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The Innovative Team of the Year recognizes groups of employees at Best Workplaces for Innovators that have gone above and beyond, driving important innovations in their workplace. Winner: Badge Lewes, DE Cofounded by Tina P. Srivastava and Charles Herder, cybersecurity startup Badge aims to revolutionize biometric authentication with its trademarked Identity Without Secrets system, which eliminates the need to store user credentials. The companys cryptography team worked with a CISO Council of outside experts to reduce the time for user authentication from multiple seconds to 22 milliseconds, a latency reduction that not only enhances user experience but also places less stress on computer resources. Since 2024, the team has secured more than 15 patents, and Badge technology is used by Microsoft, Cisco, Okta, and Ping Identity. Finalists: Hebbia, New York Hebbias engagement team is redefining what it means to serve enterprise customers in the age of AI. The team helps customers scale usage across functions and regions, customizing AI strategy from the ground up. Match Group, Dallas Operating a portfolio of dating sites (including Tinder, Match, OkCupid, and Hinge), the company combines design and technical experimentation in its Art x Science Lab, innovating everything from prototyping systems to user games. This story is part of Fast Companys 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards. Explore the full list of companies that are key hubs for fostering innovative talent. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
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E-Commerce
Fast Companys 11th annual Innovation Festival takes over New York City this September 1518. Though every year introduces new offerings to the Innovation Festival, were also bringing back an attendee favorite: Fast Tracks. Fast Tracks are our immersive, experience-based sessions that are hosted in the offices and spaces of New York Citys most innovative companies. Think of them as field trips for adults. From Pickleball at Life Time, to augmented and virtual reality demos at CBS Stations, to a coffee tasting and tour with 787 Coffee, here are a few Fast Tracks you dont want to miss this year: Brewing Coffee and Creativity: A Shot of Storytelling Fast Track hosted by 787 Coffee [Photo: 787 Coffee] Join the team at Puerto Rican coffee company 787 for an in-depth exploration of how your morning cup of joe is transformed from bean to brew. From planting coffee seeds, to roasting a batch of beans, to making your own beverage, youll walk away with a deeper understanding of the life cycle of coffee and the stories it can be used to telland how that notion applies to your industry. Peak Performance: From Mindset to Match Point Fast Track hosted by Life Time [Photo: Life Time] Join Life Time at Penn 1 for an energizing Fast Track experience blending sport and self-optimization. Come ready to listen and play in this interactive session starting with a motivating discussion with Life Time senior vice president Jessie Syfko and Life Time vice president and founder of HPLT Brian Mazza, on how to fuel peak potential through discipline, mindset, and movement. Then grab a paddle (Life Times got em for you) and hit the court for hands-on pickleball instruction and/or straight up play with Life Times elite pros. Come in your workout gear and change after. With full dressing rooms on-site, youll be ready to power into the rest of your Innovation Festival day. From Demos to Deals: How Building an AI Startup in NYC Gets You Closer to Your Customer Fast Track hosted by The Refinery [Photo: The Refinery] As the second-largest startup hub in the world, New York City gives founders a unique edge: faster paths to revenue by building alongside the customers and industry heavyweights who can propel their growth. Join Tech:NYC president and CEO Julie Samuels for a conversation with leading AI entrepreneurs on how the citys density, diversity, and access to decision-makers turn ideas into partnerships and prototypes into revenue. Following the discussion, Fast Track attendees are invited to network with panelists and fellow guests, enjoy light bites, and take in the waterfront views. How Oscar Mayer Won the Race to Cultural Relevance and Ignited a New Summer Tradition Fast Track hosted by Johannes Leonardo [Photo: Johannes Leonardo] For decades, Oscar Mayer was a household staple that lived on the tip of peoples tonguesquite literally. Everyone could sing an Oscar Mayer jingle (or two), and the brand would spark smiles anywhere the Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles went. As Oscar Mayers core audience matured and its pop-culture resence waned, the iconic Wienermobiles remained beloved. The challenge was clear: spark new brand conversation during the kickoff to grilling season, leveraging a nearly 100-year-old brand asset. The result: the Wienie 500. What began as a one-page idea in a brainstorm quickly evolved into a campaign that made marketing history and the Kraft Heinz record books. Generating more than 6 billion impressions and securing the No. 2 trending hashtag on X, the Wienie 500 took the world by storm, with fans demanding it become an annual tradition. Featuring speakers from the Oscar Mayer brand and Johannes Leonardo, this session will give attendees a deep dive into how Oscar Mayer and Johannes Leonardo crafted Americas newest