Although less familiar than many of its tech rivals, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is kind of a big deal. Its valuation, north of $1 trillion, ranks the chipmaker ninth globally among publicly held companies, and its strategic significance in the silicon arms race led New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to label it the most important company in the world.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) fabrication plant in Phoenix on Monday, March 3. [Photo: Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg/Getty Images]
So when TSMCs massive new manufacturing plant (or fab, as those in the semiconductor business like to call it) arose recently in the desert north of Phoenix, Arizonans might have expected to see a polished logo adorning the buildings facade. Instead, many were likely flummoxed by the TSMC symbol. Was it supposed to be a crossword puzzle? A disco ball? A badminton racquet? A screen door replete with dead houseflies?
[Image: TSMC]
In fact, the logo, which debuted in 1988, one year after the companys founding, represents a stylized semiconductor wafer design, as a TSMC trademark application puts it. A wafer is a thin, circular slice of silicon which is cut into rectangular dies that are used to make computer chips. The flat section of the wafer, visible at the bottom of the TSMC logo, is called, well, a flat and is used for orientation in the manufacturing process.
1st column: Integrated Device Technology, 1982, Wacker MSCE, 1986. 2nd column: Integrated Device Technology, 1998, Zoran Corporation, 1983, Cirrus Logic, 1996. SemiTex, 1999. 3rd column: Silicon Valley Engineering Council, 1990, National Security Agency, 1990. [Images: courtesy of the author]
The black rectangles in the logo seem to represent defective dies as they would appear on a wafer map, a diagram outlining the usable sections of the silicon disc. One might find this an odd design element to include, but it appears to have been a bit of a convention among ’80s wafer logos. San Jose semiconductor maker Integrated Device Technologys 1981 logo featured two such defective dies. When it reversed the coloring of its logo in the ’90s, did it realize the resulting implication was that an overwhelming majority of its dies were duds?
TSMCÙs 1988 logo (left) and 2001 update (right) [Image: courtesy of the author]
TSMC took the opposite tack, slightly revising its mark in 2001 to reduce the number of those troublesome black rectangles while improving legibility. Otherwise, though, the logo has remained unchanged and, frankly, it doesnt work well in 2025. Not only is the wafer symbolism inscrutable to the modern eye, but by todays standards, its design is overwrought, amateurish, and dated, in keeping with an overall company brand thats as dry as soda crackers.
Beyond employing the most obvious graphic design solution of adopting the companys product as a logo, the firm has named itself using the largely-abandoned tactic of simple descriptiveness, which, if still in vogue, might have resulted in Apple being known as the Northern California Computer Company or Amazon going by Seattle Online Bookstore, Inc.
Until recently, this may not have been seen as a problem for companies that, like TSMC, were not public-facing. There was a sense that branding elements like names and logos were shiny baubles that served only to catch the eyes of the public, and that were irrelevant within the context of B2B relationships. As economic historian Mira Wilkins put it in a 1992 paper, Most industrial organization economists consider the brand name as highly important in sales to the final consumer. They take the view, however, that profit-motivated firms are wiser than individuals, so trade marks are not needed to convey information to producers.”
Such thinking is going by the wayside as modern economists let go of long-held assumptions about perfect human rationality, and it would seem time for even the stodgiest B2B companies to start caring more about their brands. TSMC, in particular, has been embroiled in geopolitical intrigue that has put it in an unprecedented spotlight. The face that it presents to the world matters more than it ever has, and its about time for TSMC to sunset its old wafer.
Earlier this summer, Pepsi did something brands have been doing forever: It took a jab at its rival. In this case, that entailed some snarky satirizing of a popular Coke ad campaign. But it raised an eternal brand-battle question: Is it really a good idea to reference a rival so directly?
Under the right circumstances, yes, according to the latest research on that subject in a recent Journal of Marketing Research paper, coauthored by Johannes Berendt, a professor of economics and communication at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Germany. His fellow co-authors are Sebastian Uhrich, a professor of sports business administration at the German Sport University Cologne; Abhishek Borah, an associate professor of marketing at INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) in France; and Gavin Kilduff, a professor of management and organizations at NYU Stern.
For starters, Berendt explains in an email, its important to distinguish between true rivalry and mere competition: Real rivals not only compete against each other in the marketplace, but they also have a special competitive relationship based on a shared history, he says. This includes McDonalds vs. Burger King, Mercedes vs. BMW, Apple vs. Samsung, and, of course, Coke vs. Pepsi. Researchers call it the rivalry reference effect.
Consumers know that this is more than just regular competition, Berendt says. In their studies (which included analyses of 1.5 million social media posts from real brands, as well as controlled experiments involving fictional posts in various brand categories), Berendt and his fellow researchers found that a brand message referencing a rival increases consumer engagementand can even impact purchase intent. Openly contested rivalries have a special appeal, Berendt adds. Messages between rivals are processed differently than between ordinary competitors. (Remember the chicken sandwich wars a couple of years back? It made sense that Popeyes and Chick-fil-A would scrap on social media, but it felt off when Wendys butted in.)
