A while back, we facilitated a strategy workshop for a leadership team at a law firm. We felt confident going in and opened by setting the context with facts and data. We moved through our slides and discussed the urgency for change. Finally, we shifted focus to the team to get ideas and solutions to their problems.
Unfortunately, the workshop fell flat. People were uninspired and disengaged. Senior leaders dominated the conversation, and their ideas lacked creativity. It was not our finest work.
Thats why in our next session, we decided to change things up a bit. Katie opened by sharing a story about the magic shed experienced working in a team where everyone was truly aligned and clear on purpose. We then asked the leaders to share when they had experienced this team at its best and what had created that magic.
As each person shared their story, the energy in the room began to shift. This time, people leaned in, listened intently, and built on each others ideas. The conversation became more engaged, constructive, and focused on practical solutions. By the end, the team had developed a set of tangible actions that everyone was committed to implementing.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for problem-solving and collaboration. By tapping into peoples emotions and lived experiences, it opens up new realms of possibility and inspires commitment to action. And the “magic” we feel in these situations is based on neuroscience.
Two neural networks for different thinking
Our brains have two neural networks that govern two distinct types of thinking: the task-positive network (TPN) and the default mode network (DMN). The TPN is active during strategic, mathematical, logical, and rational thinking, while the DMN is engaged when we think about people, emotions, experiences, and creativity.
These networks are antagonistic. They operate like a seesawwhen one is active, the other is quiet. They are also responsible for emotional states. When we engage the TPN, we tend to be in a more negative, backward-looking state, which can make us less open to creative thinking and new possibilities. But when we activate the DMN, we are in a more positive, forward-looking state, which enhances our ability to think creatively and embrace new ideas.
So, what does all this have to do with creative problem-solving and collaboration? Lets go back to our first workshop (which well admit was a failure). We started with facts and data, and we assumed this was the best way to frame the context. But science shows that data and facts activate the rational, logical, negative TPN, and reduce activity in the creative, positive DMN. By beginning with logical and rational informationeven with the best of intentionswere shutting down the cognitive and emotional pathways to peoples most innovative solutions.
So, how can we stay open to new concepts, collaborate, and solve complex problems creatively? How can we reliably and easily create these “magic” meetings?
Stories
Storytelling has a remarkable ability to activate the DMN by engaging our creative thinking and putting us in a positive, forward-looking emotional state. By using storytelling to tap into the DMN before presenting data or discussing a problem, we prime our brains to be more open, less defensive, and more receptive to new ideas and possibilities. That sets us up for that “magic” feeling.
Recent research suggests that storytelling may even help us activate multiple networks simultaneously. Thats because it requires both goal-directed thinking (seeking to process the storys content) and self-referential thinking (relating the story to our personal experiences and emotions). Both of these things can help us overcome the seesaw relationship between these networks.
Storytelling can also bring groups into a state of coherence and synchronicity. Studies have shown that when groups enter this state, their heart rate, heart rate variability, and brain waves synchronize. In this state of synchronicity, they are more effective at problem-solving and collaboration. So, not only does storytelling activate the neural networks that will help us problem-solve creatively as individuals, it also impacts our collective brains.
How to harness the power of storytelling
So, how can we ensure optimal performance from individuals and the team as a whole during those gritty problem-solving meetings? Following these simple steps to unlock the power of storytelling.
Identify your story: This might be about a future state you want to achieve, a past experience that highlights key lessons, or a current situation that illustrates the challenges you face. If youre not sure where to start, begin with the prompt think of a time when . . .
Write your story: Make it authentic, engaging, and relevant to the problem at hand. Use vivid language and sensory details to draw your audience in and help them connect with the story on a personal level.
Let go of perfection: You dont need to be Brené Brown or Barack Obama to make an impact. Its your genuine connection to the story that matters most, not how polished a storyteller you are.
Open with your story: Dont recite the story like youve been called on in class. Its far more compelling and connecting if you tell it from your heart.
Encourage others to share: Invite group members to contribute their own stories or experiences that align with the outcomes youre seeking. This helps create a shared vision and foster a sense of unity and purpose.
Explore the current situation: After storytelling, discuss the current problem and the evidence at hand. Encourage the group to view the problem through the lens of the stories you share, which focuses on possibilities rather than obstacles.
Brainstorm solutions: Have the team generate ideas and possible solutions. Use the stories as a reference point to guide the brainstorming process, and keep the group focused on the desired outcomes.
Develop an action plan: As a group, identify the most promising solutions and create a clear action plan for implementation. Regularly refer back to the stories to maintain motivation and alignment with the overall vision.
Unleash the scientific magic of storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful tool for creative problem-solving and collaboration. It allows us to switch our neural networks in an optimal way and reliably tap into that magical flow and synchronicity, even when were facing daunting, complex problems.
In todays world, great team collaboration and problem-olving are no longer just nice-to-have skillstheyre essential. If you start embracing the power of storytelling with your team today, youll reap the benefits just that much sooner.
Change management is a multibillion-dollar industry built on the fundamental claim that most people dislike change, and that someone needs to manage that resistance.
But after decades of organizational theories and billions in consulting fees, the industry does not work as promised: change management projects have a failure rate of around 70%. Theres a reason no one asked McKinsey or any other leading consulting firm to run DOGE.
As enterprises large and small grapple with the wholesale transformation that will be wrought by the rise of artificial intelligence, its time to face an uncomfortable truth: Change, especially today, doesn’t happen in neat phases. It’s cyclical, unpredictable, and requires constant adaptation.
The Old Model Never WorkedBut It Especially Doesnt Now
Traditional change management follows a predictable model. Under investor scrutinyor to avoid itthe CEO announces a transformation is coming. Consultants conduct surveys, present slides at workshops, and create communication plans to deal with signs of revolt. Success gets measured by stakeholder-focused metrics like adoption rates, and KPIs like number of training programs deployed. It’s an industry that prioritizes rationality at the expense of inspiration and serendipity.
