Kelly Slater is the undisputed GOAT of surfing. The 53-year-old has won 11 world titlesincluding being both the youngest and oldest champ ever at 20 and 39, respectivelyand has competed regularly on the pro tour until just last year. Hes not even officially retired yet.
Slater has also built multiple businesses, beyond his endorsement deals. One of those is apparel brand Outerknown, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. It’s been a labor of love for Slater, who along with cofounder John Moore, had a commitment from the beginning to make it as sustainable and responsible as possible. Last month, the company dropped the Apex Trunk by Kelly Slater, the first-ever performance four-way stretch board short made from 90% recycled fishing nets from Bureo.
Slater says the trunks, aimed at performance surfers, represent both the future of the brand, and a culmination of its long-standing goals.
Were definitely making a move towards some very specific, little more hardcore surf stuff, says Slater, on the phone from his home on Hawaiis North Shore. Outerknown has largely produced apparel for the lifestyle around surfingshirts, denim, sweaters. But now the brand is creating a line of surf-specific gear under Slaters name, set for 2026. Slater compares the Apex trunk design to playing the guitar.
Ive played music for 30 years, and you can add all kinds of things to a song, but when you make a nice, good melody, you can strip it back to the basics and you have what you need, says Slater. And for me, that’s kind of what this trunk is.
It also represents a broader opportunity. Over the past couple of years, surfings traditional brand giants have been in an unprecedented state of flux and upheaval that has seen majors like Billabong, Volcom, Quiksilver, and more get stripped down and change ownership, with some getting acquired by Authentic Brands Group in 2023.
That has given surfer-owned and operated companies like Outerknown, John John Florences Florence brand, Dane Reynoldss Chapter 11, and Julian Wilsons Rivvia Projects the chance to simplify and redefine what the core surf industry looks like.
For Outerknown right now, its all about the new trunks.
Wave of the future
The new Apex trunk underwent more than three years of R&D, as Moore, Slater, and the brands designers worked closely with Bureo on the cut and materials. Slater and other brand ambassadors tested it in waves across Sri Lanka, Australia, Hawaii, and beyond.
Slater says designing a surf trunk is more complicated than it seems. Sometimes people want a multitasking amphibian short, that performs the same on the beach as in the streets. But when it comes to just going for a long surf session, I just need something that performs really simply, says Slater. And I don’t even mean to say it performs, it just doesn’t get in the way. We think of the type of string we’re going to use so it doesn’t untie, and make sure that the length is just right, so it doesn’t look too short. But if it’s too long, it’s caught on the knee, so there’s a little scallop on the side to give you a little bit more of a stretch to the side. Very simple things to get a streamlined product. But to do that, there’s years of thought and technology and ideas that go into this one product.
Moore says that the connection between the new Apex trunk and Outerknowns lifestyle apparel is about looking at design from a surfing perspective. Wherever our travels take us, surfing is one part of that, so it’s about, how do we make clothes that are built better, feel better, fit better, and do it through our surfers lens? says Moore. It just feels like we’re finally at a place where we can really focus on what matters and what works, and we know who our customers are, we know what they want, and we’re getting better at making it.
Under one roof
A decade ago, Outerknown was launched with fanfare, some surfer skepticism, and a lot of challenges. Founded by Slater and Moore, the brand was also backed by luxury brand owner the Kering Group as a minority stakeholder. Slaters goal, inspired in part by Patagonia, was to make the most responsible clothing possibleorganic cotton, fair labor practices. The challenge was making that happen when the supply chain wasnt really there, especially for the small numbers Outerknown was starting out with. That led to much higher prices, which made many surfers scoff at $300 shirts and $170 trunks.
The early days were super tough, says Slater.
But gradually, the company was able to grow its community and scale, opening eight retail locations in Malibu, California, as well as cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C.
There will still be scoffs at the new Apex trunks $168 price tag, but Slater says there are people who do care about a products provenance. A lot of people don’t realize that to do things right and responsibly, to take care of your workers, and to use the good recycled textiles or organic products, all those things are infinitely more expensive, he says.
For its first decade, Outerknown could be described as a surf-adjacent brand. Mostly street clothes and apparel, designed from a surfing perspective. But starting with the new Apex trunks, the brand will now be stocking in surf shops and creating more products to make that connection more explicit.
The catalyst for that was Slaters move last year to move his three primary companiesOuterknown, Firewire Surfboards, and Slater Designsunder one parent company roof. Surf industry vet and Firewire CEO Dylan Slater (no relation) was named chief executive of the new company. He says that the brands complement each other in some obvious ways, but also plenty behind the scenes. Outerknown is primarily a U.S.-based business, while Firewire is global.
There’s some really unique ways they can support one another, he says. We have aspirations to make Outerknown globally accessible, and we expect that to happen in the next 6 to 12 months. The brands can also collaborate around products, and have some more exposure to their respective audiences, with surfboards in Outerknown stores and things like that.
Moore is excited to see Outerknown go directly to a more hardcore surf audience, especially amid the recent consolidation of the traditional surf brand powerhouses.
Over the years, everything became very corporate and, I would argue, kind of a sea of sameness, he says. I think surfing has always been at its core about individuality and finding your own flow through life or on a wave. We’re doing it our way, and with all the evolution in the marketplace, it feels like an opportunity for usto take it to the next level.
Time is running short for customers of Joann. Thats because in just a few more days, the beloved fabrics and crafts retailers will have closed 255 locations across America. And by the end of next month, all its locations will be shuttered for good.
Heres what you need to know about Aprils round of Joann stores closing, including the locations of the closing stores and the dates they are expected to close.
Why is Joanns closing?
Like many once-ubiquitous large retail chains, Joann Inc. has faced years of financial struggles that have only gotten worse thanks to rising inflation, consumers cutting back on discretionary spending, and the increased prevalence of people preferring to shop online.
For Joann, its financial burdens became too much, and the company decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, its second bankruptcy in less than a year. As part of that bankruptcy process, its assets were sold off, and all of its around 800 stores are being liquidated.
Which Joanns stores are closing in April?
A total of 255 Joann stores are closing in April, according to a spokesperson for GA Group, the asset firm that took control of Joann after its bankruptcy. (The list was reported earlier by USA Today.) Those stores have been running liquidation sales all month, and as those sales conclude, the stores will be shut for good.
