Yolo and put it up on his website on Saturday. My sister messaged me about it the following day, and I was like, already done it, he says with a laugh. Within 48 hours of launching Yolo, Semple had sold close to 500 bottles.
[Photo: courtesy Culture Hustle]
From lasers to pigments
The human eye can perceive about 10 million colors known as the visible light spectrum. We see these colors thanks to three kinds of cone cells in our retinas that respond to three specific bands of light: long (red), medium (green), and short (blue). But we dont just see the world in RGB. Our brains blend signals from these cones to fill in the gaps, conjuring colors like oranges, teals, and purples.
To re-create olo, Stuart pored over the recent study, which was published in the scientific journal Science Advances, and pulled the color’s chromatic coordinates. These told him where on the visible light spectrum his own color should sit. Then, he set out on a surprisingly low-tech journey of mixing bases and pigments until he landed on the right formula. It’s like baking a cake and tasting it, he says, except instead of his taste buds, he used a spectrometer to see how close each swatch came to olo’s coordinates.
But Semple didnt focus only on pigmentshe also looked at texture. In the world of paint, a glossy finish reflects more light than a matte finish, which scatters light in all directions. If you shine a light on a smooth snooker ball, it will bounce off a very small point; but if you shine that same light on a fuzzy tennis ball, the light will get diffused, flattened.
Semple’s Black 3.0 paintthe blackest, flattest acrylic paint available on the planetabsorbs 99% of all the visible spectrum. Yolo does the opposite. It reflects 96% of light, but only in the narrow green-blue slice of the spectrum. The other wavelengths are absorbed by the paint. Thats why it looks like its glowing, Semple says.
[Photo: courtesy Culture Hustle]
You have to see it to believe it
The color you see on this screen comes close, but you can’t fully experience it here, or even in a book, because neither can reproduce the exact wavelength the paint captures: Screens use red, green, and blue pixels; printers use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. To truly experience Yolo, you have to see it in person, which suits Semple just fine: I make things for people with eyes, not computers, he says.
Still, the artist claims Yolo is the closest we can get to olo without having a laser fired into our eyeballs. He acknowledges that the litmus test would be to show Yolo to one of those five people, but the scientists did not respond to our requests for comment.
If a screen cant fully capture Yolo, then what kind of color can we expect? Over the course of a 30-minute phone call, Semple used the word weird four times until, finally, he landed on a weird luminous teal.
To help a North Carolina community recovering from Tropical Storm Helene, a tulip farm in the Netherlands gave the gift of flowers.
Dutch Grown runs a tulip farm in Voorhout, South Holland, and a warehouse in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where it ships out its flower bulbs to customers across the U.S. After Helene devastated western North Carolina last September, Marco Rosenbruck, a Dutch immigrant who moved to the region, reached out to the company with photos of the devastation asking for a few boxes of bulbs. Dutch Grown ended up sending 31 boxes filled with 10,000 bulbs for tulips, daffodils, and peonies.
[Photo: ExploreAsheville.com]
“At Dutch Grown, our motto is: ‘To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.’ When tulips bloom in spring, they bring hope and joy to the entire community. Dutch Grown co-owner Ben Rotteveel tells Fast Company.
The company’s generosity has now helped Rosenbruck’s new home of Swannanoa, North Carolina, beautify a local park. Rozenbroek engaged the help of a local student for some landscape design to plant the bulbs, and they’re expected to bloom for the first time this spring.
“Flowers give hope,” Rozenbroek told Blue Ridge Public Radio.
[Photo: ExploreAsheville.com]
North Carolina officials estimate Helene did $59.6 billion worth of damage in the state, and Swannanoa, a community of more than 5,000 people about a hour north of the South Carolina border, was especially devastated. The storm took out a bridge and damaged homes, but in the aftermath of the storm, Grovemont Park, where the flowers were planted, became a hub for the community where meals were distributed.