AI will be the force that kills this episodic approach. First, the tech is already moving too quickly for rigid approaches to be relevant. Second,AI requires significant amounts of training and customization to be effective in most organizations, rendering a one-size-fits-most approach obsolete. And finally, the human side of AI-driven change is more complicated than a standard reorganizationbecause AI anxiety strikes at the heart of what is human, and what sort of careers we and our children will have.
A Tale of Two Companies
In our recent work inside companies that are adopting new AI tools and workflows, weve seen the potential for a new way of working. Instead of a traditional change management approach, smart leaders today are understandingand embracingthat change in the era of AI is often organically driven by shifts brought about by AI eureka moments. Competitive advantage is built not by how quickly you move humans through a change program, but how seamlessly your organizations source codethe unique combination of people, process, and technologyrewrites itself in real time.
A Tale of Two Companies
Consider a recent tale of two companies.
First, fintech company Klarnas recent initiative to automate its customer service operations using generative AI. The company publicly claimed that its AI tools were performing the work of 700 full-time agents, leading to a dramatic reduction in hiring and headcount. The rollout was managed through a centralized, top-down approach: executive-led messaging, internal dashboards to track AI performance, and a focus on cost savings and productivity metrics. But the transition sparked internal unease and external criticism, and Klarna quietly began rehiring human agents within the year. The AI may have delivered efficiency on paper, but the rigid implementation and lack of human-centered change management eroded trust, both inside and outside the company.
Contrast that with one of our clientsa multinational pharmaceutical organization that took a radically different approach. Rather than relying on static KPIs and sequential rollouts, they used using AI to surface real-time insights from employee sentiment, social media behavior, and internal feedback loops. These insights continue to inform tailored interventions across roles and geographies. AI-powered chatbots enable employees to access personalized resources on demand, while leaders use behavioral analytics to trigger timely nudges and adapt strategies instantly. The result has been a more agile, inclusive transformationwhere change has been continuously shaped by how employees are actually working.
How Organizations Can Stay Ahead
In this new world, best practice changes from week to week. But the most important trends we see in recent, successful transformations are:
First, build a nonlinear approach. When it comes to generative and agentic AI, you often dont know your best use cases until you experiment. Embrace the 3-D problem solving that comes with transformation by moving to organized but flexible processes that account for two-way feedback.
Second, create pilots. Understand that new processes, technologies, and workflows will work differently for each organization and team. Select specific organizational areas for focused experimentation and training. Give them deadlines and establish feedback loops between pilot participants and the transformation team. Then, scale successful approaches across the organization using champions as advocates for the technology and its impact.
Third, work to understand and activate teams with precision. Identify specific employee categories to play a role in championing change. Every organization has a group of early adoptersthe weekend warriors who explore AI on their own time. And every organization also has laggardsthose who will require structured protocols and personalized training plans to implement new systems. Focus your communicationsand your expectationsby identifying each group and understanding the different needs it requires.
Finally, empower leaders. Measure success not by who attended the meeting or did the training, but by whos actually creating new pathways in process or technology. Encourage those leaders, from the CEO down, to show how they use AI tools, and arm with appropriate nudges for staff.
According to the Boston Consulting Group, the small minority of companies already operating at this level are realizing 1.5× revenue growth, 1.6× shareholder returns, and 1.4× ROI.
The goal is improving organizational metabolism so your organization stays healthy, instead of contracting a disease that needs treatment. The business model for change management consulting may shift to something far more organic: Enabling leaders to role model and guide, designing teams built for experimentation and imbuing organizational culture with a growth mindset.
Adaptability counts most
Corporate America rewards risk-taking and stories about explosive growth, rapid innovation, and bottom-line-enhancing layofs. But it’s adaptability that will count most in the AI era, and continuous improvement is what will deliver it.
Organizations that continue to rely on traditional change management consultancies are not just wasting moneythey’re actively handicapping their ability to compete in an increasingly dynamic business environment.Consultants can either changethe irony!or go down with their ship.
Labubu, the bug-eyed elves from Beijing, might just be the unlikeliest face of global brand disruption. But the viral figurines, sold in blind boxes across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, are helping rewrite the rules of consumer engagement and revealing what the future of global brands might look like.
Their success isnt really about toys; its about building a new kind of consumer community. Pop Mart, the brand behind Labubu, has built a business on orchestrating demand, emotion, and engagement at scale.
In the first half of 2024, the company posted RMB 6.65 billion in revenue (roughly $920 million), tripled its profits year-on-year, and reached a $40 billion market capitalization, more than double that of U.S. toy giants Hasbro and Mattel combined. It recently told investors to expect a 350% year-on-year profit surge for the first half of 2025.
What makes Labubu exceptional is that it represents one of Chinas first truly organic cultural exports. Its a phenomenon driven by its community of fans, rather than top-down orchestration.
A TikTok moment
Born from the imagination of Hong Kong-based illustrator Kasing Lung, the ugly-cute dolls were catapulted into the spotlight after Blackpinks Lisa was spotted carrying a plush version. That moment triggered a viral TikTok surge and helped drive a 726.6% increase in Labubu-related revenue, now accounting for 25% of Pop Marts total.
What were seeing isnt a one-off success, its a structural shift in how cultural IP is created, scaled, and consumed globally. Chinese consumer innovation is entering a new phase, moving from platforms and hardware to emotionally resonant, creator-led IP. These fandom-driven communities bypass traditional media gatekeepers entirely.
Other Chinese firms are accelerating this shift. Xiaomi, Miniso, and Heytea are part of a new generation of brands not competing on price or scale, but by building fan communities, embedding emotion, and turning cultural resonance into business strategy.
The orchestration of desire
Labubus rise is no accident. Sold in blind boxessealed packaging that hides the variant insideits more than clever merchandising. Its behavioral design. The randomized reward system mirrors gaming mechanics, tapping into dopamine loops and repeat engagement. Over 1.7 million TikTok videos tagged #Labubu feature unboxings. Limited editions, like the Rainbow Labubu, have fetched over $150,000 at auction.