In fact, the closing dates for many of those stores have already passed. But more than 100 locations are expected to close their doors today.
Joanns store closing list and dates
Below is a list of the Joann stores that are closing in April 2025. The closing dates are listed in parentheses. GA Group has confirmed the list and dates with Fast Company. (In addition to this list, Joann still has more than 500 locations that will continue operating into next month.)
Alaska
Anchorage University Center AK (04/23/2025)
Soldotna Soldotna Plaza AK (04/27/2025)
Alabama
Tuscaloosa Freestanding AL (04/27/2025)
Florence Cox Creek Plaza AL (04/28/2025)
Montgomery Eastchase Market SC AL (04/28/2025)
Arkansas
Jonesboro University Plaza AR (04/25/2025)
No Little Rock Lakewood Village AR (04/26/2025)
Little Rock Shackleford Crossing AR (04/27/2025)
Fort Smith Fort Smith Marketplace AR (04/28/2025)
Arizona
Casa Grande Tri Valley Plaza AZ (04/25/2025)
Green Valley Sahuarita Plaza AZ (04/27/2025)
Tucson Oracle Wetmore AZ (04/28/2025)
Phoenix Arcadia Fiesta SC AZ (04/28/2025)
California
Bakersfield Ming Retail Center CA (04/24/2025)
Eureka Harris Street CA (04/25/2025)
Corte Madera Tamal Vista Blvd. CA (04/25/2025)
Yuba City Raley’s Center CA (04/26/2025)
Sonora Sonora Crossroads CA (04/26/2025)
Alhambra Costco Plaza CA (04/26/2025)
Riverside Riverside Plaza CA (04/26/2025)
La Verne La Verne Plaza CA (04/26/2025)
National City Bay Plaza S/C CA (04/26/2025)
La Canada Foothill Blvd. CA (04/27/2025)
Woodland Westgate S/C CA (04/28/2025)
Jackson Grocery Outlet SC CA (04/28/2025)
San Mateo South El Camino Real CA (04/28/2025)
Redwood City Peninsula Boardwalk CA (04/28/2025)
Morgan Hill Tennant Station S/C CA (04/28/2025)
Long Beach Los Coyotes Centers CA (04/28/2025)
Colorado
Pueblo Pueblo Mall CO (04/27/2025)
Connecticut
Clinton Clinton Commons S/C CT (04/26/2025)
Brookfield Shop Rite Plaza CT (04/26/2025)
Hamden Hamden Mart S/C CT (04/28/2025)
Florida
Spring Hill Lakewood Plaza FL (04/24/2025)
Miami Flagler Park Plaza FL (04/24/2025)
Hollywood Hollywood Blvd FL (04/24/2025)
Pembroke Pines 11251 Pines Blvd. FL (04/24/2025)
Wellington Shoppes at Isla Verde FL (04/24/2025)
Port Richey Home Depot Plaza FL (04/26/2025)
Estero Coconut Pointe FL (04/26/2025)
Miami The Greenery FL (04/26/2025)
Plantation The Fountains FL (04/26/2025)
Margate Margate Shopping Center FL (04/26/2025)
Vero Beach Century Town Center FL (04/26/2025)
Fort Walton Beach Mariner Plaza FL (04/28/2025)
Destin Shoppes at Paradise Key FL (04/28/2025)
Tampa Market Square at Tampa Palms FL (04/28/2025)
Venice Venice Village FL (04/28/2025)
Miami JOANN Fabrics Plaza FL (04/28/2025)
Pompano Beach Pompano Marketplace FL (04/28/2025)
Boynton Beach Riverwalk Shopping Plaza FL (04/28/2025)
West Palm Beach Northlake Commons FL (04/28/2025)
Sanford Town Center Plaza FL (04/28/2025)
Georgia
Warner Robins Willow Lake Crossing GA (04/19/2025)
Newnan Newnan Pavilion GA (04/23/2025)
Macon Shoppes at River Crossing GA (04/24/2025)
Fayetteville Fayette Pavilion GA (04/26/2025)
Brunswick Golden Isles Plaza GA (04/26/2025)
Cumming Lakeland Plaza GA (04/27/2025)
Conyers Conyers Plaza GA (04/27/2025)
Duluth Pleasant Hill Square GA (04/28/2025)
Douglasville Douglas Corners S/C GA (04/28/2025)
Iowa
Mason City Willow Creek Crossing IA (04/28/2025)
Muscatine Muscatine Mall IA (04/28/2025)
Illinois
Galesburg Eagle Center IL (04/24/2025)
Crestwood Rivercrest Centre IL (04/25/2025)
Mchenry Shops At Fox River IL (04/26/2025)
Joliet Joliet Commons IL (04/26/2025)
Wheaton Danada Square West S/C IL (04/26/2025)
Champaign Champaign Town Center IL (04/26/2025)
Quincy Quincy Mall IL (04/27/2025)
Carbondale University Plaza S/C IL (04/27/2025)
Freeport Freeport Shopping Center IL (04/28/2025)
Niles Four Flaggs S/C IL (04/28/2025)
Norridge Norridge Marketplace IL (04/28/2025)
Sterling terling Lincoln Center IL (04/28/2025)
Lombard High Point Centre IL (04/28/2025)
Chicago Jo!co Square IL (04/28/2025)
Peru Peru Mall IL (04/28/2025)
Bourbonnais Bradley Commons IL (04/28/2025)
Mattoon Cross County Mall IL (04/28/2025)
Danville Village Mall IL (04/28/2025)
Indiana
Columbus Eastbrook Plaza IN (04/24/2025)
Michigan City Lake Park S/C IN (04/25/2025)
Bedford Town Fair Center IN (04/26/2025)
Jasper Germantown Center IN (04/27/2025)
Plymouth Pilgrim Place S/C IN (04/27/2025)
Angola Angola Plaza IN (04/27/2025)
Marion Five Points Mall IN (04/27/2025)
Richmond Wal-Mart Plaza IN (04/27/2025)
Vincennes Vincennes Plaza IN (04/28/2025)
Indianapolis Washington Plaza IN (04/28/2025)
South Bend Broadmoor Plaza IN (04/28/2025)
Kansas
Lawrence Park Plaza KS (04/26/2025)
Salina Central Mall KS (04/28/2025)
Kentucky
Elizabethtown Towne Centre KY (04/26/2025)
Ashland Ashland Towne Center KY (04/26/2025)
Owensboro Owensboro Towne Center KY (04/27/2025)
Glasgow Barren River Plaza KY (04/28/2025)
Corbin Trademart Shopping Center KY (04/28/2025)
Louisana
Slidell Village at Northshore LA (04/16/2025)
Shreveport Bayou Walk Shopping Center LA (04/26/2025)
Alexandria Power Center LA (04/28/2025)
Gretna Westside North Shopping Center LA (04/28/2025)
Massachusetts
Methuen Village Mall MA (04/24/2025)
North Dartmouth Dartmouth Town Ctr MA (04/26/2025)
Leominster Mall at Whitney Field MA (04/28/2025)
Hyannis Christmas Tree Promenade MA (04/28/2025)
Hadley Hampshire Mall MA (04/28/2025)
Maryland