Pepsis recent shot at its longtime nemesiss Share a Coke campaign is a good example of a fresh salvo between true rivals. The Coke campaign, a Gen Z-focused iteration of a past effect, involves limited-edition packaging printed with individual names like David or Mia. Pepsi copied the style but smirked at the sentiment on packaging and billboards, replacing names with shout-outs to burgers, wings, and other Pepsi-friendly grub pairings. Share a Pepsi with, say, pizza, not some bro, goes one example, resonating with the sodas Food Deserves Pepsi pitch.
That said, the specifics of any single critique may matter less than its context within a clearly established rivalry. Between rivals, consumers instantly connect new episodes to a familiar, ongoing narrative, Berendt says. This is because rivalry has two central elements of exciting stories: familiar antagonists, such as Coke and Pepsi, and a classic plot, the recurring conflict. For a consumer who has long since chosen sides, the message can be reinforcing, but Berendt says even neutral consumers seem to enjoy, or engage with, known rivalries.
Of course, there are limits. While deploying brand rivalry messages can play to feelings of consumer-group distinctiveness, it might risk implying an overly aggressive brand personality. But thats generally not an issue if a rival is attacked in a clever/humorous way, Berendt says. A few years ago, for instance, Burger King took a jab at McDonalds with its Every King Needs a Clown campaign in Germany. Occasionally, a rival-focused message can even take the high road, as when Mercedes’ CEO retired and BMW launched a spot thanking him for years of inspiring competition. The ad got 8.2 million views and lots of positive comments on YouTube, Berendt points out, suggesting that this was a classy way to engage with the rival.
Interestingly, the rivalry reference effect works whether its the category leader or the chief challenger calling out its brand enemy. The dynamic seems to be similar either way, playing to longtime loyalties or just widespread familiarity with a competitive history. Its true, Berendt concedes, that social media teasing can escalate if fans get involved and go after each otherparticularly in the context of sports. And sometimes a badly executed attack on a rival can just seem childish. But based on what Berendt and his colleagues found, theres not as much risk as you might think. If done in a clever way, most consumers seem to enjoy a good clash between rivals once in a while, he says.
Sure, we know that feelings are highly contagious, and being positive can help others around us to feel the same, but lets be honest for a moment: sometimes life isnt all rainbows. Some days arent great, and sometimes positivity isnt the best way to handle it. And research confirms it: one 10-year study into using avoidance to copeperhaps by pretending things are fine, rather than addressing when they arent finds that it can increase chronic, acute stress and be linked to long-term depressive symptoms.
In my experience as an emotional intelligence and human behavior specialist, our workplaces are becoming more focused on employee wellbeing, but its an easy way to compel us to fake optimism, regardless of the real circumstances at hand. In workplace cultures, toxic positivity compels people to remain optimistic or think positively regardless of the real circumstancessay, key clients lost, budgets and bonuses frozens, or team-wide layoffs. And its pervasive: one survey by workplace blog Science of People finds that almost 68% of people had experienced toxic positivity in the last week.
The fundamental basics of relationships between people is based on the ability to trust. Trust is created through being honest and transparent, being accountable and creditable, and being empathetic and vulnerable. It takes being realand fake positivity isnt real. If I can see that your optimism is a put-on, how can I trust the other things you say or do? Do I feel safe to be real, or do I, too, need to fake positivity?
When this occurs, it impacts every part of our workplacefrom our culture, to our performance and our mental health. Ultimately it impacts the overall success of each person and in turn, their organization. Here are five steps to shut down toxic positivity in a workplace.
Own the reality of the situation. The world is not perfect; we are not perfect. Things will go wrong, and we will get it wrong at times. The only thing we have control over in this world is how we choose to respondand our response should be authentic and genuine. Respond appropriately to the workplace situation, at the right intensity, without the need for forced toxic positivity.
Face emotions head-on. There is no such thing as a good or bad emotion, and while we tend to think positivity is the former, that isnt the case. We should be focusing on whether an emotion is appropriate for the situation, and whether the intensity that we are feeling the emotion is appropriate. We feel emotions for a reason. Acknowledge and understand what is driving an emotion so that it can be processed before we move on.
Understand how the people around us are feeling. Our emotions are influential to the people around us, but people can spot an insincere emotion from far away. Faking an emotion is setting a standard in workplace environments of what is acceptable and what is not. Trust and respect wont be created when people are not being authentic or genuine.
Ask the right questions, and answer questions asked. Communication is always key to the workplace environment, and the ability to communicate effectively directly influences our culture. When we are feeling any form of intensive emotion, we have something to say. Ask the right questions to better understand what is driving another persons emotions. Answer the questions they have, and provide the information they require to be able to move forward.
Drive emotional intelligence. Realistically, we know that a great culture in a workplace is when all emotions are being displayed appropriately. In some situations, it may be optimismand other times it might be sadness, anger, disappointment, fear, or frustration. Lets not judge someone elses emotion. Assess it, and do what it takes to ensure they are felt and processed before moving forward.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, Australian Lieutenant General David Morrison once said. Every person contributes to the culture of a workplace. By facing toxic positivity and choosing more effective communication, you can change yours.