[Photo: ExploreAsheville.com]
Gardening can have unexpected benefits for communities recovering from disasters. Research into community gardens in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and New York City after Hurricane Sandy found these spaces help build resilience because they empowered residents and helped connect them with each other, strengthening the social bonds needed to rebuild together. Grovemont Park has already done that for Swannanoa, and now the flowers will serve as a reminder.
Landscape design can make our public areas more welcoming. By beautifying and intentionally designing outdoor spaces that people are meant to spend time in and enjoy, landscape design gives a physical dimension to community. Through this massive planting endeavor in North Carolina, Rozenbroek created an inviting, functional, and visually harmonious space as the community continues to rebuild from Helene.
“After the storm, we figured out that community is the basics of everything,” says Rozenbroek. “People are willing to help each other and to make beauty. Isn’t that where humanity is meant to be?”
[Photo: ExploreAsheville.com]
Tulips don’t help build bridges or homes, but that doesn’t mean Dutch Grown’s gift won’t have an impact. The tulip garden shows the practical benefits of beautification; creating a relatively low-lift project that allows those recovering from disaster to grow closer and rebuild together; and allowing community members to rest their eyes on the perennial joys and habits of spring.
Less than a year after announcing plans to establish a hydrogen-based aviation fuel hub at Pittsburgh International Airport, Pennsylvania-based natural gas producer CNX has quietly taken down the website on which it advertised the hub.
The move comes as the fate of the much-vaunted hydrogen industryseen by the Biden administration as a way to power America while reducing climate-altering emissionsis in upheaval.
While a Biden-era rule dealt a blow to those in the gas and oil industry hoping to invest in hydrogen technology and offered greater financial incentives to the renewable energy sector, President Donald Trump is showing preference for fossil fuel-powered hydrogen. Meanwhile, the fate of those Biden-era tax creditswhether for renewable energy or fossil fuelis up in the air as Congress wades through the budget reconciliation process.
Under Trumps guidance, the Department of Energy has indicated it plans to kill Biden-era funding for four renewable-powered hydrogen hubs in primarily Democratic regions while retaining funds for fossil fuel-powered hubs in mostly red states, such as South Dakota, Ohio, and Kentucky.
California, along with Oregon, Washington and other regions, are on the Department of Energys cut list, according to Politico, which said it obtained a spreadsheet of the projects.
If the recommendations are ultimately adopted by the Trump administration, Pennsylvania would very much become a state divided. While a proposed hub in the Appalachian region that would run on fossil fuels is marked for approval, a hub mostly reliant on renewable energy near Philadelphia is marked for denial.
The seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs were a main plank of former President Joe Bidens climate agenda, a $7 billion effort to establish a national network of hydrogen producers to slow the use of the fossil fuels largely blamed for global warming.
But with four of the hubs eliminated, the envisioned national hydrogen grid would become a patchwork, seemingly drawn along political lines and primarily powered by polluting sources of energy.
The hydrogen hubs program was intended to spur innovations and demonstrations on how best to advance hydrogen as a tool in the clean energy economy, said Julie McNamara, associate policy director for the Climate & Energy program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.
Blatantly co-opting these funds for use as handouts to political supporters and favored polluters would be shameful, and fully undermine the programs ability to achieve those aims.
While the Pennsylvania hub fueled by natural gas would use methane to provide energy for the production of so-called blue hydrogen, the other hub would use renewable energy such as wind and solar to produce whats known as green hydrogen. By itself, the burning of hydrogen doesn’t produce carbon dioxide emissions.
CNX was originally involved in the former hub, known as ARCH2, but told the Pittsburgh Business Times in March that it had paused involvement in the project because of the uncertainty surrounding federal funding. CNXs name was also deleted from the ARCH2 website.
CNX did not respond to requests for comment on the status of the hydrogen hub and the sustainable aviation fuel site in Pittsburgh. A spokesperson for the airport said it is continuing to move forward with its plans to become one of the first airports to have sustainable fuel production on-site.
CNX was initially one of 15 companies enlisted in the hub, with plans to contribute low carbon natural gas to power hydrogen production, which entails using steam to draw off the hydrogen atoms from methane molecules, an expensive and energy intensive process.