Greenbelt Beltway Plaza Mall MD (04/24/2025)
Prince Frederick Fox Run Shopping Center MD (04/26/2025)
Lavale Lavala Plaza S/C MD (04/28/2025)
Annapolis Annapolis Plaza MD (04/28/2025)
Brandywine Brandywine Crossing MD (04/28/2025)
Maine
Auburn Auburn Plaza ME (04/28/2025)
Michigan
Essexville Majestic Square MI (04/23/2025)
Adrian Southland Plaza MI (04/24/2025)
Alpena Bear Point Plaza MI (04/25/2025)
Burton Courtland Center MI (04/26/2025)
Big Rapids Ferris Commons MI (04/27/2025)
Lapeer Lapeer S/C MI (04/27/2025)
Chesterfield Waterside Market Place MI (04/27/2025)
Ann Arbor Oak Valley Center MI (04/27/2025)
Holland Felch Street Plaza MI (04/28/2025)
Petoskey Bear Creek Plaza MI (04/28/2025)
Fort Gratiot Twenty-Fourth Avenue MI (04/28/2025)
Grosse Pointe Grosse Pointe Farms MI (04/28/2025)
Bloomfield Hills Bloomfield Village Sq MI (04/28/2025)
Allen Park Independence Market Place MI (04/28/2025)
Minnesota
Hibbing Irongate Mall MN (04/26/2025)
Hutchinson Hutchinson Mall MN (04/26/2025)
Faribault Faribo West Mall MN (04/26/2025)
Bemidji Paul Bunyan Mall MN (04/28/2025)
Willmar Kandi Mall MN (04/28/2025)
Shakopee Dean Lakes MN (04/28/2025)
Missouri
Jefferson City Capital Mall MO (04/26/2025)
Washington Phoenix Center MO (04/27/2025)
Saint Joseph Hillcrest Plaza MO (04/28/2025)
Crystal City Twin City Plaza MO (04/28/2025)
Mississippi
Southaven Southaven Towne Center MS (04/28/2025)
Tupelo Big Oaks Crossing MS (04/28/2025)
Jackson The Junction MS (04/28/2025)
Montana
Butte Butte Plaza Mall MT (04/28/2025)
Helena Shopko Plaza MT (04/28/2025)
North Carolina
Hendersonville Blue Ridge Mall NC (04/19/2025)
Goldsboro Berkeley Mall NC (04/24/2025)
Rocky Mount Sutters Creek Crossing NC (04/26/2025)
Mooresville Mooresville Consumer Square NC (04/26/2025)
North Dakota
Bismarck Gateway Mall ND (04/22/2025)
New Hampshire
West Lebanon Target Plaza NH (04/22/2025)
Seabrook Seacoast S/C NH (04/26/2025)
Belmont Belknap Mall S/C NH (04/28/2025)
Hooksett Hooksett Village Shops NH (04/28/2025)
New Mexico
Santa Fe Plaza Princesa S/C NM (04/26/2025)
Las Cruces Pan America Plaza NM (04/28/2025)
Nevada
Carson City Carson Mall NV (04/26/2025)
Elko Elko Junction NV (04/28/2025)
New York
Malone K-Mart Plaza NY (04/24/2025)
Clifton Park Village Square NY (04/24/2025)
Olean Tops Plaza NY (04/26/2025)
Rochester JOANN / Petsmart Plaza NY (04/26/2025)
Watertown Arsenal Plaza NY (04/26/2025)
Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie Plaza Mall NY (04/26/2025)
Middletown Dunning Farms S/C NY (04/26/2025)
Lakewood Chautauqua Mall NY (04/28/2025)
Niagara Falls Niagara Square NY (04/28/2025)
Cortland Riverside Plaza NY (04/28/2025)
Kingston Kingston Plaza NY (04/28/2025)
West Babylon Great South Bay S/C NY (04/28/2025)
Ohio
Evendale Village Crossing OH (04/23/2025)
Springfield Springfield Plaza S/C OH (04/24/2025)
Heath Park Plaza OH (04/24/2025)
Akron Tri-County Plaza OH (04/24/2025)
Fremont Potter Village OH (04/26/2025)
Lima Lima Center OH (04/26/2025)
Dayton Shiloh Springs Plaza OH (04/26/2025)
Chillicothe Zane Plaza OH (04/26/2025)
St. Clairsville Ohio Valley Mall OH (04/26/2025)
Niles Boulevard Centre at Eastwood Mall OH (04/26/2025)
Marietta Lafayette Center OH (04/27/2025)
Defiance Northtowne East OH (04/28/2025)
Findlay Former Home Depot OH (04/28/2025)
Hamilton Indian Springs Shopping Center OH (04/28/2025)
New Philadelphia New Towne Mall OH (04/28/2025)
Sandusky Crossings at Sandusky OH (04/28/2025)
East Liverpool St Clair Plaza OH (04/28/2025)
Steubenville Hollywood City Center OH (04/28/2025)
Oklahoma
Shawnee Shawnee Mall OK (04/26/2025)
Stillwater Bradford Plaza OK (04/28/2025)
Oregon
Mcminnville Mcminnville Town Ctr OR (04/24/2025)
The Dalles Cascade Square OR (04/26/2025)
North Bend Pony Village Mall OR (04/26/2025)
Warrenton Un-Named Shopping Center OR (04/28/2025)
Beaverton Canyon Place OR (04/28/2025)
Klamath Falls Jefferson Square OR (04/28/2025)
Pennsylvania
Belle Vernon Tri-County Plaza PA (04/24/2025)
Indiana Regency Mall PA (04/24/2025)
Altoona Pleasant Valley S/C PA (04/24/2025)
Bridgeville Great Southern S/C PA (04/26/2025)
Butler Pullman Square PA (04/26/2025)
Johnstown University Park S/C PA (04/26/2025)
State College Suburban Plaza PA (04/26/2025)
Wayne Gateway S/C PA (04/26/2025)
Glen Mills Concordville Town Center PA (04/26/2025)
Lebanon Cedar Crest Sq S/C PA (04/26/2025)
Pittsburgh Southland Four Seasons PA (04/28/2025)
Meadville South Park Plaza PA (04/28/2025)
Du Bois Dubois Mall PA (04/28/2025)
Pottstown The Shops at Coventry PA (04/28/2025)
Springfield Marple Crossroads PA (04/28/2025)
Selinsgrove Susquehanna Valley Mall PA (04/28/2025)
South Carolina
Charleston Ashley Crossing SC (04/24/2025)
Anderson Market Place Shopping Center SC (04/26/2025)
Columbia Northpointe Commons SC (04/28/2025)
Florence Florence Mall SC (04/28/2025)
South Dakota
Brookings University Mall SD (04/28/2025)
Tennessee
Jackson The Columns TN (04/26/2025)
Johnson City Johnson City Plaza TN (04/26/2025)
Tullahoma Northgate Mall TN (04/27/2025)
Sevierville Governor’s Crossing TN (04/27/2025)
Kingsport Kingsport Shopping Center TN (04/28/2025)
Knoxville Harvest Park Shopping Center TN (04/28/2025)
Texas
New Braunfels Interstate Plaza TX (04/26/2025)
Houston Copperfield Crossing TX (04/26/2025)
Rockwall The Plaza At Rockwall TX (04/26/2025)
Abilene Park Central Shopping Center TX (04/26/2025)
