Explore the full 2023 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies , 540 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 54 categories, including advertising , beauty , design , and more. How do four septuagenarian Swedish pop stars pull off a dazzlingly energetic 20-song set list before thousands of fans in a custom-built stadium? Easy: They get their holograms to do it. ABBA Voyage , a stunning marriage of art and technology architected by the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), has been a critical and financial success. It’s also a symbol of how the live performance industry is being transformed by technology, as digital elements are deployed to deepen fan immersion while staying true to what makes a live music experience so irreplicable. With concerts becoming increasingly visual extravaganzas, artists have access to new mediums to explore their creative … [Read more...] about The 10 most innovative companies producing live events in 2023
Hinman team race 2021
This startup has raised $600 million to give lower-income Americans better healthcare
Cityblock Health is No. 29 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023 . Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture. Cityblock Health was founded in 2017 to answer the question, as cofounder and CEO Toyin Ajayi puts it: “Why does it cost so much money to deliver care that doesn’t actually drive the outcomes we would expect?” Cityblock provides healthcare services to Medicaid and dually eligible Medicare beneficiaries, who account for a disproportionate amount of dollars spent on healthcare in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. It blends primary care, behavioral health, and disease management services, taking into account environmental and societal factors—such as insecure housing and living in a food desert—that can lead to chronic health conditions and hospitalizations. Cityblock’s clinics are staffed with teams of doctors, nurses, social workers, and mental health providers, and it … [Read more...] about This startup has raised $600 million to give lower-income Americans better healthcare
Nasdaq Readies To Launch Crypto Custody
Nasdaq Inc. ( NDAQ ) is getting close to launching its crypto custody business in the second quarter of the year, Bloomberg reported Friday. Key Takeaways Nasdaq readies the launch of crypto custody by end of the second quarter The exchange announced digital assets business last year Traditional financial institutions like BNY Mellon and Fidelity also offer crypto custody Nasdaq announced its foray into the digital assets business in September and will join traditional financial institutions such as Fidelity and BNY Mellon in offering crypto custody. The new digital offering will be headed by Ira Auerbach, who joins the company from Gemini, which was caught in the crosshairs of the FTX collapse . Auerbach was the Global Head of Gemini Prime, which was the company's prime brokerage service. The timing of Nasdaq's crypto custody launch could prove to be interesting. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is keen on keeping a close eye on custodians … [Read more...] about Nasdaq Readies To Launch Crypto Custody
The Greatest Show on Earth gets a second chance
When the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—back after a six-year absence—begins its 50-city tour of North America this September, it will include 75 highly trained performers and a litany of extravagant acts. Tightrope walkers will flit across a triangular rope, 30 feet in the air. Acrobats will launch themselves between four spinning wheels suspended from stadium ceilings. BMX bikers will spring off a giant trampoline. And a 360-degree set studded with massive video screens and enhanced with sonic spatial technology will envelop audiences in the spectacle. There won’t, however, be any lions, tigers, or bears. Oh my! “When you have a brand called ‘The Greatest Show on Earth,’ you can’t downscale,” says Juliette Feld Grossman, chief operating officer at Feld Entertainment, which acquired the iconic circus in 1984. “You really have to reimagine and reinvent.” Founded in 1871, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus delighted American families … [Read more...] about The Greatest Show on Earth gets a second chance
These 6 brands are growing by letting fans pursue their passions
A good product will win you customers, but it takes a lot more to create, cultivate, and keep true, actual fans. The magic word for most is community, and the brands here, being honored as part of Brands That Matter 2022, have found ways to foster and excite growing communities around them. Decades-old brands, including Fender guitars and Magic: The Gathering, are using new content to stay relevant. For Fender, this past year was about building a content hub full of tools for the millions of new people who started to play over the past few years as a COVID-19-lockdown-induced new hobby. Magic: The Gathering has leaned into celebrating a more diverse set of players with its direct-to-consumer platform, Secret Lair. Meanwhile, three-year-old wrestling upstart All Elite Wrestling has taken on a Goliath by showing a different side of its diverse lineup of stars. Here are the brands making the most of fun and fandom: All Elite Wrestling As discussions around mental … [Read more...] about These 6 brands are growing by letting fans pursue their passions
How Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz brought the ticketing platform back from the brink
Eventbrite is No. 42 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023 . Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture. Halloween. That’s the tell for Eventbrite . If the haunted yacht cruises and cemetery tours are reaching out to the event planning and digital ticketing platform to list and promote their events, then the Thanksgiving Eve bar crawls, holiday light shows, and New Year’s Eve specials will follow. During Halloween 2022, the number of paid events on Eventbrite grew 30% over 2019, and ticket volume beat the company’s prior record by more than 50%. The reinvigorated enthusiasm for live experiences has been a boon to Eventbrite’s fortunes—and a success made possible only because Julia Hartz, cofounder and CEO, has spent the past few years effectively re-founding the company, which she created with her husband, Kevin, and their technical cofounder Renaud Visage in 2006. After the pandemic hit in … [Read more...] about How Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz brought the ticketing platform back from the brink
The 10 most innovative companies in beauty of 2023
Explore the full 2023 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies , 540 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 54 categories, including advertising , architecture , design , and more. Nature has typically been the first place that beauty companies turn to for solutions to aging and skin imperfections. Now there’s a new source—biotech—and it takes its inspiration from the pharmaceutical industry. The move toward lab-generated ingredients that promise to improve on what scientists would find in nature dovetails with society’s larger embrace of personalized medicine, including cell and gene therapy, says Sarah Broyd, a partner at Durham, North Carolina–based Clarkston Consulting who specializes in consumer healthcare and pharmaceuticals. “Even the mRNA technology used in some of the COVID vaccines has contributed to a greater general understanding of how biotechnology works, which has … [Read more...] about The 10 most innovative companies in beauty of 2023
The lie of the hustle
One of the ways that gig companies have been able for years to define their workers as independent contractors is by exploiting the allure of individualism. The contractor has their freedom, the thinking goes, so why would they exchange that for a full-time job with benefits? “These words have gained a strange kind of prestige from downwardly mobile, college-educated tech workers,” said John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism . It was part of what Reddit’s founder, Alexis Ohanian, has called “hustle porn,” cheerleading multiple jobs and their backbreaking exertions, giving a cheerful spin to the full 30% of Americans who do something else for pay in addition to their full-time jobs, according to an NPR/Marist survey. Hustling and nimbleness and the like implied, however, that there is a slinky joy in picking up gear at a studio and dropping it off across town or selling CBD oil part time. Once called drably “another job,” these … [Read more...] about The lie of the hustle
How Gen Z favorite E.l.f. cosmetics became an entertainment powerhouse
E.l.f. is No. 26 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023 . Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture. E.l.f. (which stands for “eyes, lips, face”) may sit beside L’Oréal and Revlon on shelves at Walgreens, Ulta, and Target, but its leaders also view it as an entertainment company, servicing a huge audience of followers across its social platforms. “When you have 14 million people showing up on your doorstep every day,” says CMO Kory Marchisotto, “you can’t just sell them a product, you have to entertain them.” Known for its affordable, fair-trade products and beloved “dupes” of high-end items, E.l.f. began partnering three years ago with marketer Movers+Shakers on inventive digital work that went viral. Its 2019 #eyeslipsface campaign, with original music by Grammy-winning producer Ill Wayno and featuring Holla FyeSixWun, garnered 7 billion views. It attracted the most user-generated videos ever at the … [Read more...] about How Gen Z favorite E.l.f. cosmetics became an entertainment powerhouse
The 10 most innovative companies in architecture for 2023
Explore the full 2023 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies , 540 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 54 categories, including advertising , beauty , design , and more. In this age of tumult, the world needs more than pretty buildings. The architects, designers, and firms in this year’s list of Most Innovative Companies are designing beautiful things, to be sure, but they are also thinking bigger and deeper about the production, the impacts, and the future of what they’ve designed. This year’s winning firm, 3XN , has created what could be a model-setting project: an office tower built mostly from the bones of the aging building it’s replaced. The approach not only slashed the building’s environmental impact, it demonstrated that creative, new designs don’t always need blank slates—or new construction! Other companies in this year’s list, such as Carmody Groarke and … [Read more...] about The 10 most innovative companies in architecture for 2023