But the companys evolving relationship with the hydrogen industry appears to have soured when the Biden administration finalized a long-awaited federal rule on a tax credit for hydrogen production called 45V.
That final rule, CNX argued, was overly restrictive, and failed to create sufficient economic incentives for the company to expand its production of methane released from abandoned coal mines, which it said was key to the growing hydrogen economy. CNX pitched its involvement in the Sustainable Aviation Fuel project in Pittsburgh as being dependent upon the outcome of the 45V rule.
We saw the fossil fuel industry view 45V as a lucrative chance for profit, McNamara said. Not by truly reducing emissions, but by introducing loopholes that made it easier to qualify.
CNX had previously lobbied for the intricacies of 45V to work out in its favor. A little more than a year ago, a CNX lobbyist pushed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiros office to lobby the federal government to ensure the Treasury Departments hydrogen rule was lucrative for coal mine methanea request to which the Shapiro administration agreed, Capital & Main reported at the time.
The value the rule gave to coal mine-derived natural gas came down to a series of arcane specifics in a formula that measures life-cycle emissions from beginning to end of the creation of a single kilogram of hydrogen.
CNX urged the Treasury Department to treat coal mine methane as carbon-negative with the assumption that it would otherwise leak into the atmosphere from inactive coal mines, releasing a more potent greenhouse gas than if it were captured and burned, which would release carbon dioxide. (Both are greenhouse gases, but methane is well understood to be around 80 times more potent in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timeframe.) By ascribing to this captured methane a negative value, a tinyportion of it could be blended into a natural gas hydrogen feedstock and qualify for the highest tier of the 45V tax incentive, the same level as hydrogen produced with renewable energy.
But the final rule went against the pleas of CNX and companies like it, including the ARCH2 hub itself, which urged the Treasury Department to pass a methane-friendly rule in 2024, arguing it could lead to a loss of $6 billion in private investments otherwise and have far-reaching consequences for the hydrogen industry.
Its like the Treasury Department went out of its way to say, We hear what youre saying. And the answer is no, said Sean OLeary, senior researcher at the nonprofit think tank Ohio River Valley Institute.
The ruling was seen as a win for environmentalists, who urged the Treasury Department to ensure that any projects receiving subsidies under the guise of being clean were in fact clean. They feared CNXs proposal, and that of other fossil fuel producers, wouldve given natural-gas based hydrogen a tax boost equal to that for renewable, emissions-free sources of hydrogen.
How and whether the rule will be upheld by the Trump administrationwhich has shown strong support for fossil fuels and a general disdain for renewable energyremains an open question, and one of concern to environmentalists. According to Bloomberg, the American Petroleum Institute, a national oil and gas trade group, has lobbied the White House to ensure fossil fuels can qualify for the highest tier of the hydrogen tax credit.
OLeary sees CNXs apparent exit from ARCH2 as a sign of the hubs strained economics. In October, OLeary authored a paper in which he noted that the hub had lost four of its development partners, while a handful of others were showing signs of financial stress. This is not a resume that inspires confidence among prospective investors, OLeary wrote. CNXs reluctance to move forward signals a broader trend within the industry, OLeary said in an interview with Capital & Main.
The wheels are coming off, OLeary said. Even after subsidies are taken into account, the economics still arent there to make many of these projects work.
Another project development partner for ARCH2, KeyState Energy, is also showing signs of uncertainty. In February, a primary customer for its blue hydrogen, Nikola Corporation, a transportation company that had planned to use the hydrogen for a zero-emission truck fleet, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company plans to sell its assets.
KeyState CEO Perry Babb told Capital & Main the company had pivoted from its energy production project with Nikola to a new ammonia fertilizer project that has a committed customer, and will still rely on hydrogen and receive funds from ARCH2. The first payment from the hubs program has been doled out and KeyState will invoice for reimbursement soon, he said.