Instead of relying on loyalty programs or sales funnels, the brand creates micro-moments of surprise that make shopping feel like play. Its 66.8% gross margin reflects not just operational efficiency, but emotional value. The retail strategyvending machines, roboshops, and immersive flagshipsis designed for experience, not efficiency.
In New York, teens queue outside Pop Marts SoHo flagship not to shop, but to swap figurines, livestream unboxings, or hunt for rare Labubu variantsmimicking sneaker culture.
From product to platform
This emotional engagement mirrors moves by other Chinese innovators. Xiaomi, once a low-cost smartphone player, has evolved into a lifestyle platform spanning wearables, TVs, EVs, and smart home devices.
Its loyal Mi Fan community is central to its success by participating in product development. This two-way relationship cuts marketing costs and builds loyalty. Online forums, feedback channels, and fan events make Xiaomi feel less like a company and more like a community.
Miniso, too, has leaned into aesthetic curation and scarcity. Its co-branded collections with Sanrio, Marvel, and Coca-Cola go viral on social platforms, while its treasure-hunt store layout fuels impulse discovery. Despite affordable price points, it achieves performance that rivals luxury retailersproving emotional design can scale.
At the center of this shift is aesthetic fluency. Pop Marts roboshops now span 25 countries, including the U.S., France, and Australia. Flagship stores in New York and Los Angeles draw Gen Z crowds reminiscent of Supreme drops. The design of Labubuquirky, ironic, expressivetaps directly into Gen Zs appetite for memeable, imperfect symbols of self-expression.
This isnt imitation. China is exporting design-native communities that speak to youth culture through visual language.
Monetizing emotion at scale
Chinese brands are also redefining how emotion scales. While legacy Western players rely on storytelling and identity marketing, their Chinese counterparts are building infrastructure for emotional engagement.
Heytea treats each product launchwhether a limited-edition cheese tea or a regional collaborationas an event, amplified through influencers, teaser campaigns, and fan buzz.
Its minimalist, Instagrammable stores are designed for social interaction, turning queues into part of the experience. Co-branded drops with luxury names like Fendi and seasonal exclusives fuel emotional attachment. This isnt just clever marketingits a system that turns a beverage into a lifestyle, and a brand into a community.
That same emotional infrastructure powers Labubus rise into fandom. Rare figurines flip for 5 to 30 times their retail value on Xianyu, Alibabas resale platform, some with blockchain verification. Police raids on counterfeit Lafufu dolls signal Labubus ascent to luxury-like status, making it a new asset class: IP with emotional and economic value, validated in real time.
What Western brands can learn
Some Western executives may dismiss blind boxes and roboshops as quirky or culturally niche. But under the surface lies a global truth: Consumers crave emotion, novelty, and community.
Labubus rise shows how brands can scale through visual culture that travels without translation. No slogan, no storyline, just design. It spreads like a physical meme, interpreted across cultures from Seoul to Paris. The core question is no longer Whats the story? Its Whats the emotion were scaling?
Chinese brands are showing that strategy today is built from small, orchestrated moments that add up to immersive communities. Theyre blurring the lines between product and platform, commerce and culture.
The old playbookposition, promote, pushwas built for mass marketing and one-way messaging. Todays leading brands thrive on feedback loops, cocreation, and community-driven agility.
The next wave of global brands?
Its tempting to view Pop Mart as a regional curiosity. That would be a mistake.
Labubu may look like a viral toy, but its also a case study in how design, emotion, and communities converge into strategic advantage.
What ties these brands together is not just design or digital presenceits the way they build and sustain fan communities. Labubu isnt a preview, its proof. And for global brands still running on legacy logic, its time to catch up.
Its summer, and its been hot, even in northern cities such as Boston. But not everyone is hit with the heat in the same way, even within the same neighborhood.
Take two streets in Boston at 4:30 p.m. on a recent day, as an example. Standing in the sun on Lewis Place, the temperature was 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.6 degrees Celsius). On Dudley Common, it was 103 F. Both streets were hot, but the temperature on one was much more dangerous for peoples health and well-being.
The kicker is that those two streets are only a few blocks apart. The difference epitomizes the urban heat island effect, created as pavement and buildings absorb and trap heat, making some parts of the city hotter.
A closer look at the two streets shows some key differences:
Dudley Common is public open space sandwiched between two thoroughfares that create a wide expanse of pavement lined with storefronts. There arent many trees to be found.
Lewis Place is a residential cul-de-sac with two-story homes accompanied by lots of trees.
This comparison of two places within a few minutes walk of each other puts the urban heat island effect under a microscope. It also shows the limits of todays strategies for managing and responding to heat and its effects on public health, which are generally attuned to neighborhood or citywide conditions.
Even within the same neighborhood, some places are much hotter than others owing to their design and infrastructure. You could think of these as urban heat islets in the broader landscape of a community.
Sensing urban heat islets
Emerging technologies are making it easier to find urban heat islets, opening the door to new strategies for improving health in our communities.
While the idea of reducing heat across an entire city or neighborhood is daunting, targeting specific blocks that need assistance the most can be faster and a much more efficient use of resources.
Doing that starts with making urban heat islets visible.
In Boston, Im part of a team that has installed more than three dozen sensors across the Roxbury neighborhood to measure temperature every minute for a better picture of the communitys heat risks, and were in the process of installing 25 more. The Common SENSES project is a collaboration of community-based organizations, including the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Project Right Inc.; university researchers like me who are affiliated with Northeastern Universitys Boston Area Research Initiative; and Boston city officials. It was created to pursue data-driven, community-led solutions for improving the local environment.
Data from those sensors generate a real-time map of the conditions in the neighborhood, from urban heat islets like Dudley Common to cooler urban oases, such as Lewis Place.
