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When word started circling that AMC Theaters was screening an AI-generated short film, the internet’s cinephiles took it personally. On Wednesday, some social media users reported that the short was playing in the pre-show before trailers at select AMC locations. A little digging revealed the source: Earlier this week, the short, titled Thanksgiving Day, was announced as the winner of the inaugural Frame Forward Animated AI Film Festival. The prize package included a nationwide theatrical release, which apparently entailed making its way to AMCs screens. Movie lovers across social media were immediately up in arms. Some called for boycotts. Some found it insulting that if pre-show screen time were being given to short films, AMC would feature AI-generated content rather than human-made movies. Almost all seemed to agree that the move was, as one disgruntled user put it, “hot garbage.” Don't go to AMC theatres.Boycott all slop. https://t.co/x4HrMttzGB— Ewan Morrison (@MrEwanMorrison) February 18, 2026 Imagine if they were screening traditionally made short films … https://t.co/cvCTtKlYMF— Scott Jeschke (@ScottJeschke) February 18, 2026 hey @AMCTheatres this is hot garbage https://t.co/aL1b05Xw46— Miss Gender (@girldrawsghosts) February 18, 2026 Less than 24 hours later, AMC issued a statement to set things straight. Showing Thanksgiving Day wasnt AMCs idea, but an initiative from Screenvision Media, a cinema advertising company that co-organized the Frame Forward festival. According to AMC, Screenvisions pre-show advertising packages run in fewer than 30 percent of AMCs U.S. locations. AMC was not involved in the creation of the content or the initiative and has informed Screenvision that AMC locations will not participate, the statement, which was given to the Hollywood Reporter, concluded. Social media users celebrated the news that AMC would no longer screen the short. Yes, its a victory in itself for anti-AI advocates. But perhaps more importantly, it suggests that brands take notice when consumers speak out against AI integration. According to film critic Jacob Harper, claims about AIs inevitably dont hold water. Stand firm against AI in film! Make them listen and they WILL listen! Never underestimate the power of your voice! Harper wrote in his post on X. Very proud of AMC for this! AI is inevitable. Adapt or be left behindNOPE. Stand firm against AI in film! Make them listen and they WILL listen! Never underestimate the power of your voice!Very proud of AMC for this! https://t.co/N8ExrXiKij— Jacob Harper (@JacobAtTheMovie) February 19, 2026 Good Keep being loud about how much you dislike AI. It works! https://t.co/7oLsZqwOjZ— Is this a 3D model? (@IsThisA3DModel) February 19, 2026 A wonderful example ofYou slop, you flop. https://t.co/WScuO9FEY6— Ewan Morrison (@MrEwanMorrison) February 20, 2026 KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT AI!!! https://t.co/xBodh0vSEc— Drew (@HeyImReallyDrew) February 19, 2026 AMC wasnt the only theater showing the short, and its not the only theater to axe it. Social media users also reported seeing Thanksgiving Day ahead of films at Hollywoods iconic TCL Chinese Theatre, prompting similar outrage from moviegoers. PUT SOME LOONEY TUNES ON INSTEAD OR SOMETHING WTF https://t.co/qfsjuEqsN8— Zac (@ZacStrikesAgain) February 18, 2026 But a representative for the theater tells Fast Company that the short has been removed, following AMCs example. Though Thanksgiving Day may no longer be part of the AMC experience, organizers of the Frame First festival, including AI film company Modern Uprising Studios, arent giving up on the short. In a statement issued by the festival, president and studio head of MUS Joel Roodman said that the theatrical run was only the beginning of plans for the AI-generated film, which include adapting Thanksgiving Day for a new immersive theatrical venue coming to New York City. Shared theatrical experiences are an important cultural bond,” Roodman said. “The traditional theatrical chains are vital to our cohesion as a society, and are duly cautious [about AI]. However, the media landscape is changing and evolving rapidly.” “They may be prudent, but it is important to MUS immersive that new and exciting films, filmmakers, cinematic language, and spaces for these shared experiences continue to develop,” Roodman added. “We will bring new content, and important existing content, to our developing venue network of venues, starting in New York. We will not see the theatrical window wither on our watch.