Babb said he still meets regularly with the remaining ARCH2 project partners, who are all positive in expressing a way forward. But he noted that, for years, hes weathered regulatory uncertainty; the final 45V rule was the nail in the coffin for Keystates original plans to produce blue hydrogen under ARCH2. He said the company has also put its participation in the Pittsburgh Sustainable Aviation Fuel hub on pause.
Last May, I began to notice dozens of hydrogen projects being canceled, he said. I had thought that it was essentially because the business case wasnt sound.
With the continued uncertainty around tax credits through the end of the Biden administration . . . we said, Thats it. Were done. Were going to go where theres a market thats predictable.
While failing to find a partner in the Biden-era Treasury Department, CNX could soon turn to the state, where Gov. Shapiro is reupping a $49 million tax credit for hydrogen production as part of his Lightning Plan, a six-pronged portfolio of legislation designed to speed up the commonwealths clean energy economy.
Though supported by some state environmental groups, the plan caught the ire of others, like Karen Feridun, cofounder of the grassroots Better Path Coalition, who said in a statement that the Lightning Plan would continue and even expand fossil fuel production. On March 11, a group of Democratic senators and representatives introduced 12 cosponsorship memos, six in each chamber, carrying out Shapiros plan.
Hes going to do whatever he needs to do to try to keep [hydrogen] going, Feridun said of Shapiro in an interview with Capital & Main. Its a nice way to kind of provide cover for having a continued fossil fuel plan, one that sounds really good to voters.
Should ARCH2 unravel, Feridun fears grassroots environmentalists would be tasked with tracking individual projects, without the cohesion of a hub offering guidance. Even so, she said there never was a clear map that defined what the footprint of all of this was, which left frontline communities in the dark.
Like OLeary, Danny Cullenward, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said he now sees the hydrogen hype bubble beginning to burst. Though he believes hydrogen has an important, if niche, place in the clean energy transition, its economics dont make sense in all uses unless heavily subsidized.
We basically set up a structure that said, at the end of this rainbow is a giant pot of gold. And everybody said, Wed all like to do that. That all sounds great to us, he said. I think now the cold, hard reality of, Does hydrogen make sense? And in what applications would it make sense? is becoming a little bit more real.
The whiplash of all this impacts Pennsylvania communities, many that are former oil, gas, and coal towns learning that major projects theyd once planned for are no longer.
Its immensely damaging, OLeary said. State or even county and municipal level governments, theyre making economic development choices based on these expectations.
The distraction impact of whats going on is just staggering.
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
Remember when Netflix cost $9 per month and The New York Times website was free? Well, the days of online media feeling like a bargain are long gone. Today, its become a costly convenience.
But there are still great deals to be had, thanks to cheap yearlong introductory subscriptions, budget bundles, and libraries. One thing to skip: those one-month free trials that are easy to sign up for but even easier to forget to cancel.
Here are some of the best ways to truly save on digital media.
Free content with ads or from the library
Free news sources include the Associated Press, the BBC, DW (Germanys international broadcaster, available in English), The Free Press, The Guardian, and NPR. Many other sites offer a portion of their content free.
You can also tap into free content newsletters and podcasts from typically paid sources such as Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. In fact, most podcasts are free to stream (though they may include ads), from Joe Rogan to Jon Stewart.
Meanwhile, a library card can help you score a world of free media through apps. Libby provides e-books and audiobooks on phones, tablets, and the web. Hoopla has e-books, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, music, and comics, with apps for phones, tablets, and smart TVs. Your library may not have every title you want, or there may be a waitlist. But its a great place to start.
For more TV and movies, skip Hulu and Netflix in favor of Amazon FreeVee, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, and Tubi. They are ad-supported, but nowadays so is the basic tier of most paid services. If you can handle commercials every few songs, check out the free tiers of Deezer, SoundCloud, Spotify, and YouTube Music.