These technologies are becoming increasingly affordable and are being deployed in communities around the world to pinpoint heat risks, including Miami, Baltimore, Singapore, and Barcelona. There are also alternatives when long-term installations prove too expensive, such as the U.S.s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration volunteer science campaign, which has used mobile sensors to generate onetime heat maps for more than 50 cities.
Making cooler communities, block by block
Although detailed knowledge of urban heat islets is becoming more available, we have barely scratched the surface of how they can be used to enhance peoples health and well-being.
The sources of urban heat islets are rooted in developmentmore buildings, more pavement, and fewer trees result in hotter spaces. Many projects using community-based sensors aspire to use the data to counteract these effects by identifying places where it would be most helpful to plant trees for shade or install cool roofs or cool pavement that reflect the heat.
However, these current efforts do not fully capitalize on the precision of sensors. For example, Los Angeless massive investment in cool pavement has focused on the city broadly rather than overheated neighborhoods. New York Citys tree planting efforts in some areas failed to anticipate where trees could be successfully planted.
Most other efforts compare neighborhood to neighborhood, as if every street within a neighborhood experiences the same temperature. London, for example, uses satellite data to locate heat islands, but the resolution isnt precise enough to see differences block by block.
In contrast, data pinpointing the highest-risk areas enables urban planners to strategically place small pocket parks, cool roofs, and street trees to help cool the hottest spaces. Cities could incentivize or require developers to incorporate greenery into their plans to mitigate existing urban heat islets or prevent new ones. These targeted interventions are cost-effective and have the greatest potential to help the most people.
But this could go further by using the data to create more sophisticated alert systems. For example, the National Weather Services Boston office released a heat advisory for July 25, 2025, the day I measured the heat in Dudley Common and Lewis Place, but the advisory showed nearly the entirety of the state of Massachusetts at the same warning level.
What if warnings were more locally precise?
On certain days, some streets cross a crucial thresholdsay, 90 Fwhereas others do not. Sensor data capturing these hyperlocal variations could be communicated directly to residents or through local organizations. Advisories could share maps of the hottest streets r suggest cool paths through neighborhoods.
There is increasing evidence of urban heat islets in many urban communities and even suburban ones. With data showing these hyperlocal risks, policymakers and project coordinators can collaborate with communities to help address areas that many community members know from experience tend to be much hotter than surrounding areas in summer.
As one of my colleagues, Nicole Flynt of Project Right Inc., likes to say, Data + Stories = Truth. If communities act upon both the temperature data and the stories their residents share, they can help their residents keep coolbecause its hot out there.
Dan O’Brien is a professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Each January, we set lofty resolutions for ourselves: increasing our output, landing that promotion, and negotiating a raise. Then progress stalls, motivation dips, and those big goals become distant dreams.
Research from Headwaya book summary app designed to help people achieve their self-development goalsshows that 60% of people are embarrassed by how little progress theyve made this year, with 44% close to writing off their 2025 resolutions.
As a productivity coach, I know how beneficial resolutions can bebut also how quickly they can sap morale and motivation when combined with the wrong mindset.
But it doesnt have to be all or nothing. Theres no deadline, and you havent failed if you dont complete your resolutions by December 31st. So if youve hit a midyear slump, dont panic. These strategies can help you to reset, refocus, and rebuild momentum:
1. Reframe your setbacks
Setback carries negative connotations, but its just another word for experience, and experience is essential for growth.
Instead of brushing these moments asideor beating yourself up over themnote down each time youve tried and failed, then reflect on what these experiences taught you, shifting your mindset from self-criticism to self-awareness. Where did it go wrong, and what would you do differently next time?
Setbacks arent roadblocks; theyre stepping stoneswith each one providing valuable insight that will aid your next attempt, making you more resilient and better prepared. In fact, research shows that a failure rate of around 15% is optimal for self-growth.
2. Utilize the Zeigarnik effect
Many people recommend breaking your resolutions down into smaller, more achievable tasks. Yet, that constant sense of achievement can kill your productivity. You tick a small step off your to-do list and reward yourself with a break, hitting reset on your momentum.
Instead, you need to use the Zeigarnik effect to your advantage. This is a phenomenon where our brains are hardwired to focus on unfinished tasks and quickly forget about the ones weve completed. Instead of wrapping up your day with your to-do list at 100% completed, end at 80%. The next day, youll be ready to pick up where you left off. But once you finish a task, move immediately on to the next to keep the momentum going.
This approach will keep your goal front of mind, maintain a sense of urgency, and prevent that post-completion slump that too often derails our progress.
3. Cut yourself some slack
Youre not the person you were six months ago. Life shifts and priorities change, so your January goals might be unrealistic today. Thats okay.
Some 27% of people say simply surviving 2025 is commendableand theyre right. Close to half fear a global conflict is on the horizon, one in five find themselves worrying that a loved one could face deportation, and there has been a sharp rise in the number of people struggling to make ends meet.
Tensions are high, and were all struggling with something, so go easy on yourself. If you need to scale back your resolutions or hit pause until 2026? Theres no shame in it.
4. Stop striving for perfection
You dont have to navigate your goals aloneor stick rigidly to the resolutions you set in January. You simply need to stay connected to your intentions, especially when motivation starts to dip.
That might mean scheduling regular check-ins with yourself where you can remind yourself why you set certain goals in the first place, take time to note whats working and what isnt, and adjust accordingly to match the current pace of life.
Progress isnt about perfection. Its about staying in tune with what matters most to you and seeking to better yourself. By being too tough on yourselfdenying yourself the space, flexibility, and self-trust to get there in the endyoure not pushing yourself to achieve; youre pushing yourself to quit.
5. Focus on recovery
With 61% of people having suffered a meltdown in 2025, its clear were demanding too much of ourselves, and another midyear resolution wont help.
The problem is, we set ambitious goals on top of our already overloaded schedules, then sacrifice our sleep and downtime to pursue them. Its no surprise we burn out when our bodies and minds are running on empty.