San Antonio City Base Landing TX (04/28/2025)
Mesquite Marketplace at Towne Centre TX (04/28/2025)
Odessa Chimney Rock TX (04/28/2025)
Virginia
Lynchburg River Ridge Mall VA (04/23/2025)
Christiansburg New River Valley Center VA (04/24/2025)
Martinsville Village of Martinsville VA (04/26/2025)
Culpeper Dominion Square VA (04/26/2025)
Hampton Riverdale Plaza VA (04/26/2025)
Warrenton Warrenton Center VA (04/28/2025)
Vermont
Barre Central Vermont Shopping Center VT (04/26/2025)
Rutland Town Green Mountain S/C VT (04/28/2025)
Washington
Port Angeles Port Angeles Plaza WA (04/26/2025)
Kent Kent Hill Plaza WA (04/26/2025)
East Wenatchee Valley Mall Parkway WA (04/26/2025)
Seattle Nw 57Th Street WA (04/28/2025)
Renton Northeast Sunset Blvd. WA (04/28/2025)
Moses Lake Town Center WA (04/28/2025)
Clarkston Gateway Square WA (04/28/2025)
Wisconsin
Marshfield Marshfield Center WI (04/22/2025)
Pewaukee Silver Nail S/C WI (04/23/2025)
Plover Crossroads Commons WI (04/25/2025)
Marinette Pine Tree Mall WI (04/25/2025)
Watertown Rivers Edge Mall WI (04/25/2025)
Beaver Dam Heritage Village WI (04/28/2025)
Fond Du Lac Forest Plaza WI (04/28/2025)
Cudahy Packard Plaza WI (04/28/2025)
West Virginia
Beckley Raleigh Mall WV (04/28/2025)
Parkersburg Memorial Bridge Plaza WV (04/28/2025)
Wyoming
Rock Springs White Mountain Mall WY (04/28/2025)
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Nearly 20 years ago, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen published The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, his groundbreaking work about why successful companies often lose their way. But CEOs still struggle with one of the books central lessons, which is that companies need to disrupt themselves.
Companies certainly know more about disruption than they did in 1995, but I still speak and write to executives who havent firmly grasped the implications of the theory, Christensen told former Harvard Business Review editor and Inc. columnist Karen Dillon in an interview published shortly after his death in 2020. The forces that combine to cause disruption are like gravitythey are constant and are always at work within and around the firm. It takes very skilled and very astute leaders to be navigating disruption on a constant basis.
New paths and challenges
Indeed, even after leaders make the difficult decision to shed traditional and reliable revenue streams to invest in new products and services, executing such transitions can take years. Such lags can test the patience of investors and other stakeholders, especially when theres no guarantee that the new business model will succeed.
Just ask Michael Weening, president and CEO of Calix, Inc., which took 13 years to transform itself from a networking gear maker into a software and managed services company for rural broadband providers. The company was founded in 1999, at a time when startups and enterprises alike were rushing into the lucrative business of making gear to power the internet. (Remember when Cisco Systems was the most valuable company in the world?)
But a decade later, enterprises started to change the way they were deploying technology, moving to cloud-based solutions that began to minimize the need for companies to maintain their own computing equipment. Calix leaders saw the change coming and began laying the groundwork for an entirely new approach in 2012one that reimagined the company as a software and cloud company for rural broadband service providers. The company hired Weening from cloud trailblazer Salesforce in 2016 to help with the transition.
However, a year later, the companys annual loss had widened to more than $80 million from $27 million on revenue of about $450 million as Calix realigned the business to focus on investments in its software business. The market cap fell to $275 million, about two-thirds of its value at the time of its 2010 initial public offering.
Staying the course
Weening credits Carl Russo, Calixs founder and chairman, with having the patience to weather losses. He says: The founder was the largest shareholder, who could in essence say to the market, Were making these massive investments because if we dont do this, were going to turn into a low-margin commodity business.
In addition to making changes to Calixs core business model and business infrastructure, Weening and his leadership team had to bring in new talent, resulting in restructuring costs for severance and termination benefits.
Another big challenge was convincing Calixs clients, the rural broadband operators, to embrace Calixs new offering. Rather than selling them gear for their fiber optic networks, Calix wanted to offer a cloud and software platformwith a host of fully integrated managed services, some of which the broadband companies could then sell to their consumers and business customers. For example, Calix customers can sell residential customers a subscription to Bark, a social media-monitoring service for parents. Theyre great at construction; theyre great at reliability and running a network, but this new world of broadband is around experiences, Weening says. How do you teach them how to be sales and marketing- and experience-orientated? Weening drew on his experiences leading customer success at Salesforce to develop resources and training to help Calix clients take advantage of its products and services.