Long-term introductory subscriptions
Many news outlets offer steeply discounted introductory rates for digital and digital/print subscriptions. As of this writing, deals include: six months of The New York Times for $4 a month; a year of The Wall Street Journal for $8 a month; and The Washington Post for just $40 a year. The San Francisco Chronicle offered three months for 25 cents, and the Los Angeles Times had four months for a single dollar. (For even more options, check out DiscountMags.) At the end of the introductory period, newspapers may offer further discounts to keep you from canceling.
Streaming deals change more often, so keep an eye out. They have included a year of Hulu at 99 cents per month or three free months of Peacock (both with ads). Spotifys ad-free Premium plan is free for three months.
Shared subscriptions
You may save with a subscription that allows you to add one or more people at a discount, or even for free. For example: Two people can get one year of The Washington Post for $60.
Depending on the plan, Netflix lets you add either one or two people at $6.99 a month for service with ads or $8.99 without. Spotify offers a dual ad-free subscription for $16.99 a month and a six-person family plan for $19.99 (versus $11.99 for one person), but everyone has to live at the same address. Amazon Family allows a Prime member to add one adult (related or not) and up to four children and four teens to share e-books and some other media for free. Apple Family Sharing allows up to six people to access much of what the first person subscribes to, such as AppleTV+, at no extra charge.
Bundled subscriptions
Savings on video bundles are often small, and may not help if the individual streamers are offering their own discounts. One to consider is the bundle of Hulu, Disney+, and Max (including HBO, Studio Ghibli, CNN, Food Network, The CW, and others) for $16.99 a month with ads or $29.99 without.
For news, you can get Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and Investors Business Daily at $16 a month for one year. For $12.99 a month, Apple News+ provides a selection of content from over 500 sources, including The Atlantic, Bon Appétit, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and (ahem) Fast Companyall shareable with five other people.
Look closely at bundles with wireless carriers. For instance, T-Mobiles $85-a-month Experience More plan adds AppleTV+ and Netflix (with ads) for $35 more per line, per month than its Essentials Saver plan. But subscribing to both streamers on your own costs only $17.98. Experience More may be worthwhile for its additional wireless features, but not just for streaming.
Buying a significant piece of Apple hardware (it varies by service) gets new users three free months of AppleTV+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and Apple Arcade. The companys Apple One bundle starts with TV+, Music, Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud storage for $19.95 a month, versus $28.96 if bought separately. For $25.95, you can share all that, plus 200GB of storage, with five people. Throwing in Fitness+, News+, and 2TB raises the price to $37.95.
Student, teacher, and military discounts
The pricey Financial Times is free to pre-college students and their teachers at participating schools. Students and teachers can get a digital subscription to The Economist for 75% off. In addition, universities may offer free subscriptions to news outlets for students, faculty, and staff.
Hulu offers students its ad-supported plan for $1.99 a month. Spotify bundles that plan plus its ad-free Premium service for $5.99. Apple charges the same for ad-free Music and (for a limited time) TV+. Peacock runs $2.99 (versus $7.99) for the first year. (The site Student Beans keeps track of deals on media subscriptions and many other items.)
There are several options for military personnel, such as Peacock Premium at $3.99 a month for 12 months. Paramount+ offers a 50% discount for the life of any subscription plan. (Military discount sites The Exchange and GOVX list more deals.)
You may be feeling overwhelmed by all these cheap and free offerings for all kinds of people and all kinds of media, but thats better than being overwhelmed with big bills.
Lets be clear: We shouldnt expect kids to be experts in financial literacy. As much as they love YouTube, I doubt many spend their time watching videos of Warren Buffett.
However, the oldest members of this Gen Alpha group will become adult consumers soon enough, and between the way they approach money and their perception of spending, two things are quite clear. The first is that regardless of their industry, companies will be put to the test by this generation. The second is that Gen Alpha may have a rude awakening when faced with the harsh realities of life.
Weve done several studies on Gen Alpha, with the most recent focusing on their thoughts and interactions within five key industries: beauty, automotive, financial services, food, and luxury. And while we uncovered many great insights, I cant help but focus on the spending. Seventy percent of respondents say they have a basic understanding of money, and again, at their age, we shouldnt necessarily assume that to be the case. However, other findings paint a picture of a generation that has a taste for the finer things in life, high expectations, and increasing influence.