So instead of pushing yourself to do more, push yourself to rest more. Your midyear resolutions should be to sleep eight hours each night, stop checking your emails after hours, and use up all your vacation days.
Theres a reason athletes take rest days and CEOs swear by meditation. Whats good for the body and mind is great for productivity, so if you set resolutions that help you rest, relax, and recover, your career will undoubtedly profit.
It’s not uncommon for large companies to acquire startups primarily for their talent rather than their product. Acquihires, as they are called, allow big companies to gain talented employees, while bypassing traditional methods of hiring.
However, as the AI talent wars have heated up, major companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have been engaging in reverse-acquihires at AI startups. That is, they are swooping in to hire star talent and license technology, discarding the rest by the wayside. The tech giants gain talent while sidestepping the need for government approval and antitrust scrutiny that would happen if they bought the company outright.
The remaining employees are left to flounder in the husk of their former company. By Bloombergs count there have been six since last March, and as the AI talent wars continue, were likely to see more.
6. Google DeepMind and Windsurf
In July 2025, Googles DeepMind division hired Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and cofounder Douglas Chen, along with other key members of their R&D team. The $2.4 billion deal also included Windsurf technology. Google did not take a stake or any controlling interest in the startup.
The deal came after Windsurf was nearly sold to OpenAI in what was set to be a $3 billion deal. The Windsurf employees whom Google did not hire went from expecting to be part of OpenAI to being left behind at a company with no leaders.
In a surprise twist Windsurf was quickly acquired by AI coding startup, Cognition. Still, the story doesnt have a happy ending. Shortly afterwards, Cognition laid off 30 members of Windsurfs team and offered buyouts to the remaining 200 TechCrunch reported.
5. Meta and Scale AI
This June, Meta finalized a deal with data labeling company Scale AI. Meta acquired a group of its top engineers, including founder Alexandr Wang, and took a 49% stake in the company, for a $15 billion price tag. “As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” a Meta spokesperson said.
A month later, Scale laid off 14% of its workforce. Interim CEO Jason Droege said the company plans to focus on its government and enterprise businesses going forward.
4. Google and Character.AI
In August 2024, Google also struck a deal with chatbot startup Character.AI, hiring its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, as part of a $2.7 billion deal. “Were excited to announce that weve entered into an agreement with Google that will allow us to accelerate our progress,” Character.AI said in a statement at the time. The statement also explained that the startup would grant a nonexclusive license to the tech giant for its LLM technology.
In the wake of the reverse-acquihire, Character.AI has shifted to a cheaper business model. Instead of training LLMs, it simply develops AI characters. Interim CEO Dominic Perella told Bloomberg: We were left much better positioned than some folks, pointing out that for a reverse-acquihire Character.AI is doing well.
3. Amazon and Covariant
In August 2024, Amazon hired robotics company Covariants three founders (Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, and Rocky Duan) as well as about a quarter of the staff. They also received a nonexclusive license to Covariants robotic foundation models. According to a whistleblower, Amazon paid $380 million, which is much higher than $119.5 million, which is when deals need to be reported to the FTC.
The Washington Post reported that according to the whistleblowers filing, Covariants current CEO, Ted Stinson, said if Amazon had bought the company outright, the deal would have been killed by antitrust authorities. According to the whistleblower, the deal restricts which licenses Covariant can sell without paying a fee to Amazon, hobbling its ability to grow. The whistleblowers filing said Covariant was only expected to last for a year after the deal went through.
2. Amazon and Adept
Similarly, in June 2024, Amazon hired CEO David Luan and most of the AI startup Adept’s 100-person team in a deal that also included licensing the startup’s technology. At the time, Adept, which had raised $400 million, was developing AI agents to do software tasks, and the deal came before it had launched a product.
Post-deal a blog post from Adept seemed to suggest that the company was now low in fund and needed to shift to a cheaper business model. Continuing with Adepts initial plan of building both useful general intelligence and an enterprise agent product wouldve required spending significant attention on fundraising… the post stated. Adept will now focus entirely on solutions that enable agentic AI, which will continue to be powered by a combination of our existing state-of-the-art in-house models, agentic data, web interaction software, and custom infrastructure.
In December 2024, Amazon announced it was launching a new lab led by David Luan that would build AI agents that can handle complex workflows.
Only around 20 employees remained at Adept after the Amazon deal. Bloomberg noted only four people currently list Adept as their employer on LinkedIn.
1. Microsoft and Inflection
Microsoft kicked off the reverse acquihire trend last March when it agreed to pay chatbot startup Inflection about $653 million in a deal that effectively gutted the startup. The move included hiring founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonya and most of Inflection’s staff. Around $620 million was for nonexclusive licensing rihts to Inflection’s AI models, and a $33 million payment for Inflection to waive any legal claims related to the hiring of its staff.
Inflection had raised $1.3 billion in June 2023. However, Bloomberg noted CEO Suleyman was worried about the companys ability to raise enough funds to stay viable given the size of its competition.
The deal triggered a FTC investigation to determine whether it was designed to avoid antitrust review while allowing Microsoft control over Inflection. Inflection is still in operation, but has changed course to focus from building new AI models to working on AI in the enterprise space.
Sean White, a former Mozilla executive, became the new CEO. White told Bloomberg that Inflection is still in rebuilding mode: The ship, over time, was slowly replaced, board by board, piece by piece, right? But it was still always the same ship, he said.
Amazon is the the most efficient, popular online retailer. So maybe it shouldnt be surprising that its a gold mine for scammers. These individuals, bless their blackened hearts, are adept at crafting new and increasingly plausible ways to trick the unsuspectingand posing as Amazon is an easy way to attract attention.
So, with a healthy dose of skepticism, let’s examine a few of their more popular ruses. And, more importantly, how to avoid becoming the next victim.
Your Account Is On Hold!