New outcomesa decade later
The transformation is starting to pay off. The company in 2023 made Fortunes list of the 100 fastest-growing companies of the year based on growth in revenue, profits, and stock returns. The company reported lower revenue and losses in 2024 but recently reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations. Calixs market capitalization is about $2.4 billion.
Ask Weening what he thinks about disrupting Calix now, having gone through a 13-year transformation: He and the company say transformation is ongoing, and he says he relies on his customers to keep innovation on track. You can never get arrogant, he says. You always have to be listening. We have 10 advisory customer boards. And if youre not arrogant, everyone will tell you where you suck.
He also offers a reminder of why so many companies resist tackling the innovators dilemma, even when they understand the risks of inaction. This, he says, is not for the faint of heart.
How does your company navigate disruption?
Has your company faced the innovators dilemma? How do you, in Christensens words, navigate disruption on a constant basis? Send your stories and anecdotes to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to share your examples in a future newsletter.
Read more: innovators dilemma
Why companies fail to innovate. An excerpt from The Innovators Dilemma
Basecamp founder Jason Fried talks to Clayton Christensen
How Steve Jobs solved the innovators dilemma
Getting a sense of the scale of social media platforms can be tricky. While tech companies often share self-serving metricslike monthly active users or how likely users are to buy products after engaging with brandsthey rarely offer a true sense of their platforms’ enormity.
But a new study published in Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv aims to change that by quantifying TikToks scale over a single dayclaiming to be among the first to grasp the platforms full scope. It also offers insight into what people are watching, how much content is being uploaded, and who is posting it.
The motivation is using this social media data to better understand society, says Jürgen Pfeffer, one of the studys coauthors and chair of computational science at the Technical University of Munich. The researchers reverse-engineered how TikTok assigns video IDs to gather their data, eventually capturing what they believe to be at least 99% of all posts from a single hour on April 10, 2024around five million videos. They also sampled one minute from every hour across a 24-hour span between April 9 and 10. The entire process took five months.
Among the teams findings was the sheer scale of TikTok activity. They estimated 117 million videos were uploaded on that single day. Roughly one in five featured children, based on estimates from an age classification engine the team trained. Videos posted precisely at the 0th second of each minute significantly outperformed otherssuggesting timing tricks might influence the algorithm. However, Pfeffer notes this could be due to professional creators scheduling their posts, who are also more likely to achieve success.
About a fifth of the videos were deleted within seven months, hinting at large-scale moderation or user regret.
The average video was approximately 20.5 seconds long and was viewed between 2,250 and 2,500 timesdepending on whether the data came from the hour-long slice or the one-minute-per-hour sample.
Pfeffer was also surprised to find that TikTok engagement peaked twice daily. Around 4 a.m. UTC (11 p.m. EST), uploads surged to nearly six million videos per hour, reaching a similar peak again around 1 p.m. UTC (8 a.m. EST). The researchers attributed these spikes to global usage cycles, as morning users in Asia overlapped with late-night uploaders in the U.S., and vice versa later in the day.
The team also grouped popular videos into thematic clusters. Among the most common were images with colorful backgrounds and graphics and selfies with fashionable outfits and watermarks. Less frequent themes included political commentary on police operations in Pakistan (0.025% of all videos) and camouflaged military soldier images, which accounted for 0.06% of the content.
Were facing a career confidence crisis. Work is changing fast, yet many employees feel stuck. At LinkedIn, our data shows workforce confidence has dropped to a five-year low, and only 15% of employees say their manager has supported them with career planning in the past six months.
Managers can play a big role in righting the shiphelping employees build the new skills they need to stay relevant and develop into future leaders. But this requires a fundamental shift: transforming them from task-overseers to coaches developing talent and sparking the best ideas from their teams. There are some key steps any company can take now to develop a culture of coaching that starts with your managersbut extends well beyond them.
Start to develop your managers as coaches
If you want your managers to become coaches, that starts by coaching your coaches. Just like elite athletes rely on coaches to reach peak performance, managers also need coaching to unlock their full potential. Coaching is a skill that needs to be intentionally developed. Executives are starting to grasp this opportunity. Nearly 80% of global CHROs agree their managers in the future will spend less time managing tasks and more time coaching teams.
Leading companies are doubling down on this already. For instance, IBM supports first and secondline managers to grow through targeted programs, assessments, and skill-aligned badges. Manager Impact, for example, is an interactive learning experience that coaches new managers on how to lead with confidence, create meaningful employee experiences, and navigate real-world leadership challenges. Managers who complete these programs achieve significantly higher employee engagement scores, says IBM.
Coca-Cola is taking similar steps to grow managers into coaches by implementing rigorous leadership assessments to select the right people for leadership roles, and then providing cohort-base development to set those people managers up for success as coaches. Theyve seen notable upticks in how employees are rating their managers, as well as a boost in overall employee satisfaction.
Taking the time to develop your managers into coaches is key to helping employees get unstuck and supercharging growth across the business. Plus, providing managers with the tools and support they need to excel in their roles improves their own retention and engagement, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits the entire organization.
Consider making professional 1:1 coaching an employee benefit
Its important to recognize your teams are operating through a moment of historic work change. By 2030, we expect 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change, with AI emerging as a catalyst. To keep pace, your people need more support.
Training managers to coach is essential, but they cant do it alone. Thats why more companies are bringing in independent career coaches who offer specialized guidance on complex workplace challenges, like navigating difficult workplace relationships, managing career transitions, or developing crucial interpersonal skills that AI cant replicate.
Kearney, a business consulting firm and LinkedIn Top Company for 2025, has taken this approach by offering a six-month individualized coaching program and practice rotations designed to accelerate consultant growth. And at LinkedIn, we recently made the decision to offer every single employee, regardless of their job function or seniority level, an opportunity to work directly with an independent career coach. This investment in personalized development is already showing promising results, with 97% of our employee participants saying they feel more confident in their ability to navigate their careers after coaching.
Scale personalized coaching in new ways with the help of AI
There is no replacement for one-on-one coaching from a trusted adviser, but that person cant be there for you 24/7, which is where AI tools can round out your strategy.