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E-Commerce
At one point in my life, I managed a team of seven. My days consisted of 1:1 calls, performance reviews, and running interference between the team, other departments, and customers. I thought thats what I wanted: the perceived power and responsibility of being a manager. But in reality, it was very stressful. Today, I have been a solopreneur for three years. The assumption is that solo businesses are a starting point. You launch alone, build momentum, hire employees, and scale. That’s the entrepreneurs playbook, right? {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-mobile-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Work Better\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn\u0027t suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.workbetter.media\/\u0022\u003Eworkbetter.media\u003C\/a\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91457605,"imageMobileId":91457608,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} But over 80% of small businesses in the U.S. have no employees, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. For many of us, that’s not a limitation. Staying solo is a deliberate strategy that prioritizes control and flexibility over growth for growths sake. Small is a strategy, not a stepping stone The “grow or die” mentality makes sense for companies that have dreams of becoming large, enterprise organizations. And some small businesses may have that dream. The cultural assumption is that a solo business is Phase One: something to outgrow. But many solopreneurs are choosing to stay small permanently. Hiring employees fundamentally changes what you do every day. You stop being a practitioner and become a manager. Some people want that transition. Many don’tand recognizing that isn’t a failure of ambition. It’s simply prioritizing a different way of working. Revenue isn’t profit A report by Gusto found that 77% of solopreneurs are profitable in their first year, compared to just 54% of businesses with employees. And 93% of solopreneurs expect to be profitable in 2025, versus 80% of employer businesses. A company earning a million dollars per year sounds impressive until you subtract salaries, benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, and the overhead required to keep it all running. The owner of that business may take home less than a solopreneur earning a third of that revenue with almost no overhead. When you stay solo, you can increase your effective rate by being selective. You might take on fewer, better-paying clients instead of chasing volume. In the end, revenue is a vanity metric if you’re working more hours for less take-home pay. You don’t need permission to reinvent yourself Staying solo means retaining total control over your business and your life. When you have employees, every pivot requires buy-in, transition planning, and often difficult conversations. You can’t just decide to raise your rates, shift your niche, or take a three-month sabbatical. In the several years Ive worked for myself, Ive gone through several iterations of Who am I? What do I do? What clients should I serve? I can change my entire service offering without consulting anyone. I can walk away from a client who isn’t working out without worrying about how it affects someone else’s paycheck. That flexibility is especially valuable in an uncertain economy because I can respond to market changes in days, not months. The question solopreneurs should ask themselves isnt necessarily, “How can I grow and scale?” It’s “What kind of business do I actually want to run?” {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/11\/work-better-mobile-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Work Better\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Thoughts on the future of work, career pivots, and why work shouldn\u0027t suck, by Anna Burgess Yang. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.workbetter.media\/\u0022\u003Eworkbetter.media\u003C\/a\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.workbetter.media","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91457605,"imageMobileId":91457608,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
The venerable business case study method got its start in 1921 at the Harvard Business School. The method became standard at the school throughout the 1920s and since then Harvard has a near-monopoly grip on the business, selling its cases to over 4,000 rival schools. Cases can be useful and informative, but recognize that they arent reality. The companies featured typically require that the case writer submit the case to them for approval. That introduces survivor biaswhoever is still around at the time of publication gets to dictate how the narrative is told. Another issue is that the companies selected and held up as exemplars are subject to the halo effect. This is the tendency to believe that because a company was successful, copying its practices will create success elsewhere. Unfortunately, the iron law of transient advantage is hard to escape. The 1995 Dell case doesnt hold up so well. A 2002 case about Nokia centered on how the successful phone company was going to deal with the 8 billion in cash piling up in its accounts. And dont even get me started on the 618 (!) cases that feature the General Electric Corporation. Which brings me to the decades of adulation long accorded to Southwest Airlines. The Shortest Distance to Just Another Airline