Luxury possessions are of value to Alphas
Typical toys and video games arent the only things catching the attention of Gen Alpha; they have big dreams about the life theyll one day lead. Thirty-five percent aspire to own a luxury car when they are older, and who could blame them? But did you know that 68% already own a luxury product by the time they turn 10 years old? While they place plenty of value on digital goods and their digital identities, 66% say they would pay a premium for real-life products.
Alphas believe they are entitled to what they want, when and how they want it
How will they pay for these luxury high-end items? Early signs indicate it wont be through traditional institutions but through e-wallets and online banks. Alphas top five favorite financial brands are PayPal, CashApp, Visa, Apple Pay, and Venmo. Companies that dont offer these digital payment options may miss out on purchases. Additionally, others that dont provide flexibility on the products themselves could face similar pushback because Alphas want to customize. In fact, 58% of respondents would rather customize a car than save money by purchasing a standard model. Im sure youre noticing the theme of a lack of frugality, which aligns with an eye-opening mindset: 75% of Alphas say they deserve to get most of the things they want.
Parents are giving Alphas a meaningful decision-making voice
Perhaps this financial ambition and confidence stems from the parents, who say their children play a central role in many decisions within their households. For example, 61% believe their kids have final say on which car the family purchases, and the same percentage believe their kids have influence over what the family eats. While they have a voice in the choice, we must also acknowledge that they likely arent feeling the impacts of those decisions because they arent yet financially responsible for the purchases.
Kids dream big, and thats a good thing. That inspiration and imagination should never be discouraged, and there are only so many real-world considerations they can apply when theyve had minimal experience.
That being said, companies that arent keeping Gen Alphas perspectives at the forefront of their strategies could find themselves drastically off the mark when these consumers reach purchasing age. At the same time, Alphas appear to be experiencing a false sense of reality on the accessibility and affordability of luxury or customized products. Both trends could impact the way this generation budgets and manages money, how it prioritizes desired purchases, and its brand loyalty.
Of course, they are still young, and these feelings could change quickly. But based on the data we have today, the companies that meet Alphas experiential needs in areas like flexible options and digital payments could have an advantage. And to the social media creators posting financial literacy content, I dont think youll have a hard time getting engagement from Alphas once they start paying their own bills.
Being the great-grandson of the French artist Henri Matisse can be complicated.
Alex Matisse grew up in the Northeastern United States, and being a Matisse meant being immersed in art. It’s what his family talked about at the dinner table; the walls of his home were full of paintings usually seen only in museums. By the time he was in elementary school, Alex could recite his great-grandfather’s most notable works, like La Danse and the Nu Bleu series.
Like many of the Matisse children, Alex had artistic inclinations. Throughout his school years, he thrived in art classes, and in fourth grade he fell in love with pottery in an after-school program. But when Alex began to think about his future, he struggled to see how he could become an artist.
“I really wanted to escape my great-grandfather’s legacy,” he says. “I felt like if I became an artist, there would always intrinsically be a comparison to Henri’s work.”
Alex Matisse [Photo: East Fork]
So Alex forged his own path as an artisan potter, eventually founding the renowned North Carolina pottery company East Fork. Now he’s resurfacing his family roots with the new Matisse Collection, launching online today. It features famous motifs from Henri’s work displayed on dinner plates, dessert plates, and mugs. The company has also developed a new dark blue color, which it is calling La Sirne (the Mermaid), inspired by a color often used in Henri’s palette, bridging Matisse’s saturated, graphic sensibilities to East Fork’s rustic craft.
[Photo: East Fork]
Forging a new path for the Matisse name
When he was starting out as a ceramist, Alex fell in love with a community of potters who had settled in North Carolina, creating rugged utilitarian pieces. He apprenticed with the legendary potter Mark Hewitt. In 2009 he bought a piece of land that was once home to an old tobacco farm in Asheville, North Carolina, and set about starting his own practice as a potter. “I didn’t really know what it was going to be,” he says. “But I had this feeling that if I tucked myself away in the mountains for a little bit, I’d figure it out.”