While many leaders are focused on AIs impact on productivity, AI for coaching is emerging as the next frontier, with more companies experimenting and seeing early gains. Were seeing firsthand how more organizations are tapping into our AI-powered coaching features in LinkedIn Learning, with companies like Gates Foundation and Thomson Reuters actively using our new coaching tool to help their managers practice new skills. Companies are already saying this is helping their employees better prepare for that difficult conversation or high stakes presentation.
Building a strong culture of coaching will always be rooted in human expertise, but it can be complemented and scaled to new heights with the help of technology.
The most valuable skill we can cultivate today isn’t technicalit’s teaching our people how to learn continuously in a rapidly changing world, building resilience that no economic shift or technological disruption can shake. By investing in coaching, you’re not just developing skillsyou’re unleashing the uniquely human potential that will define success in the AI era and beyond.
In 2017, Ubers executive team reached a critical turning point. The world saw headlines about leadership changes, valuation drops, and cultural upheavals. Beneath the noise, however, lay a deeper issue.
It wasnt rogue culture or aggressive expansion. It was misalignment at the very top.
An all-too-familiar scenario had taken root: Executives were operating in silos. They werent facing challenges to key decisions, and they overlooked red flags. The result? A $20 billion valuation adjustment and a leadership overhaul that forced Uber to rethink how alignment works at the highest levels.
And thats where the real story begins. Instead of crumbling, Uber recalibrated. The company realigned its leadership, rebuilt trust, and restructured cultural processes. The company turned misalignment into an opportunity for transformation. Today, it stands as a case study in how great organizations use misalignment as a catalyst for growth.
These challenges arent unique to Uber. Misalignment is present in companies of all stages and sizes. Unfortunately, many teams dont realize it until its too late.
What leads to misalignment
Most executive teams think theyre aligned. But the data says otherwise. Only 18% strongly agree their teams consistently demonstrate the behaviors that define true alignmentlike communication, integrity, accountability, and follow-through.
This gap between perception and reality is where organizations lose their edge. You cant build alignment out of assumptions or beliefs. It requires discipline. If leaders arent actively testing for alignment, they simply hope it exists.
Misalignment doesnt happen loudly. It doesnt announce itself from the center stage. Instead, it creeps in during everyday interactions. A CFO notices a financial red flag but assumes someone else will address it. A CMO defends their budget so fiercely it hinders collaboration. Or a CEO shares a vision for the future, unaware their team is nodding in agreement while quietly disengaging.
These moments dont feel like failures. But thats what makes them dangerous.
The cost of misalignment
Misalignment is more than an internal struggle, its an existential threat. In our work with executives across industries like healthcare, technology, government, and finance, the following patterns typically lead to misalignment:
Conflict avoidance: Leaders sidestep difficult conversations, allowing minor issues to grow into major problems.
Transactional meetings: Discussions lack depth and critical debate, reducing meetings to routine updates instead of platforms for innovation.
Superficial trust: Leaders hesitate to ask for help, fearing it signals weakness, while their teams avoid raising strategic concerns out of distrust or fear.
Team disengagement: When trust diminishes, team members stop challenging one another and wait for top-down directives, turning from proactive problem-solvers into task-oriented executors.
These issues are not failures of leadership competency. They are symptoms of false alignment, which is the consequence of overlooking the need for deliberate cohesion.
Signs your executive team is out of sync
Think your team is aligned? Consider the following questions:
Does alignment depend entirely on your CEO? If your team waits for top-down answers, it isnt aligned.
Are your meetings mostly informational updates? If real collaboration happens only in smaller groups, trust is lacking.
Are silos the norm? If asking for help feels risky, your leaders are functioning as individuals, not as a team.
Is constructive conflict avoided or punished? If problem-solving debates feel unsafe, innovation is stalling.
If any of these scenarios resonate, your team isnt just underperformingits likely holding itself back, forfeiting innovation and strategic agility.
What great executive teams do differently
You cant build alignment in the boardrooms. Its built-in momentsthe way leaders interact, debate, and trust each other. Aligned teams outperform their peers, not because alignment is easy but because it is deliberate.
In our experience, companies need to take a two-step approach to fix misalignment:
Step 1: Work on internal issues
Elevate trust. Companies need to treat trust as a mission-critical value. Facilitate open discussions where executives can address challenges without fear of retaliation.
Establish feedback loops and accountability. Integrate structured feedback mechanisms to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Embed professional development. Prioritize coaching and mentorship to make learning and growth central to your teams strategy.
Path 2: Bring in outside experts
Executive coaches act as mirrors, revealing blind spots, building trust, and uniting teams before fractures lead to failure. They provide the safe space needed for honest discussions and alignment.
A CEOs Final Test: Are You Aligned?
Finally, great leaders dont assume alignment, they test it. If you want to know whether your team is truly aligned, ask your executivesprivately and anonymouslyto rate your teams trust, collaboration, engagement, and alignment on a scale from 1 to 10. Compare the results. If the scores vary wildly or skew low, your team isnt aligned, its merely coexisting.
Start to think about how you can fix it. Remember, misalignment isnt just an operational challenge, its a threat to your organizations survival.
In the lower Manhattan neighborhood of NoHo, the crowded area around Lafayette Street was once called Gasoline Alley because of the many auto shops and gas stations housed there. While New York is still crowded with cars, gas stations in Manhattan are now more rare (there are none today in Gasoline Alley, only one left in all of lower Manhattan.) But off of Lafayette, theres a new kind of space-inspired gas station that reveals the future of fuela future in which we power vehicles across land, air, and sea with CO2 instead of fossil fuels.
The Fuel Store is an immersive concept store by AirCo, a Brooklyn-based startup that turns captured CO2 and hydrogen into synthetic fuels. Most people dont think about their fuel all that much, or dont know that there are options other than fossil-fuel derived gas. The Fuel Store is meant to introduce people to AirCos technology, and paint a possible future where CO2 powers everything from motocross bikes to jets to spaceships.
[Photo: AirCo]
Previously called Air Company, AirCo has turned captured CO2 into all sorts of consumer products, including vodka, hand sanitizer, and perfume, since it was founded in 2017. In 2024, AirCo raised $69 million in a Series B round, and the company also has a $65 million contract with the Department of Defense; its raised over $100 million in total, according to Pitchbook. With just under 120 employees, it’s lab and R&D operations are located in Brooklyn.