This particular chestnut arrives via email, often with a subject line designed to induce mild panic. It’s adorned with a passable Amazon logo and a link, invariably urging you to verify your details or update your billing information.
How to avoid it: Amazon, for all its technological prowess, rarely communicates critical account issues via unsolicited links in an email.
Outsmarting this one can be done the same way you outsmart just about every other phishing email out there.
Make sure to examine the sender’s address. Does it genuinely end in “@amazon.com”? Or is it a peculiar string of characters, perhaps including amazon.com somewhere? The latter is a strong indicator its a scam.
In the message itself, are there peculiar grammatical constructions or spellings that suggest English might not be the author’s primary language? These subtle imperfections are often telltale signs, though theyre getting harder to spot thanks to AI.
And finally, resist the urge to click. If theres genuinely an issue with your Amazon account, manually navigating to Amazon.com in your browser and logging in will reveal all. Any legitimate alerts will be visible there.
The “Unexpected Refund” Text Message
This rather sneaky tactic involves a text message, ostensibly from Amazon, informing you that a recent purchase of yours has failed some sort of routine inspection. Perhaps it’s being recalled, or simply isn’t up to Amazon’s exacting standards.
The good news, the message purports, is that a full refund is due, often without the hassle of returning the offending item. All you need do is click the convenient link provided to claim your compensation.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, among others, has recently issued warnings about this particular brand of mischief.
How to avoid it: Excitement for an unexpected windfall should be tempered with a healthy dose of doubt.
For starters, while Amazon does send legitimate texts, an unsolicited refund notification, particularly for an unspecified item and without requiring a return, is highly suspect.
Clicking the link in the text message will, in all likelihood, lead you to a meticulously crafted phishing page that looks just like the official Amazon login pagejust waiting to collect your Amazon credentials, payment information, and any other personal details you’re willing to volunteer.
Should you harbor even a fleeting thought that the message might be legitimate, bypass the text entirely by logging into your Amazon account via the official website or the app. Any legitimate refund or recall information will be clearly displayed within your order history or official notifications.
The “Accidental Over-Refund”
This is a somewhat more sophisticated deception. You might receive a call or an email asserting that Amazon has, through some inexplicable error, refunded you too much for a recent return.
The request is for you to remit the “overpayment,” often via the purchase of gift cards or a wire transfer.
How to avoid it: Before doing anything, consult your actual bank statements or Amazon account to confirm the alleged overpayment. It’s almost certain you’ll find no such anomaly.
When it comes to Amazon’s refund protocol, the companys internal processes are reasonably sophisticated. Should a genuine error occur, the company would rectify it internally, not solicit funds from you via questionable methods certainly not gift cards!
And if anyone purports to be from Amazon and requests remote access to your computer to “correct” a refund issue, it’s time to end the conversation. Amazon will never, ever, ever ask for access to your computer.
Your Order Has Shipped!” Wait, what order?
This particular trick plays on a combination of alarm and curiosity. A plausible-looking order confirmation arrives in your inbox for an itemoften expensive that you most certainly didnt purchase.
The objective is to prompt you to click the “Cancel Order” or “View Details” link in a state of agitation.
How to avoid it: Bypass the email entirely. Log into your Amazon account and go to your “Orders” section. If the supposed order isn’t there, it’s a fabrication.
Though generally ill-advised, should you feel compelled to examine a link, hover your mouse cursor over it and observe the URL that appears. If it deviates significantly from www.amazon.com, then it’s best left unclicked.
The “Mystery Package” Brushing Scam
This particular oddity is less about financial theft and more about system manipulation. You receive a package from Amazon, addressed to you, containing an item you never orderedoften something inexpensive and utterly random.
The purpose? A third-party seller is using your details to create fake purchases, allowing them to post fraudulent positive reviews under your name, thereby artificially boosting their product’s standing.
How to avoid it: While seemingly harmless, receiving freealbeit often useless goods does indicate your personal information is being exploited.
Do a good deed by contacting Amazon customer service and reporting the unsolicited package. The company takes a dim view of such practices.
And given that your address is being used, a periodic review of your credit report for any other unusual activity is probably in order.
Its the story as old as (industrial) time. In the design/innovation world, not every great result will carry its makers name. There are some notable exceptions. Corning is the widely known supplier of ultradurable glass (Gorilla Glass) used in iPhones, for example. And GORE-TEX is known for premium outdoor gears breathable waterproof membrane, a material of choice. But behind most every iconic solution there are scores of silent partners like our own, Chang Robotics, whose involvement may never be known.
Herein lies the problem: How can you gain recognition, build authority, and attract new business while honoring strict NDAs or white-label relationships?
I know this challenge keenly. We provide scores of organizations with game-changing automation. But how will the next set of Fortune 500 CEOs considering new automation or reshoring know they should talk to us?
We are far from alone. In 2022, there were some 239,000 U.S. manufacturing organizations engineering firms, product designers, and R&D labs. All but 4,177 have fewer than 500 employees. We comprise the legions whose design and production touches most products we experience, but whose names are seldom part of the story.Here are five ways to share the news about our achievements to allow us to scale:
1. Tell the story without naming names
One of the most effective strategies is to frame your achievements by category, not by client. Rather than revealing client names we describe the following:
The type of client: e.g., a Fortune 100 healthcare device manufacturer or a leading North American foods and packaging provider.
The challenge solved: e.g., We accelerated time-to-market by 42% for a new diagnostic platform.
The impact achieved: e.g., We are eliminating the use of PFAs (forever chemicals) in food packaging.
We can maintain confidentiality while still showcasing credible and impactful stories. In some cases, we can show the world a physical product in final development before any branding is attached.
Sometimes after time passes and development cycles are complete, customers may be willing to officially or unofficially acknowledge a partners role. Or they may allow the client to use them as a confidential reference, or name them as client if you dont disclose confidential details of your work. Any of these moves, especially in aggregate, can speed your ability to gain the authority you deserve.