And he did. He met his wife, Connie, and another potter, John Vigeland. The three of them, still in their twenties, decided to launch East Fork in 2009. Over the next few years, they developed a unique look for their pottery, inspired by the heavyweight, wood-fired aesthetic of North Carolina potters but also blended with a minimalism that would appeal to millennials. They sold their plates, serving dishes, and mugs directly to customers through their website, and spread the word through Instagram.
Over the past decade, East Fork has thrived. The company now has a team of more than 100 people at its headquarters in Asheville, where there is a large factory. The company also has physical stores in Asheville, Atlanta, and Brooklyn. The pottery has become iconic, particularly among millennials. It’s common for couples to put East Fork’s dishes on their wedding registries.
Many consumers don’t know, or care, that it is made by the great-grandson of a famous French painter. In many ways, Alex did what he set out to do: He created his own artistic legacy that had nothing to do with his ancestors. “We’re not trying to play in the art world,” he says. “Its proper pottery. We sell beautiful objects that are functional, durable, useful.”
But then something interesting happened. Alex felt a shift inside himself; he wanted to reconnect with his heritage. He wanted to somehow find a way to nod to Henri’s most beloved paintings through his work at East Fork. He is doing so for the first time with this collection.
[Photo: East Fork]
Matisse motifs
Alex chose the motifs for the Matisse Collection very carefully. He wanted them to be recognizable but also blend in perfectly with the East Fork aesthetic. “We thought really hard about how to pay homage to his work in an honest, complete presentation, without distorting it or cutting it up,” he says.
Henri’s best-known portraits are very spare; just thick black lines made in aquatint, a printmaking technique. Some of his most famous ones are Nadia au regard sérieux (Nadia With a Serious Look) and Bédouine au grand voile (Bedouin With Headscarf). In this collection, East Fork has captured these portraits on plates.
Henri is also famous for his Nu Bleu (Blue Nude) series, which features blue paper cutouts on canvas designed to reflect the human form. In the East Fork collection, thes images are rendered on plates and mugs. “We just went through everything,” Alex says. “We kept trying different paintings until we found ones that fit perfectly wrapped around the mug.”
In some Nu Bleu paintings there are also images of palm fronds. In the East Fork collection, this motif is isolated and displayed on cake plates. On one serving platter, there is a large image of a tree taken from La Platane (The Plane Tree), which is made up of thick black strokes.
[Photo: East Fork]
An homage to family lineage in an East Fork line
For Alex, it felt like a serious responsibility to identify and incorporate these motifs. This is partly because the Matisse family has been very judicious about licensing Henri’s art to create products, which is quite different from other well-known artists, like Vincent Van Gogh. This year, much of Henri’s art enters the public domain, which allows companies to use it without having to pay fees. (Some of the earlier work is already in the public domain.) Alex wants to make sure Henri’s work is represented in the very best way through this collection. “It was a moment where we felt we could shepherd Henri’s work into the world in a thoughtful way,” Alex says.
The East Fork team worked hard to render the images perfectly on the pottery. In the end, it was easiest to put them on as decals. They found a company in France that was able to translate the images into decals, and then East Fork applied them to the pottery and finished it off with a glaze.
[Photo: East Fork]
This collection is the first in what Alex wants to be an ongoing part of the East Fork line. Over time, the company will introduce different aspects of Henri’s work onto pottery, finding ways to draw new attention to the Matisse heritage. But in an interesting twist of fate, Alex believes there are some customers who are East Fork purists and who only want the brand’s minimal pieces that aren’t adorned with Henri’s work.
“We have tried very hard to make this collection very aesthetically similar to what we already make, so our existing customers will be intrigued by it,” he says of East Forks Matisse wares. “But there are others who won’t care about this collection. And that’s fine too.”