Recently its been focusing on fuel, because thats an industry where it can have substantial impact. It’s one of the hardest industries traditionally to decarbonize, says cofounder and CEO Gregory Constantine. Transportation is the largest contributor to the U.S.s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 28% of all direct emissions. Globally, aviation alone counts for 2% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions.
[Photo: AirCo]
AirCo instead uses CO2a greenhouse gasas a feedstock. It combines that CO2 with hydrogen to create fuels through a process that runs on renewable energy. Though AirCo declined to share how much CO2-derived fuel it currently produces, it does have partnerships with multiple companies for the use of its sustainable aviation fuel, called Airmade. In 2022, JetBlue signed an intent to purchase 25 million gallons of Airmade over five years, and Virgin Atlantic signed an intent to purchase up to 100 million gallons over 10 years. The company has also has partnerships with Boom Supersonic, and the U.S. Department of Defense. For the government, AirCo has worked on projects for land, air, and sea transportation.
[Photo: AirCo]
The Fuel Store showcases these different developments. When you first walk in, you see a shiny chrome gas station in the center of the rooman AirCo branded awning over sleek, futuristic pumps. A motocross bike is attached to one pump, meant to represent the freedom to roam, just like how AirCos fuels can be made either in remote locations or in cities. Along the walls are a series of products designed to tell different aspects of AirCos story, and the future of fuel the company envisions.
[Photo: AirCo]
On one shelf are hard-shell suitcases decorated with modern travel stickers, one of which reads, “My plane is on an air-based diet.” The climate impact of transportation has led to some travel shaming, Constantine says, but he adds that travel is a part of life. Through its work making sustainable aviation, AirCo is making travel less objectionable, he says.
[Photo: AirCo]
Next to the suitcases are vintage Air Force bomber jackets, adorned with new AirCo patches. In April, AirCo fuel partnered with the Air Force for the first-ever unmanned flight powered by CO2-derived jet fuel. AirCos synthetic fuels are 100% compatible with current aircrafts, unlike hydrogen, which requires new engine designs.
[Photo: AirCo]
On the other side of the store are life vests made of recycled signal flags, a nod to the companys successful tests with the Navy to use Airmade for marine vessels. (These tests powered boats while also emitting less visible smoke in the exhaust.) The signal flags themselves mean urgent and full speed, echoing the companys perspective on its mission to decarbonize fuel. Above the life vests are dry bags made from upcycled sails, an ode to how sailboats, powered by air, were once the dominant form of sea traveland how air, through AirCos CO2 fuel, could power future marine vessels.
Objects like the motocross bike, a mini toy AirCo fuel truck, and vintage Army T-shirts screen-printed with an image of a Polaris MRZR tactical vehiclewhich AirCo successfully powered with its CO2-derived fuel through tests at West Pointshowcase AirCos fuel use on land.
[Photo: AirCo]
And finally, the Fuel Store also hints at AirCo going into space. One wall features a conceptual Mars helmet and workwear suit. These imagine a future where the red planets atmospherewhich is 95% CO2could be harvested to power spacecrafts, rovers, and habitats. AirCo also has a long-running partnership with NASA.
A lot of the work that we do with groups like NASA is to try to prove out that we can produce a fuel not only here on Earth made from CO2 but potentially, in the long-term future, up on Mars, so that we can bring astronauts back, Constantine says. AirCo also created bacon, egg, and cheese space food, a nod to the classic New York City sandwich and the companys home base.
[Photo: AirCo]
Each of these products has tags that explain their connection to AirCos larger story. Though these items wont be for sale at the Fuel Store, they will be available via auction online after the concept stores run is over. That auction will help fund AirCos research and development. Visitors will be able to purchase AirCo merch like T-shirts, socks, and some of the stickers that appear on the luggage (including ones that read honk if you love unlimited feedstocks and Make love, not CO2).
[Photo: AirCo]
The Fuel Store will be open to the public from April 30th to May 3rd at 55 Great Jones Street, New York. Constantine hopes the concept store is ableto shed light on AirCos technology, and the hopeful future it envisions.
Educating people about the future is a tricky challenge, but it can be an inspirational one, he says. The origins of fuel, and these new technologies like fuel made of CO2, can be foreign to people, but the store puts them in an immersive world full of that technologys use cases. What we’ve tried to do here, Constantine adds, is to show what the future can look like in a way that others haven’t been able to do.
To most visitors, Hobokens ResilienCity Park might look like a normal (if rather upscale) park, complete with a large lawn for lounging, a playground, a basketball court, and an athletic field. But hidden in plain sight, the park has another purpose: keeping two million gallons of rainwater off of Hobokens streets by storing them in a giant underground tank.
The parkand others like itis one of the main ways that Hoboken has transformed from a city devastated by Hurricane Sandy to one that, today, tends to recover from major rain within a matter of hours. Now, experts think New York City could use parks to follow Hobokens lead as extreme weather continues to worsen the citys flood risk.
[Image: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
According to a study published today by Rebuild by Design, an organization dedicated to using design solutions to solve complex urban problems, 70% of NYC parks will be flooded by 2100. The report comes on top of another recent study from the Regional Plan Association (RPA), which found that, by 2070, as many as 82,000 housing units in and around NYC could be lost due to flooding by 2040, and the number could double to 160,000 by 2070.
Amy Chester, director of Rebuild by Design, believes that Hobokens example could help NYC protect both its parks and its housing by turning green spaces into a form of storm management.
[Photo: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
How Hoboken’s parks keep its streets dry
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded 80% of Hoboken, took out its power grid for two weeks, and cost the city $110 million in damages. In a recent talk shared to Rebuild by Designs YouTube, Caleb Stratton, the citys chief resilience officer, said that it was a wake-up call for the city of Hoboken.
The following year, Rebuild by Design was started as a design competition to promote resilience in regions that had been affected by Sandy. At the time, Chester says, cities were blindsided by both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy: We didn’t really understand resilient infrastructure as we do now, she says.
[Photo: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
That was especially true for Hobokenwhich, despite its coastal location and long history of flooding, had almost no flooding mitigation infrastructure in place, Chester says. Hobokens proposed rain resilience project was one of Rebuild by Designs six winning submissions, and over the last decade or so, the city has used more than $660 million from various sources including the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the state of New Jersey, and FEMA to implement new flooding protection measures.