Inside a greenhouse in the English countryside, one of the newest inventions from Dyson just went through its first large-scale test: an 18-foot-tall rotating wheel of strawberry plants, designed to ensure each plant gets its share of sunlight.
Dyson, the multibillion-dollar brand, is best known for designing products like vacuums and ultra-high-end hair dryers. But the company also bought a farm in 2013, and now owns 36,000 acres of land across the U.K.
James Dyson, who grew up in rural Englandand hauled potatoes as one of his first jobsrealized that engineering and design could play a role in helping solve some of the challenges of the food system.
There is a real opportunity for agriculture to drive a revolution in technology, and vice versa, he says.
Dyson Farming, a subsidiary within the larger family-owned business, is focused on sustainability and food quality. Some of its practices are low tech, such as using crop rotation to improve soil health, or letting wildflowers grow on the edge of fields to support pollinators. But it also continuously incorporates new technologies like sensors and drones.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
At a farm in Carrington, England, the company started using an anaerobic digester to turn manure into electricity nearly a decade ago. (The equipment can generate roughly as much power as 10,000 homes use; some of it goes into the grid and the rest is used on the farm.) The process also generates a lot of heat, which is why the farm initially added a greenhouse: The strawberries can make use of the heat to grow in cooler weather. But the team recognized that they could go farther.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
As engineers, were never satisfied, Dyson says. We constantly ask how things can be improved, achieving better results with the same resources. Instead of relying on traditional rows, we have designed and built a system in which strawberry plants are arranged on rotating wheels which are over 5 meters high, fully utilizing the glasshouses vertical space. This dramatically increases the number of plants we can grow in the same footprint, significantly boosting yields by 250%.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
In a typical vertical farm, plants sit on shelves or on walls under artificial light. On the Dyson farm, as the Ferris-wheel-like design rotates, the strawberries get as much access as possible to natural light under the roof of the greenhouse. The farm supplements this with LED bulbs. (A sensor detects the wavelengths of light that the strawberry plants need, and then adds more as necessary.) Making better use of sunlight means that the mechanism also uses less energy.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
The system is automated, with robots that use vision sensing to pick berries when theyre perfectly ripe. Other robots distribute predatory insects to fight aphids without insecticide. Another robotic system shines UV light on the berries to prevent mold.
Though the system is still in the early stages, the first crop of strawberries was harvested in May and June, and sold at a premium in U.K. grocery stores because of the quality of the fruit. Eventually, the new tech will be growing strawberries year-round. Apart from during a few weeks in the summer, the strawberries available in British supermarkets will have been trucked over from North Africa or Spain, Dyson says. There is a significant carbon footprint associated with that movement. Plus, the strawberries themselves are small, colorless, and not at all sweet. Our crop is the opposite of that.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
Most of Dyson Farmings food i still grown outside. But there are advantages to growing indoors when its possible, especially as the climate changes. While some other vertical farms have struggled with cost, its possible that Dysons efficient new invention could help, particularly its model of generating electricity and heat from farm waste on-site. Right now, the biggest cost for vertical farming comes from energy use.
[Photo: Dyson Farming]
Dyson is interested in scaling up the tech, and potentially sharing it more widely when its fully developed. We are experimenting at this stage, but weve unlocked significant efficiency gains for our glasshouse, he says. And for others toowhile we have to be relentlessly vigilant with confidentiality and secrecy at Dyson due to competitors stealing our innovations, in farming its not like that. British farmers have been woefully under-supported by successive governments for years. They need a level playing field with their foreign counterparts. Im in a fortunate position to be able to take on risk and invest in experimenting with new ways of farming. And I hope it is eventually to the benefit of all farmers. We need to stand together.
Working on the food system, he says, is not so different from the rest of his lifes work. Farming shares a lot with engineering and manufacturing, Dyson says. You create something, you take pride in it, and you supply it to people who need it. Just as a factory should be efficient, well-designed, and run using the latest technology, the same principles apply to farming. You must get the fundamentals right: drainage, access, boundaries, machinery, buildings, soil health, weed control, and biodiversity. Its about making everything work together, in the most effective and high-quality way possible. That’s how progress is made.
For much of the AI era, intelligence has been on-demand: a user issues a prompt, and the model responds after reasoning through the request. But as AI systems grow more autonomous and expectations rise for real-time reasoning, low latency, and cost-efficiency, the definition of intelligence is shifting. Were entering a new phase where AI is expected to stay ready for the next requesteven during downtime.
The key to unlocking this proactive AI future may lie in an unexpected moment: when the AI is “asleep,” a phase now called sleep-time compute.