A strong résumé can make all the difference. It demonstrates to hiring managers that you’re the best person for the job by summarizing your career highlights and accomplishments.
We know its important to customize your résumé for each job you apply to, and to ensure that youre including quantitative accomplishments whenever possible, to show the impact youve had. But despite the amount of time we all spend writing and refining our résumés when job searching, theres still a fair amount of debate about the ideal format.
One common question is whether or not to include an objective statement at the top of your résumé in order to provide a snapshot of the type of position you hope to acquire. Does it help you stand out to recruiters or does it look dated? We asked four career experts what they recommend:
When it makes sense to skip an objective statement
Objective statements can come off as generic and full of tired clichés, says Amanda Augustine, a résumé writer, career expert at résumé.io, and Fast Company contributor.
Including a career objective on your résumé can actually hurt, more than help, your candidacy, she says. The statement may date you: Hiring managers instantly recognize it as an old-school practice, she says. At one time, it was common advice to put a career objective at the top of your résumé, but if youre still following that advice, its time to update your approach, says Augustine.
Even though an objective shares what youre hoping your next career move will be, some job experts say adding the statement states the obvious and your employment history should speak for itself.
What to focus on instead
Highlight your qualifications instead, says Stacie Haller, chief career adviser at ResumeBuilder, as those are more relevant to companies looking for a strong candidate. The focus has become more on what the candidate’s qualifications are rather than what [the candidate] wants, Haller explains.
After all, you only have a few seconds to capture a recruiter or hiring manager’s attention, Haller notes, and the top of your résumé is prime real estate. Use the top of your résumé to capture a recruiters attention, says Haller. This concise segment should highlight your most relevant skills and accomplishments that align with the job youre applying for. It is not a place for stating career objectives; rather, it’s an opportunity to showcase why the candidate is the ideal fit for the role.
Another tip is to tailor the top section for a specific position, so hiring managers will want to delve deeper into your résumé. Create a summary thats impactful, succinct and directly related to the job youre applying to.
For example, she says, if you were applying for an accounting job, yours might say: Detail-oriented and results-driven accountant with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and CPA certification. Skilled in financial reporting, budgeting, and compliance, with proven success in managing audits and streamlining accounting processes to improve accuracy and efficiency. Adept at using QuickBooks, Excel, and ERP systems to analyze data and support sound financial decision-making. Committed to delivering value to organizations through accurate financial stewardship and strategic insights.
Why keywords matter more than ever
Instead of including a tired objective statement packed with clichés, use the space on your résumé to include keyword-rich words to match a job description, says Jasmine Escalera, career expert at LiveCareer.
Tech-savvy job seekers know that companies are using AI in the recruitment process, and according to a MyPerfectResume report, 39% of HR professionals now use AI for résumé screening and analysis.
Résumés have to be optimized to show how they match the role, says Escalera. A vague objective about what you want wont help you get through the AI screening, but she insists a targeted professional summary with the skills, keywords, and achievements that match the job sure will.
When an objective statement makes sense
If youre a recent college graduate, adding a career objective is acceptable, says Haller with ResumeBuilder. College grads are an exception to this as they do not typically have as much direct experience to highlight, she says. But Haller thinks even entry-level applicants should still make sure to demonstrate when their skills align with the job description.
But when they do include an objective or statement, Haller emphasizes it should not just be “seeking an opportunity to learn and grow with an organization,” but more focused on what the job is and what they can offer.
Likewise, Jill Chapman, director of early talent programs at Insperity, agrees that including a career objective or mission statement on your résumé can be a smart move, especially for new graduates or those pivoting into a new industry. This is especially valuable because many candidates, particularly recent graduates, may not check every traditional box on a job description, Chapman explains. Hiring managers are looking for people who are coachable, motivated, and aligned with their mission. A strong objective signals all of that, right from the start.
She says this type of objective statement includes your intended career direction, a glimpse of what drives you, and how you can contribute. Keep it under 50 words and use it to connect the dots between who you are and the opportunity in front of you, she recommends.