Southwest Airlines ran a Super Bowl ad this year. In it, passengers scramble through a jungle, climbing over each other in a chaotic race to grab seats. The tagline? “That was wild. Assigned seating is here.” The ad was intended (I think) to indulge in gentle mockery of the past. I found it jarring. Herb Kelleher, the airlines colorful co-founder, would have been horrified, I think. I last met with him (over a Wild Turkey bourbon, of course) at the Strategic Management Society Meetings in 2004 and he was adamantemployees first, deep attention to details, and most importantly, fun! The many (348!) cases, book chapters, and textbook references to Southwest reference its tightly integrated strategy where every element reinforced every other, allowing it to be profitable in a notoriously tough business. A Boeing 737-2H4 in Southwest livery, ca. 1977. [Photo: Museum of Flight/CORBIS/Corbis/Getty Images] Kellehers insight was that there was a particular kind of flyer whose other option was driving, so short flights that replaced a 4-5 hour drive were attractive. That meant you didnt have to offer meals. One aircraft type (Boeing 737s) meant simplified maintenance, training, and scheduling. Open seating enabled 20-minute turnarounds instead of competitors’ 35 minutes. That extra utilization squeezed more flights from every plane. Bags fly free meant fewer delays at check-in and faster boarding. Employees came first and everybody pitched in. Pilots helped clean cabins, gate agents jumped in wherever needed. And even with all that, the companys culture of having fun at work made the operational discipline feel human rather than mechanical. One of my favorite examples is a flight attendant rapping the entire safety briefing to the tune of Ice, Ice, Baby. Or this one, safety with a sprinkling of humor. The takeaway The big teaching point from the Southwest cases is that competitive advantage isn’t about any single policy. It’s about the fit between policies. Remove one piece and the whole system weakens. Southwest has now removed all of them. Assigned seating went into effect January 27th. “Bags fly free” ended in May 2025. The company is adding premium extra-legroom sections and tiered fare bundles. They’ve announced redeye flights and partnerships with Icelandair. They’ve conducted the first layoffs in their 53-year history. At least they are honesttheir COO explained the bag fee reversal with refreshing candor: “We need more revenue to cover our costs.” Activist investors at Elliott Management got what they wanted. But what exactly has Southwest become? As one former loyalist put it: “There’s simply no reason to fly Southwest anymore. Southwest’s leadership cited research showing “8 out of 10 customers prefer assigned seating.” They also acknowledged that after fare and schedule, bags fly free was cited as the #1 reason customers choose Southwest. The problem is that when you remove that differentiator, you’re now competing on fare and schedule against Delta, United, and American, carriers with better route networks, international reach, premium cabins, and decades more experience operating their models. Like all the other airlines, we are likely to now see pitched battles for overhead space, another blow to a business model built on fast airport turnarounds. The Super Bowl ad could be a case study in strategic confusion. Southwest is making fun of customers who were passionately loyal to what made Southwest diffeent, while asking those same customers to believe the company’s “legendary hospitality” somehow exists independent of the operational system that enabled it. Take lessons from case studies with caution There’s a deeper lesson here. Case studies are snapshots. They capture what worked at a particular moment, under particular boundary conditions. What they dont speak to is what to do when those conditions shift. Southwest’s open seating made sense for the short-hop flights taken by their initial core customers. When the alternative was expensive legacy carriers, those customers would have been driving were it not for Southwest. By 2024, travelers had options that didn’t exist in 1971 or 1991 or even 2011. JetBlue offered assigned seats with personality. Spirit and Frontier offered unbundled ultra-low fares. Delta went upmarket with better service. The white space Southwest once occupied got crowded. My friends Zeynep Ton and Frances Frei exchanged concerns for the culture of the airline. Frei, a professor at Harvard Business School, captured this concern: “I sure hope this isn’t a case of activist investors coming in and insisting on a set of decisions that they won’t be around to have to endure. Great organizations get built over time. It doesn’t take very long to ruin an organization.” I’m not arguing Southwest should have frozen in amber forever. Markets change. Customer preferences evolve. Even the most elegant strategy eventually needs updating. But there’s a difference between thoughtful evolution and abandoning your model. Herb Kelleher once said humility and discipline go together: “You can’t really be disciplined in what you do unless you are humble and open-minded.” He built an airline that knew exactly what it was, knew exactly who it served, and had the discipline to say no to opportunities that didn’t fit. Southwest’s new leadership knows what investors want. Whether they know what Southwest is anymorethat’s less clear.
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E-Commerce
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