The term was coined in an April 2025 white paper by Letta, a Berkeley-born AI startup spun out of UC Berkeleys Sky Computing Lab, founded by researchers Charles Packer and Sarah Wooders. Developed in collaboration with Databricks and Anyscale cofounder Ion Stoica and others, the sleep-time compute framework aims to shift AI from reactive to proactive intelligence. Instead of waiting for prompts, AI agents use idle time to precompute answers, refine memory, and anticipate user needs.
Wooders says the idea draws inspiration from neuroscience. Just as humans consolidate memories during sleep and reflect beyond immediate tasks, AI should be able to do the same.
We might think about a conversation that we had with someone yesterday and make new conclusions from it, or spend time learning new things even if there is no immediate job to be done. AI Agents, on the other hand, dont spend any time thinking outside of the scope of a task, she tells Fast Company. With sleep-time, the idea is to give AI agents the same ability to think and process offline just like we do as humans.
The result is an always-on AI system thats faster, more cost-efficient, and remarkably responsive. The paper reports accuracy gains of up to 18% in certain reasoning tasks, and a 2.5-times reduction in cost per query. By spreading computation across related queries and reducing redundant processing, response times and operational costs fall significantly.
Why Wait When Your AI Can Think Ahead?
Lettas approach uses a dual-agent model. One agent handles live interactions; the second, the sleep agent, activates during downtime to analyze past conversations, parse uploaded documents, and reorganize memory. This division allows the system to maintain context without reprocessing everything in real time.
Wooders says the goal is to let agents learn offline by generating learned context, or consolidated insights from prior data. As context windows grow larger, an agent might have a ton of tokens dedicated to storing this learned contextincreasing the likelihood that any new task or question is about a topic that its already thought about, she says.
For his part, Packer calls sleep-time compute a successor to test-time compute (TTC), and the next big direction for scaling AI. Rather than only adding compute during inference, systems can now scale intelligence during downtime.
Sleep-time compute builds on the idea that the longer a model can reason . . . the better the final answer, says Packer. By staying active during downtime, AI agents can refine their memory, precompute likely responses, and redistribute compute resources more efficiently to improve both performance and cost. Stoica, the Anyscale cofounder and UC Berkeley professor, sees this shift as pivotal, noting that vast quantities of compute will be spent on reasoning at training time or sleep time to create shared context, unlocking greater efficiency when models are in use.
Test-time compute, or inference, refers to a models ability to apply knowledge to generate outputs. Allocating more resources at this stage improves output quality but increases latency and back-end costs.
Always-on tools like chatbots and coding assistants need fast, low-latency responses to serve users effectively. As these systems grow more complex, they require significantly more compute, says Anyscale cofounder Robert Nishihara, driven by sophisticated agentic systems that demand significant computational resources.
Lettas research shows that sleep-time compute also boosts model power. In benchmark tasks like GSM-Symbolic and American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), shifting computation to downtime reduced test-time workload by up to five times without hurting accuracy. Agents can update knowledge, refine memory, and improve performanceall without human input or added GPUs.
Sleep-time Compute is Already Reshaping Billion-dollar Stacks
The concept may sound theoretical, but major tech companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Google are already building with sleep-time principles.
During an interview panel in June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previewed how our future AI interactions will shift.
Im excited about a future where multiple copies of AI models like o3 run constantly in the backgroundreading Slack, checking emails, acting like a team of helpful agents, said Altman. Id love to wake up to drafted email replies and a summary of unfinished tasks like heres what you didnt finish on your to-do list yesterday with suggested next steps.
OpenAIs AI coding tool Codex now enables asynchronous code refactoring in cloud environments. Moreover, AI code editor Cursor recently launched background agents that operate in parallel cloud environments. Developers can deploy a fleet of agents that run test suites, refactor code, and generate new features in the background, guided by context.
Anthropics Claude Code SDK offers similar functionality. Developers can deploy subprocesses that function like backstage assistants, handling testing or debugging without interrupting the main workflow. Googles “Project Naptime” and “Big Sleep,” an internal collaboration between Project Zero and DeepMind, is also exploring principles similar to sleep-time compute for code vulnerability detection.
Building the Future of Ambient Intelligence
Letta has embedded sleep-time compute in MemGPT 2.0, an open-source framework that equips AI agents with persistent, efficient long-term memorywhat it calls infinite context. By offloading memory tasks to sleep-time phases, the framework improves context management and reliability. Here, sleep-time compute acts like a silent housekeeper, running continuously to stay organized.
Through asynchronous memory consolidation and simulated scenarios, Letta is advancing a long-standing goal in AI: agents that prepare for the future, not just react in the moment.
Test-time scaling often slows down the user experience, with tasks lke Deep Research taking minutes to complete. “But with sleep-time compute, the time the agent can spend thinking is unlimited, says Wooders. Its about creating a new dimension of scaling compute, which historically has led to improvements in AIs capabilities.
Letta says its framework is already making an impact, from financial chatbots summarizing earnings reports overnight to medical agents analyzing patient histories while the system is idle.
Lettas model-agnostic infrastructure lets developers mix and match models within a single agent. For example, a chat agent might run on OpenAI while a sleep-time agent handles memory on Anthropic. This makes it easier to build AI that feels stateful, always-on, and proactive, says Packer.