obsession and pastime in a way that sparked smiles and spread love for Oscar Mayer hot dogs across the nation. The Business of Art and Creating a More Inclusive Space Fast Track hosted by GPGallery [Photo: GPGAllery] As the art market shifts, a new generation of galleries is embracing a leaner, more intentional approachprioritizing authentic relationships over volume and aligning economic success with community investment. Join us for a timely conversation between artist and gallerist Jessica Ann Peavy and acclaimed painter Guy Stanley Philoche, hosted at GPGallery (GPG) and exploring how GPGs hybrid modelmerging the artist-centered mission of a nonprofit with the sustainability of a commercial galleryis creating measurable economic and cultural impact in Harlem. This conversation will unpack how GPG is at the forefront of that movement, offering a real-time case study on how culture and capital can evolve together, from the inside out. Why We’ve Fallen Out of Love with the Biggest (Beloved) Brands, and How We Fix It Hosted by Design Bridge & Partners [Photo: Design Bridge & Partners] The same brands that once made us fall in love have somehow fallen into fatigue. In a world where private labels deliver both dupes and desire, and digitally native creator brands are dropping every day, what role do the OGsthe traditional, established brands that built whole categories but are now fighting for differentiationplay today? Using their proprietary, people-driven brand analysis platform, the top strategists at branding agency Design Bridge and Partners will explore how big brands are becoming a cautionary tale by overly relying on the feelings people already know and love them for. Theyll also demonstrate another way forward, revealing how these tried-and-true OGs can reinvigorate for a new eratapping the audience to offer additional insights and suggestions before revealing ideas for a revamped brand or two. Mobilizing Capital to Tackle Climate and Poverty Fast Track hosted by Acumen [Photo: Acumen] Around the world, the poorest communities are on the front lines of climate change, yet they have the least access to the resources needed to adapt and thrive. In this immersive Fast Track session, founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz will share Acumens pioneering approach to deploying the right mix of capital to solve the toughest problems at the intersection of climate and poverty, from assembling a $250 million capital stack to bring clean energy to the hardest-to-reach people living without electricity to raising $300 million for agricultural adaptation for smallholder farmersone of the largest such commitments in the world. Attendees will get to play investor and assess investment opportunities through Acumens framework of poverty focus and business viability. This Fast Track will explore what it takes to build systems rooted in dignity and challenge you to rethink investment as a tool for moral as well as economic transformation. Reworking the Workplace with Ryan Anderson and MillerKnoll Fast Track hosted by MillerKnoll [Photo: MillerKnoll] Join Ryan Anderson, VP of Global Research and Planning at MillerKnoll, for a new look at todays workplace. Ryan and the MillerKnoll team are known for rethinking how workspaces can best support people at every stage of their careers. Hell share insights on how the physical environment can be thoughtfully designed to reduce loneliness and social isolation, while enabling the relationship-based work thats essential for everyone to create meaningful interactions, from those just starting their careers to those preparing for their final career moves. Guests will have the opportunity to tour MillerKnolls New York showroom (which opened just a year ago), where these ideas come to life. Discover how residential and hospitality-inspired design is making offices feel less institutional, how individual workspaces are evolving to support both focus and social connection, and why thoughtful workplace design is more essential than ever in an era of rising life pressures. Light bites and drinks will follow the session. Life on the Edge: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Resilience Fast Track hosted by Edge of Earth [Photo: Edge of Earth] For three years, the Edges of Earth team has lived and worked in some of the most remote and rapidly changing ecosystems on the planetabove and below the waterline. From disappearing kelp forests to off-grid coastlines and deep jungle research stations, this global expedition set out to document collapse, but more so, to understand resilience. What they uncovered is called the edge effecta phenomenon where progress takes root in the margins, led by the people and systems that mainstream climate narratives often overlook. This session features a screening of their short-form documentary, followed by a conversation and Q&A with expedition lead Andi Cross and special guests whove been part of this journeyfrom subsistence fishers and coral scientists to forest guardians and underwater engineers. Expect raw footage, grounded insights, and a reframing of what it means to make change in a world that often feels too big to fix. Reimagining Local News: How CBS Stations Uses AR/VR to Tell the Story Within the Story Fast Track hosted by CBS Stations [Photo: CBS Stations] Step inside the future of broadcast journalism with CBS New York, where innovation meets impact. In an era when local news is more vital than