2. Own your domain expertise through thought leadership
Even when you cant name who youre working with, you can be very clear about what you do and why it matters. Take every possible opportunity to publish thought leadership reports that explore:
Emerging trends in your field
Lessons learned from anonymous project work
Predictions about where your segment is headed
Provide this information in as specific and meaningful detail as possible. We do this frequently through white papers and research reports about the industries and development categories we touch. This strategy positions your brand as a go-to expert without violating confidential ground. Some of your clients or prospective clients may even be willing to participate in the white paper projects as sources.
3. Create your own use cases
When you can’t speak about the solutions you’ve built for others, consider building your own. Create demo products, concept videos, or “hypothetical” use cases that mirror real-world applications aligned with industries you’re targeting.
Ortaken to full fruitionunderwrite and support portfolio firms of your own. Weve stepped into this arena, creating the Chang Robotics Fund, which has already invested in eight companies. It is allowing us to scale in several significant ways:
1) We can be fully visible for our roles in each portfolio company.
2) We can display the results of our technical prowess.
3) Perhaps most valuable for us, some results are based on IP from our core employees. This provides them the opportunity to participate as equity owners in their projects while also enjoying the security of their employee positions.
To a large degree, this is a model where everyone wins.
4. Gain visibility through the right channels
In your effort to gain authority in your sector, focus on information channels that reward expertise over promotional content such as:
Contribute to leading business and trade publications or speak at industry events. My participation in the Fast Company Innovation Council is an example of this.
Use platforms like LinkedIn, X, and even TikTok to share expertise and insights (not sales pitches) aligned with the vertical markets you serve. I cannot emphasize the value of these efforts enough, as they comprise some of our most successful achievements in driving new business in 2025-2026.
These environments elevate your voice among peers and prospects without needing to self-promote or name-drop.
5. Partner with clients for joint wins
When your clients can publicly acknowledge your role, even as a footnote, be ready to draft joint case studies, share in award applications, and coauthor technical papers or conference presentations.
This is more difficult when clients are publicly traded organizations. But many clients (and particularly major university clients and partners) are open to win-win mutual visibility. This is especially true in technical fields where peer credibility counts, and the academic research can be helpful for your own organization as well.
Final words
Invisibility is not inevitable. For ingredient brands, strategic storytelling, anonymized case studies, and consistent thought leadership can earn you deserved attention and credibilityeven if your logo never appears on the box.
Matthew Chang is founder and principal engineer of Chang Robotics.
The fastest-growing group of real estate investors? Theyre not hedge funds or institutional investors. Theyre nurses, teachers, NASA engineers, and first-time landlords with a smartphone.
In recent years, 85% percent of investor-owned residential properties were purchased by small scale mom and pop landlords, rather than institutional players. Thanks to property technology, investors no longer need deep pockets, a finance degree, or a ton of spare time to start building a real estate business.
Real estate has long been one of the most capital-intensive, time-consuming, and difficult asset classes to break into. But proptech is dismantling many of the long-standing barriers that once kept many people out, redefining who gets to invest, who gets to earn, and who gets to build wealth from real estate.
Just as fintech became essential infrastructure for financial inclusion, proptech is democratizing real estate investing through smart, values-aligned innovation.
Time is no longer the gatekeeper
In the past, investing in real estate meant navigating a maze of manual taskscollecting paper checks, coordinating maintenance by phone (often in the middle of the night), and tracking expenses with pen, paper, and shoeboxes. The time commitment required wasnt feasible for most people.
Today, modern software platforms automate and centralize nearly every step of the process. Automated five-pronged tenant screening tools deliver instant background and credit checks. Lease agreements can be generated digitally and signed online. Rent is collected automatically via mobile apps. And maintenance requests flow through clean, trackable dashboards that dispatch vetted local pros without bothering the owner at odd hours.
That kind of automation has opened the doors to investors who once felt priced outnot financially, but in terms of time and attention. Ive seen it firsthand. One landlord and long-time RentRedi user, a NASA engineer named Dawid, manages his real estate business in the evenings and on weekends while continuing to work in aerospace. Proptech makes it possible to treat real estate like a side hustle, rather than a full-time obligation.
Financial barriers are no longer the dealbreaker
Theres no denying it: The financial hurdles to buying property have grown steeper. Home prices are high. Interest rates have increased. For many aspiring investors, the traditional path to ownership feels out of reach.
But while the barrier itself has risen, proptech is helping people find strategic ways to overcome it. Digital tools are making creative income strategieslike renting out space or co-owning propertiesmore accessible and easier to manage than ever before.
By generating income from day one, many of these strategies reduce the amount of personal capital needed to cover costs. That means investors can start smaller, take on less risk, and enter the market more affordably. The result? A new wave of homeowners and investors who are building wealth one step at a time.
Creative property monetization: Turn space into income
Even without renting to long-term tenants, homeowners can generate meaningful income from underutilized parts of their property. Proptech platforms make it easy to list, manage, and monetize these spaces, turning idle square footage into opportunity.
One of the most rapidly growing real estate trends is accessory dwelling units (ADUs). These are separate, self-contained structures on a residential lot (often detached in backyards or converted from existing garages) that can be rented out for short- or long-term stays.
Creative models can lower the financial strain of ownership and allow people to begin investing in real estate incrementally, without the need for multiple properties or large upfront capital.
Scale without the traditional infrastructure
For investors who start smallwhether through co-ownership, or a single rental unitscaling is traditionally the next big hurdle. Growing a real estate portfolio used to require hiring property managers, assembling in-house teams, or outsourcing to expensive service providers. The overhead alone made it difficult to expand without deep pockets or significant infrastructure.
Thats no longer the case. Today, an individual with the right property management software can manage 1, 10, 50, even 100 units independently. Operations that once required a staff can now be handled from a mobile dashboard in minutes. Investors can grow their portfolios incrementally without sacrificing their full-time careers or quality of life.