As AI evolves toward multi-agent systems, the ability to think ahead could define the next wave of tech breakthroughs. The most powerful systems wont just be those with the largest models, but those that know how to process information quietly and efficiently, even in their sleep.
In the future, vast quantities of compute will be spent on reasoning at sleep time by agents to make sense of new information and context that the agents encounter, says Stoica, the UC Berkeley professor. I expect this direction to be a major driver of progress in AI. Engineering the right shared context through reasoning at training time or sleep time will allow for far more efficiency at test time.”
Goodreads just got its first-ever logo redesign, and its taking a page straight out of BookToks aesthetic catalog.
Since the book tracking and reviewing platform debuted in 2007, its generally used the same logo: A brown wordmark featuring the word good in a skinny sans serif and the word reads in a slightly thicker sans serif, all set on a cream-colored background. While the ultra-simple look was probably designed to evoke the warm atmosphere of a bookstore or library, it also veers perilously close to the corporate blanding aesthetic that ruled the 2010s. But in 2025, bland is the opposite of how one might describe emerging aesthetics in the book community.
Online platforms like Instagram and Tiktok have shaped the way publishers approach book cover design, which increasingly relies on eye-catchingly bright dopamine colors, chunky text, and swirling shapes to stop readers in their scroll. Carly Kellerman, then an associate publisher for Zondervan Books at HarperCollins, explained in 2022, Instagram has made everything more aesthetic, from lattes to fashion trends to book covers to travel. Im very cognizant of the shareability of book covers as I craft the direction.
As these eye candy covers continued to populate users Goodreads shelves over the past several years, the sites own branding was quickly becoming incongruous with the book design of the times. On July 14, Goodreads announced a new logo that ditches the former staid look for a touch of modern whimsy.
[Images: Goodreads]
A new logo with a hint of whimsy
Launched in 2007, Goodreads was acquired by Amazon in 2013 in a move that swept the book reviewing platform away from a potential deal with Apple. Since then, Amazon has routinely been criticized for neglecting the book tracker, whichon both its app and websitelargely looks the same as it did more than 10 years ago. Just this June, Amazon announced layoffs impacting Goodreads, though the company declined to share specific numbers with Fast Company at the time.
In 2023, Jane Friedman, a publishing industry consultant, told The Washington Post that Goodreads hasnt been all that well maintained, or updated, or kept up with. She added, It does feel like Amazon bought it and then abandoned it.
Now it looks like Amazon is finally turning a bit of attention to the platform with both a new logo and a few added features. The logo swaps its former minimalist font scheme for a chunky, rounded serif font with a bit more character. While the logo is still all lowercase, its significantly more bold, allowing it to stand out better on a screen.
Our new logo is designed to better represent Goodreads and is optimized for accessibility so it looks clear and sharp no matter where you see itfrom your phone to a billboard, a blog post on the update reads.
The logos g character, which serves as a stand-alone symbol for the Goodreads app icon and social media profile pictures, has been fully reworked to incorporate a few bookish Easter eggs. According to the blog post, the upper half of the character is meant to evoke a magnifying glass, while the bottom half represents an open book, symbolizing the book discovery and sharing of perspectives that are at the heart of the Goodreads experience.
Platform updates improve flow and drive sales
Alongside the fresh logo, the blog post also shares a few updates to the Goodreads platform. Starting this week, the Want to Read sectionwhich lets users compile books they hope to read in the futurewill now also appear in Your Books on Amazon for readers who have linked the two accounts.
[Image: Goodreads]
Essentially, its a way for Amazon to drive customers to acquire their reading materials through Amazon rather than an outside seller. (This might be a turnoff for some readers, given that a chunk of Goodreads users jumped ship and joined the competitor StoryGraph earlier this year to protest Amazons ownership of the platform).
In addition, he blog post notes that Goodreads is expanding its book catalog to include more than a million audiobooks, as well as building out its Reading Challenge feature to help readers meet their annual reading goals. On Reddit, fans are tentatively hopeful that the new logo and accompanying updates hint that Amazon is planning to modernize its broader UI.
I guess its a good sign that theyre trying to implement some changes that I hope to be for the better, one Reddit user wrote. The site (and app) were practically frozen in time!
The logo update, while admittedly subtle, signals that the platform might finally be a higher priority for Amazonand that, to imagine what a future revamped Goodreads could look like, the bright new landscape of book cover design is one place where Amazon appears to be pulling inspiration.
If we havent been there ourselves, weve seen it happen: A well-respected team member, bursting with potential, is promoted into a new leadership role. There are congratulations and smiles all around, and the new chief digs in, scheduling meetings and even offering sneak peeks at their 90-day plan. But as the good vibes fade, and everyone sets their eyes on the workKPIs, deliverables, an upcoming board meetingit soon becomes apparent that somethings wrong.