ever, CBS Stations is leading the charge in transforming how stories are toldleveraging cutting-edge augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology to bring viewers deeper into the why behind the weather, elections, and major breaking news. This immersive session offers a behind-the-scenes look at how CBS New York is redefining the traditional newscast. Attendees will meet the journalists and technologists driving this evolution, explore interactive demonstrations of AR/VR storytelling, and tour the legendary CBS Broadcast Center. From dynamic weather visualizations to real-time election data rendered in 3D, discover how CBS is making news more engaging, informative, and future-ready. How Designing for Queer Audiences Fuels Unique Innovation Fast Track hosted by Local Projects [Photo: Local Projects] Amid growing political and cultural headwinds, LGBTQ+ communities continue to shape culture through bold self-expression, mutual care, and creative resistance. Designing for queer audiences today isnt just about inclusionits about unlocking new ways of thinking, building, and belonging. Join Local Projects, the Fast Company award-winning experience designer of the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, for a short tour of the exhibition with the founders. Following the tour, visitors will hear from a panel of LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs at the forefront of inclusive design, curated and moderated by communications agency Camron. Panelists will share personal stories and lessons learned from buildng forand withinqueer communities.
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E-Commerce
In an era of quiet, subtle brand refreshes, Trump is embracing a full-on rebrand with an executive order that seeks to rename the single largest U.S. government agency. Trump’s 200th executive order of his second term, signed September 5, gives the Department of Defense the “secondary title” of “Department of War,” an old name for the U.S. military’s government agency before the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force were consolidated and renamed the Department of Defense in 1949. “We’re going Department of War,” Trump said. “I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.” But like getting people to call Twitter “X or use the phrase “Gulf of America,” Trump could find his attempt at renaming the Defense Department easier said than done. You think changing a logo is hard? Try changing an entire brand name for one of the biggest U.S. employers. “Changing a name doesnt change how people feel about you overnight,” brand name expert and Eat My Words founder Alexandra Watkins says. It’s one thing to change a logo. It’s another to change a name. Trump can’t rename a department on his own without Congress, hence his executive order giving “Department of War” as a secondary name. Still, he’ll face hurdles to implementation that any brand would expect to encounter to undergo a name change. “Big organizations don’t, or shouldn’t, take the decision to rebrand lightly,” Ben Weis, a strategy director at the naming and writing studio A Hundred Monkeys, tells Fast Company. “The bigger the organization and the more widespread the name, the bigger the lift and the higher the risk for blowback and confusion.” For the Department of Defense (DOD), with its nearly 3 million military and civilian employees, the risk for blowback and confusion is uncommonly high. Pentagon officials are already fuming over the costs and work that could come with a branding change for an organization that has more than 700,000 facilities across every state and in 40 countries, according to Politico. Not the first rebrand The DOD was briefly called the National Military Establishment, but the name had the unfortunately aggressive acronym NME, which sounds like “enemy,” and it was changed less than two years later. Trump’s impetus for changing the name now is less pressing. The DOD isn’t a company, so it doesn’t have to play by the same rules as a corporate rebrand, but Scott Milano, founder of the brand naming agency Tanj, says it fits into one of the buckets he often sees with renaming efforts. “Normally, when businesses try to rebrand, there’s either a problem, like some sort of brand-specific problem, or in the case of naming . . . there’s a trademark issue, like you can’t use it moving forward,” he says. “Obviously that’s not the case with the Department of Defense.” The more relevant way to frame it, he says, is when businesses outgrow their name and want to signal something new to the market, as he sees Trump doing with the change from “Defense” to “War.” “It’s intentionally intimidating and it’s in your face, and I assume that was on purpose,” he says. But being obvious isn’t always seen as a virtue when it comes to picking a brand name. In fact, experts say, it can undermine the message the organization is trying to send. “Honest people don’t tell you that they are honest, cool people don’t talk about how cool they are, and truly strong people don’t puff their chests outthe world knows this,” Igor Naming Agency cofounder Steve Manning says. “It’s a reaction to feeling we are being seen as militarily impotent. Since this rebranding is nothing more than a surface treatment, it will be ineffective for the three years it will be in place.”
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E-Commerce
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