In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for people to build new businesses. We want to build the services that enable this. This is important for ensuring that people broadly share in the prosperity created by superintelligence.
The decision to transfer the family farm was based on the son's long-standing interest and commitment to the land, which made the parents believe they were making the right choice.
"The specific barrier is capital," says Lisa George, global head of the Macquarie Group Foundation. "Without access to capital, it's very hard to get social mobility and educational mobility in life."
Most for-profit companies still confine nonprofit relationships to corporate philanthropy. Donations flow through foundations, annual reports highlight community contributions, and nonprofit engagement is framed as evidence of corporate responsibility.
Multinational firms are under rising pressure-from investors, regulators, and employees-to demonstrate positive societal impact in the places where they do business. With ESG-focused institutional investments projected to reach nearly $34 trillion this year and roughly 90% of large U.S. companies now disclosing ESG reports, these pressures are now a central part of corporate strategy.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took the unprecedented step of designating a U.S. firm-Anthropic-as a supply chain risk. Anthropic's crime? It refused to violate industry-wide protocols against using AI for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. Hegseth's designation, which has until now been reserved for foreign firms, bars U.S. military contractors from doing business with the company.
Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.
If your partner in Munich mishandles customer data, or your reseller in Paris uses a "black box" AI tool to generate deceptive ads, it isn't just their reputation on the line. It's yours. With the EU AI Act now in full swing and GDPR entering its "mature enforcement" era, the distance between a partner's mistake and your company's $20 million fine has never been shorter.
The pandemic changed Defector's course. New York shut down, the economy ground to a halt, and the offers of capital dried up. So the group decided to launch a new website on their own dime, this time structured as a worker-owned cooperative in which the journalists, rather than media executives, made all the decisions. The site became the kind of success that's rare in digital media nowadays, bringing in $3.2 million in revenue from over 40,000 paying subscribers in its first year alone.
In places where inclusion is part of the infrastructure of their economy-supply chains, procurement processes, capital access, or business ownership-people thrive. Inclusive economies create more resilience by expanding the base of potential business owners who can build, own, innovate, and hire. They allow more opportunities for homeownership and investing in the longevity of communities. As our economy becomes increasingly stratified and volatile, we need as much resiliency as we can get.
"The suggestion that patents are anti-progress is a dangerous myth that continues to be perpetuated by those who are ill-informed or believe sharing inventions for free is a more expedient strategy than paying for a license." Sharing information about an invention is not an option. With patents, disclosure is a requirement which benefits the inventor, other inventors and society. When and how an invention is shared makes a huge difference.
In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,
Most Strasbourg fans thought they had it good from the deal which tied them together with Chelsea. After all, the BlueCo investment has given the French side a team competitive in Ligue 1 and finished top of the Uefa Conference League table last month. There has been a 157m revamp of their Stade de la Meinau home, improving facilities and increasing capacity.
You have probably heard about voluntary carbon offset-if not from elsewhere, from buying plane tickets, where, after you have paid for the ticket, the tax, the seats, maybe the luggage fee, and the priority boarding, you have an option to also pay to offset your carbon footprint. Companies get to do this, too, and, unlike you, they get to brag about it.
Business growth is valuable, but too often entrepreneurs treat it as a final destination. In reality, expansion is just one part of a long-term success plan, unfolding through many smaller milestones along the journey of building a business. Here are three ways you can expertly use expansion to build on success, along with examples of companies that have handled expansion as a positive part of the success process.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a future-state conversation. It is here, embedded across enterprise systems, cloud platforms, security tooling, analytics engines and decision-making frameworks. The pace of adoption has been extraordinary, and so is the scale and intensity of the infrastructure required to power it. Against this backdrop, Microsoft's recent call for a "community-first" approach to AI infrastructure is both timely and necessary.
U.S. worker engagement has stagnated for decades, with more than two-thirds of workers feeling detached or disengaged. To reverse the trend, many executives have strived to build an "ownership culture," hoping personal responsibility will drive productivity. Yet most omit the most vital ingredient, actual ownership. We spent the past four years studying companies that committed to this missing piece, extending equity to all employees.
New analysis published today (6 February 2026) reveals a structural issue that is eroding valuations, limiting exits, and trapping founders in their businesses, with around 80% of UK private companies failing to sell. The White Paper, The Owner Dependence Problem in UK SME Businesses, published by Exit Factor, highlights how excessive reliance on founders is undermining business value across the UK SME sector. The White Paper analyses businesses with annual revenues between £3m and £30m and demonstrates how owner dependence materially restricts strategic options for owners.