The new leader may find their ideas and ways of working arent quite . . . landing. Have senior leaders moved the goalposts? Are peers expressing less enthusiasm? Is the team holding back? Whatever the disconnect, frustration builds. Anticipated quick wins become slow-rolling fails. Senior leadership begins to express concern, offering feedback that only increases the pressure. The new leader feels awkward and isolated, losing sleep and second-guessing every move. Soon, their job may even be at risk.
A widespread problem
This kind of failure would be tragic enough if it were uncommon. But its not. Some 46% of leadership transitions underperform, according to research and advisory firm CEB Inc. (Now owned by Gartner Inc.) The stats are even worse for the C-Suite. New CEOs have a failure rate as high as 50%, according to McKinsey, and 90% of them wish they had handled their transition differently.
According to McKinsey, a failed leadership transition can cost the company more than two times the executive’s annual compensation. But of course the cost of ripple effects from the failurelower productivity, higher turnover across the team, and missed opportunities can cost even more.
All told, failed executive transitions are one of the most underrecognized systemic risks facing organizations today. So much of a companys momentum depends on getting transitions rightpromoting top performers, replicating success across departments, expanding the leadership bench. A leadership failures impact ripples outward, causing direct reports to hunker down, peers to pull back, and cultural damage to deepen. Leaders across the organization begin to doubt its ability to manage change. Growth itself can stall.
But organizations can inoculate themselves against this negative feedback loopand accelerate the success of their new leadersby rethinking how they support transitions. Here are four against the grain rules that can help a new leader take root and thrive.
1. QUICK WINS, YES; HERO MODE, NO
New leaders often arrive eager to prove themselvesscanning for early wins they can capture. But that motivation can come across as self-serving and raise a red flag for the rest of the team. Early moves should build trust: showing the leader is focused on enabling the team, not spotlighting their own capabilities. The organization can play a critical role here. The new execs own leader should define what success looks likesteering them away from hero moves and toward shared goals, with an emphasis on team visibility, engagement, and inclusion.
This matters even more when the new leader is promoted from within. Others may have wanted the role or expected a different outcome. The new leader must address that dynamic directly, affirming each team members value. But its the organizations job to reinforce early and often that the teams success is the leaders success. Thats corporate culture at its best.
2. WHAT GOT YOU HERE WONT GET YOU THERE
Most new leaders were promoted because they excelled in a previous role. But that success was likely built on different strengths: technical skill, individual output, or tactical problem-solving. These arent the skills needed to create and communicate a vision and strategy, lead across functions, and navigate complexity. Internal promotions must make a clean break from their old roles or risk blurring the focus on the most important thingwhats next. Without this increased self-awareness, its natural to fall back on whats familiar, especially as the pressure rises. Instead of stepping up to a broader mandate, newly elevated senior leaders tend to double down on execution. It may feel safe, but it stunts growth and signals a lack of readiness.
Even worse, the new leader may have blind spots about their own skills and inclinations. Getting 360-degree feedback, even if informal (and if possible, additional psychometric data) is critical to building self-awareness. This is where a neutral confidante, a coach, or even a practice of asking others for their candid feedback, can be invaluable.
3. THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POLITICAL
Theres a taboo in most organizations about gossiping to a new boss or appearing to be highly political. But avoiding all such discussion can in fact be dangerous. New leadersespecially external hiresoften walk in blind to personality landmines, power dynamics, and team history. Instead, they need unvarnished insight into who theyll be working with: the stakeholders who are aligned and the ones who clash; the teams that collaborate and synergize; and those that dont. They need clarity on how things get done.
Imagine how much more effective you could be in a new role if someone detailed all the team members and their relationshipsalmost like a pregame scouting report analyzing each players mental and physical strengths and vulnerabilities, and the plays they like to run when a games on the line. It would instantly improve your ability to collaborate and record successes. Even better if it will give you insight into how your own work style fits in.
Consider a product leader recruited from a fast-moving startup into a legacy organization. In one version of his story, his trademark urgency, focus, and accountabilityincluding take-no-prisoners KPI reviewsalienates peers and they quietly sideline him. In another scenario, hes warned that his bulldog style could backfire, thanks to a hiring manager who was transparent about personalities and fit.
Its the organizations jobideally the new bosss bossto reveal this before Day One and keep the conversation going. Every workplace has its unique culture, comprising people, politics, and pressure points. If those arent surfaced early, the new leader struggles to find their way, which at best delays success and in too many instances derails it completely.
4. THERES NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC
New leaders are often handed a mandatesometimes clear, more often vague. Theyre expected to bring change and energy, and turn things around. But rarely do they get clarity on pacing and priorities, resourcing, and success measures. Who are their internal customers anyway, and what are their requirements?
Consider a COO, hired into a high-growth company with a mandate to increase operational efficiencies. In one version of the story, she immediately overhauls the supply chain strategy and upgrades technologyonly to clash with a CEO whos laser-focused on short-term KPIs. In another version, she seeks clarity on priorities up front, aligns her approach to what the CEO needs to make quarterly numbers, and executes a plan that builds lasting momentum.