Another customer, Katherine, is a pediatric ICU nurse who wanted to create passive income for retirement. She started with three units and has since expanded her portfolio to eight units in just three years, managing it alongside her demanding healthcare schedule.
These arent isolated success storiestheyre part of a growing trend. Proptech means real estate investing can become something people can build around their lives. The tools once reserved for big players are now in the hands of everyday investors.
This shift lowers structural barriers for underrepresented groups. Young, minority, and female investors who have historically faced the steepest entry points are now scaling businesses with little more than a smartphone and a solid strategy.
A new era of inclusive real estate investing
What fintech did for Wall Street, proptech is doing for Main Street real estate. Its unlocking ownership, income, and long-term financial opportunity for more people in more places, with fewer of the barriers that once made real estate the domain of the already-wealthy.
As more people access real estate as a means to build wealth, proptech helps reshape who owns housing in Americaand how that ownership affects communities, families, and futures. This is more than convenience. It’s a structural change and the beginning of a more inclusive, more entrepreneurial economy.
Ryan Barone is cofounder and CEO of RentRedi.
In the next 24 months, your most valuable customer may never visit your site, click your ad, or read your email.
Imagine this scenario: You have a lake holiday coming up in two weeks. Instead of manually researching a new set of water skis, scrolling through reviews, and comparing prices, your AI agent handles this task. It scans your calendar to confirm the trip dates, checks the destination and expected conditions, then pulls data from your smartwatch to understand your height, weight, and skill level. It knows your brand affinities, your budget, your shipping constraints, and your preferred colors. Within seconds, it selects the perfect skis, ensures theyll arrive in time, and purchases themno endless open tabs, no second-guessing, no friction.
This isnt sci-fi. Its the next wave in digital commerce, and brands that dont adopt now will fall off the digital shelf.
If your brand isnt optimized for AI agents, its already losing. Think of AI agents as hyper-loyal personal shoppers but with perfect recall and zero patience for friction. Agents dont care how beloved a brand is. They just care about the data.
The primary shopper your brand must persuade into purchasing will no longer be a person, but an AI agent acting on that persons behalf. The traditional marketing funnel is irrelevant in a world where agents compress it into a single millisecond. These autonomous agentic AI systems ingest a customers preferences, constraints, and history, then compress the entire marketing funnel, from awareness to consideration to checkout, into a single, split-second decision.
If AI agents are the future of digital commerce, then the checkout process becomes even more critical. Its one of the last, and sometimes only, moments where brands have permission to show up. That means relevance is what keeps you in the consideration set.
Most brands market to people. Those days will soon be gone as reasoning-capable agents are beginning to transact, not just inform. A vacation that once required hours of research can now be booked end-to-end in moments, with flights, hotels, and dinner reservations stitched together by code, not clicks. To thrive in this agent-first landscape, brands must reengineer how they surface, price, and prove value, because the algorithms will do the selecting long before a human ever sees the options.
AI agents are a new distribution channel
SEO alone wont cut it in the agentic world. AI agents arent browsing like humans; theyre retrieving, evaluating, and transacting based on clean, structured data. With 42% of U.S. businesses already paying for AI tools, the infrastructure to support agentic interaction is rapidly being normalized across enterprise stacks. On top of that, the consumer mindset is catching up with the infrastructure as ChatGPT is one of the fastest growing platforms of all time, reaching 100 million users in just two months. To remain in the consideration set, brands must optimize not just for discoverability but for the entire purchasing journey. That means building for machine experience the same way brands once built for user experience.
Agents will become distribution endpoints, not unlike marketplaces or search engines, except theyll be personalized and always-on. Product information, pricing, and availability must be structured and accessible via APIs or structured feeds, not buried in formats or siloed systems that cant be read by AI. Brands that view agent-friendly infrastructure as a key growth lever are poised to grab an outsize share of voice and revenue on whats quickly becoming the new algorithmic shelf.
Loyalty from both humans and agents
Loyalty must be earned on two fronts: emotional and algorithmic. In a world where AI agents can ruthlessly parse thousands of SKUs in mere milliseconds, emotional storytelling may no longer get the job done. Agents will weigh product attributes against shipping timelines, historical pricing data, and ratings volatility with surgical precision. Subpar signals can cause a product option to be filtered out, no questions asked.
What does this mean for brands? More than anything, they must operationalize loyalty across two separate but equal fronts: one emotional, and one algorithmic.
For human shoppers, loyalty is still earned through rich brand experiences and tailored-to-you storytelling. Agents, on the other hand, demand a very different kind of digital courtship: high-quality, structured data, consistently reliable fulfillment, competitive pricing, seamless checkout with relevant upsells, and gold-star customer satisfaction signals. Brands that win both the hearts and algorithms wont just lead; theyll lock out the competition. For shoppers with only a tenuous connection to your brand, AI agents are your best shot at winning them over, if your data can back it up.
Advertising to agents
Marketing to machines doesnt require charm, it demands cold structured truth. Unlike people, agents cant be charmed or cajoled by creativity, only swayed by real-time relevance and quantifiable value. That forces a rethink of how brands allocate their media dollars. Traditional ad strategies that have been optimized for human psychology will need a parallel track for performance-driven, machine-readable messaging.
In this new paradigm, advertising becomes less about storytelling and more about signaling. These agents wont merely browse, theyll retrieve, rank, and decide. Thats why advertising must evolve to speak their language: real-time product availability, structured metadata, and machine-readable signals.
The agent economy is no longer speculative, its investable. To stay in the consideration set, brands must act now to build a data-first infrastructure, prove performance integrity, and become fluent in the language of machines. Agent-based advertising isnt a futuristic niche; its the next frontier of performance marketing. It demands precision, agility, and real-time truth. Because in an agentic world, every brand is constantly reevaluated.
Relevance isnt a campaign. Its a living negotiation with algorithms in the drivers seat.
Elizabeth Buchanan is chief commercial officer of Rokt.