Without early, specific alignment to stakeholder expectations, a new leader is left uncertain about the playbook, the true priorities, and how aggressively to move forward. Worse, they may act with confidence, but in the wrong directionaiming all their energy at an objective no one else shares. Dont assume talent plus title equals traction. Hiring or promoting the right person and letting the magic happen isnt a strategy.
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF GROWTH
Successful leadership transitions are essential to a companys growth in the same way that new routers are essential to an expanding telecommunications network. Scaling up requires that each connection works. When they dont, the existing structure becomes overburdened, everything slows down, and the limits to growth become painfully clear.
All leadership transitions bear risk. Most of the risks are identifiable and predictable, and afford opportunities to apply strategies that mitigate them. Taking deliberate steps to make transitions go well wont eliminate that risk, but it will shift the odds in our favor. The only thing more risky than changes in leadership is leaving leaders to face them alone.
One hundred miles off the coast of New York City, there is an underwater canyon teeming with marine life. Seabirds soar overhead as whales, sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, and fish gather around Hudson Canyon.
With so many species calling the canyon home, the Wildlife Conservation Society wants Hudson Canyon to be designated a National Marine Sanctuary. The designation, awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would protect the ecologically diverse area from companies hoping to mine the seabed for oil, gas, and minerals.
Its not just the endangered species WCS is hoping to save from disruptive and dangerous miningit also wants to save the fish you eat for dinner. With a striking new campaign created by the advertising agency McKinney, WCS is calling on seafood lovers to sign its petition urging NOAA to protect Hudson Canyon, home to the creatures that stock seafood markets in New York City and beyond.
[Image: courtesy Hudson Canyon]
Were protecting the species out there, were protecting their health, but were also protecting the economic viability of our waters, says Christine Osekoski, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
To help communicate the importance of Hudson Canyon to the people who enjoy the spoils of commercial fishing there, McKinney took an analog-first approach to the campaign. They printed the petition right onto the butcher paper that seafood markets wrap around the fish they sell.
[Image: courtesy Hudson Canyon]
What better way to get the actual cause, actual information, and actual petition into peoples hands . . . than at the moment you are consuming the very thing that is being threatened? asks Omid Amidi, chief creative officer at McKinney.
To create an eye-catching design on the butcher paper, McKinneys team members used a Japanese printing technique called gyotaku, brushing the types of animals found in the Hudson Canyon with blue ink and pressing them onto paper. The process yields nearly perfect impressions of the very same creatures the campaign is trying to saveblack sea bass, scallops, and crabs, for example.
[Image: courtesy Hudson Canyon]
The fish prints are paired with maps of the Hudson Canyon, copies of the petition text, and QR codes to sign it. These elements, all in blue, are overlaid with blocky red letters reading Quit Floundering, Then Save the Canyon and Save the Scallops, Then Sear Them, among other sayings. The simple layouts and contrasting blue and red ink are meant to evoke the advertising and storefront design choices of old New York fish markets. The end product is a far cry from the plain brown butcher paper that markets traditionally use to wrap seafood.
[Image: courtesy Hudson Canyon]
The design itself is just meant to stop you in your tracks, Amidi says. Even though its a light piece of paper, it has the weight of all the work and all the care we put into it.
Adding to the campaign, McKinney designed window clings and counter cards for participating markets, as well as created signage displayed at the New York Aquarium and online videos featuring local fishmongers supporting the effort.
[Image: courtesy Hudson Canyon]
The campaign launched June 9, the day after the United Nations World Oceans Day. Since then, participating seafood markets in the New York City area have wrapped their fish in WCSs petition and stirred up support mong customers. Six markets are participating in the campaign: Mt. Kisco Seafood, Greenpoint Fish and Lobster, Metro Seafood, Mermaids Garden Sustainable Seafood, Martys Gourmet Seafood, and Lobster Place at Chelsea Markets.
We definitely have a crew of loyal customers who are into sustainability, says David Seigal, culinary director at Lobster Place at Chelsea Markets. But we also have a lot of customers who want to know where their food is coming from, and I think those are the people who are most interested in this.
Some participating fish markets are already asking for more shipments of the paper, Osekoski says, as more people see the design and sign the petition. This show of support is an important step in the process toward Hudson Canyon being designated a National Marine Sanctuary. Soon, NOAA will release its draft of the designation documents and solicit comments from the public before ultimately choosing whether to make the area a sanctuary. By the end of the public comment period, WCS hopes its petition will have 25,000 signatoriesand the nonprofit is already one-third of the way there.
For Seigal, also an avid fisherman who frequently travels to the Hudson Canyon, protecting the area is a cause especially close to his heart.
Were in business with Mother Nature, when it comes down to it, he says. Any threat to Mother Nature is a threat to, at a minimum, our business, but really to our existence as a human race.
Tech nostalgia runs strong among Gen Z. The retro movement has made long-outdated devices desirable once more. When it comes to personal computer nostalgia, you’d be hard-pressed to find a PC more fondly remembered than the Commodore 64.
Now, the machine that served as the starter computer for many old-school gamers is making a comeback of sorts. Commodore Corp., which is no longer run by the team behind the original device, has begun taking preorders for the Commodore 64 Ultimate, a $299 device that its makers claim is compatible with over 10,000 retro games, cartridges, and peripherals.
The new C64s are expected to begin shipping as early as October, though that date could slip. Also, the listed price doesnt account for tariffs. A “tariff tax” ($15 to $25 in the U.S.) is added at checkoutand the builders warn that amount could change if tariffs do.
While there have been Commodore 64 emulators in the past, this marks the first official product from the company in more than 30 years. There are three models to choose from, all with the same internal components. If you were expecting a vastly outdated machine, however, you’re in for a surprise.
[Photo: Commodore International Corporation]
The Commodore 64 Ultimate will include 128 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of flash memory. It connects to modern monitors via HDMI in high-definition 1080p resolution and features three USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Beyond the computer itself, the power source, and HDMI cable, your $299 also gets you a spiral-bound user guide, a 64-gigabyte USB drive featuring over 50 licensed games, a quick-start guide, and stickers.
Aesthetically, the Commodore 64 Ultimate is available in the original beige or in premium variants: the Starlight Edition, with a clear case and LED lights ($249), or the Founder’s Edition, which includes 24-karat gold-plated badges, satin gold keys, and a translucent amber case ($499). Just 6,400 units of the Founder’s Edition will be produced, according to the company.
[Photo: Commodore International Corporation]
The preorder setup resembles a Kickstarter campaign, though it doesn’t use that platform. Commodore says all preorders come with a money-back guarantee, but it chose to skip the services fees. Buyers should be aware that accounts are charged at the time of preorder.
Who owns Commodore?
Ownership of the Commodore brand adds some complexity. Earlier this year, Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpsona YouTuber focused on retro techannounced he was in the process of acquiring the company and claimed to be the “acting CEO of Commodore.” In a YouTube video posted at the end of June, he said he purchased the company for “a low seven-figure sum” and has recruited several former Commodore employees to help relaunch the brand.
In the video, Simpson states he signed “a share purchase agreement” with the previous owners of Commodore Corp., but is still seeking angel investors to help close the total sales amount.
That uncertainty may give some potential buyers pause, and understandably so. The official site addresses the concern, noting: “We have a contract with the previous IP owner that ensures that regardless of the final acquisition outcome, these machines can be manufactured as promised.”
The product will come with a one-year limited warranty, and Commodore says most parts are already in production, including the updated motherboard, the case, and the keycaps that recreate the blocky keys that early users remember.
The original Commodore 64 debuted in 1982. It was one of the worlds best-selling computers at the time, with graphics and sound that pushed the limits of 8-bit technology. With games like M.U.L.E., Wizard, and The Last Ninja, it quickly became a gamer favorite. In addition to the games on the USB drive, backers will also receive a “new sequel” to the C64 original, called Jupiter Lander: Ascension.
Inbox fatigue is real. According to one analysis, the average person receives more than 120 emails a day, with some office-based staff receiving even more due to their work environment. From Substack newsletters to marketing emails from local stores (alongside standard business updates), it can be difficult to stay on top of it all.
Its a challenge Google, owner of Gmailthe worlds second-most-used email service after Apple Mailhas acknowledged and is now addressing. Beginning this week, the company is rolling out a new feature for Gmail users in select countries: Manage Subscriptions.
The tool lets users see all their active email subscriptions in one place, along with a count of how many emails each sender has delivered in recent weeks. From there, unsubscribing takes just a single click.
It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of subscription emails clogging your inbox: Daily deal alerts that are basically spam, weekly newsletters from blogs you no longer read, promotional emails from retailers you haven’t shopped in years can quickly pile up, said Gmail director Chris Doan, in a company blog post announcing the feature earlier this month.
For users, its a welcome step toward reclaiming control of their inboxes. But for email marketers, this visibilityand the ease of opting outcould signal a reckoning.
The feature reflects a broader trend, says Omar Merlo, an associate professor of marketing strategy at Imperial College London, wherein customers are looking for greater control, more meaningful content, and added value in their interactions with brands. If email doesnt meet that standard, people now have a faster and easier way to walk away, Merlo says. This isnt the end of email marketing. It is perhaps the end of sloppy email marketing.
And while the tool may accelerate unsubscribes among already-disengaged users, some say its unlikely to trigger a mass exodus, and could, in a sense, help marketers by reducing spam complaints. Unsubscribes are better than spam complaints, says Desi Zhivkova, deliverability team lead at e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend. Giving users easier ways to opt out peacefully helps preserve sender reputation and improves long-term deliverability.
Richard Stone, managing director of PR agency Stone Junction, believes it could elevate the quality of email marketing. Email marketing has always been about creating a list of people who actually want to hear from you, he says. All Gmail is doing is making that principle harder to ignore. In the long run, this kind of user control will lead to better relationships between brands and their audiences, not worse.