[Photo: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
Hobokens flooding resilience project includes several different levers. To keep floodwaters out, its building a 9,000-foot-long series of preventative seawalls, gates, and levies. Its also updating its sewer system with more flood pumps to move water out of storage quicker during heavy rain. And, its keeping streets dry by increasing above and below ground water storage. Thats where resiliency parks come in.
So far, Hoboken has completed construction of three resiliency parks and a series of waterfront parks, with several more parks currently under construction. Each of these parks uses green infrastructure on its surfaceslike pervious pavers and rain gardenswhich funnel water underground into holding tanks, keeping it out of the crowded sewer system and preventing overflows.
[Photo: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
The ResilinCity Park, the largest of the existing parks, can hold two million gallons of water, enough to collect runoff from 20 surrounding blocks during a notable rain event (typically defined as more than a half inch of water falling in a 24-hour period), Chester says. A large chunk of that water is kept in the parks underground tank, while some is held in other clever wayslike a sunken basketball court with a capacity to hold more than 100,000 gallons. In all, the existing parks can hold a total of 4.2 million gallons of water.
It’s different from green infrastructure, because green infrastructure is on top of the park, and that stops the park from flooding. This is pumps and storage that stops the entire neighborhood from flooding, Chester says. We’re really interested in doing this all over New York City and in any urban areas where there are neighborhood parks, because if you’re a couple blocks away from a park, that park could be the storage option for your community and keep the floodwaters out of your basements and out of your streets.
Rebuild by Designs data shows that, in 2022 and 2023, Hobokens new rain resilient infrastructure led to an 88% reduction in flooding events. In practice, that meant that across 121 storms, noticeable flooding only occurred 14 times. In September 2023, when Hurricane Ophelia led to thigh-deep water in Brooklyn and flooded subway cars in NYC, Hoboken was noticeably dry.
Projects like thesewhich plan not just for seawater flooding, but also for excessive rainfallare increasingly important as climate change ushers in rising sea levels, and as record-warm ocean temperatures lead to more intense annual storm seasons. According to the RAPs recent analysis, NYCs existing infrastructure is not prepared to account for the coming decades of flooding damage, which is expected to impact as many as 1.6 million New Yorkers by 2040. Chester thinks resiliency parks could be the first step toward preparing the city for whats ahead.
[Image: courtesy Rebuild by Design]
Why NYC’s parks could help keep residents safe from flooding
Rebuild by Design’s new NYC park analysis maps all of the city’s 2,385 parks based on their current and future flood risk. Users can search the interactive map to view the parks in their own neighborhood, or filter for todays flood risk and flood risk by 2100. The map is also color-coded based on FEMAs social vulnerability index (or the susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts of natural hazards) and the heat vulnerability index, as parks provide the added benefit of reducing urban heat.
The tool shows that 38% of parks are currently in flood zonesa number that’s expected to surge to 70% by 2100. While these statistics may seem alarming, Chester sees them as an opportunity.
We’ve mapped all of the floodplain in New York City and parks to see where [resiliency parks] could potentially be a solution, Chester says. We were able to show that 38% or 900 parks in New York City are currently on top of a flood plain. Interesting. Then if you look to the 2100 flood plain, it’s 70% of parks. That’s when we were like, Oh my goodness. This could be really incredible to be thinking about this on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.’
Of all of NYCs parks, Chesters team has identified 177 sites that would benefit the most from a resilient makeover, based on both their flood risk and heat vulnerability. To make this happen, Chester says, the parks would have to be fully rebuilt to construct underground tanks that would pump water off of nearby streets, like the ResilienCity examplewhich is why we need to start now, she adds.
If every time the parks department upgraded a park, they rebuilt it this way, we could have a major headstart in addressing flooding across NYC neighborhoods, Chester wrote in a follow-up email to Fast Company. All of Hobokens flood infrastructure was built in the past decade (after Sandy.)
These parks are, admittedly, a major investment. ResilienCity, for example, cost $80 million, while the smaller Southwest Resiliency Park (which can hold about 200,000 gallons of water in its cistern) cost $12 million. However, Chester explains, pitching resiliency parks as flood protection can help to draw in new streams of federal and state funding.
Parks manage 14% of the Citys land, but only about 0.6% of the City budget over the past 40 years, far below the national standard of 12% allocation of a municipalitys budget, the Rebuild by Design interactive map page reads. Parks offer immense potential to draw down federal and state funds, including programs from FEMA, HUD, and state funding. If the City were to recognize parks as vital infrastructureas it does highwaysand properly invest in upgrading and maintaining its parks, these public spaces could protect and save lives and save billions of dollars.
For now, Rebuild by Designs NYC proposal is just that. But Chester believes that, if Hoboken could implement successful resilient infrastructure in just a decade, theres no reason that other cities cant do it themselves.
We’ve been working on this for a little while now, but like, it’s such an incredible model for urban areas nationally, because a majority of urban areas have neighborhood parks, and theyre these smaller areas that can be doing a lot more things, Chester says. None of these parks existed in Hoboken before, and Hoboken is not a city with a lot of money.
Efficiency standards for home appliances were once the conversational equivalent of beigeneutral, but aggressively uninteresting. But as political polarization has deepened, dishwashers, laundry machines, showerheads, and other household staples have begun to take on a new charge. With Republicans now in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, rules that quietly save Americans money on utility bills while conserving energy and water are suddenly at risk.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump doubled down on his long-standing complaint about low-flow showerheads taking too long to clean his beautiful hair. He ordered his administration to repeal a rule, revived by the Biden administration, that aimed to save water by restricting flow from the fixtures. A White House fact sheet promised the order would undo the lefts war on water pressure and make Americas showers great again.
Its part of a growing movement targeting efficiency standardslast year, House Republicans passed bills including the Refrigerator Freedom Act and Liberty in Laundry Act, though neither succeeded in the Democratic-led Senate. Now in charge of both houses of Congress, Republicans have already passed a resolution to repeal a recent energy-efficiency standard for gas-powered tankless water heaters, which awaits Trumps signature.
Efficiency standards used to have bipartisan support. But today, many Republican politicians see restrictions on gas stoves, refrigerators, and laundry machines as symbols of Democratic interference with peoples self-determination. Thats the idea Trump advanced when he signed an executive order targeting efficiency standards for home goods and appliances to safeguard the American peoples freedom to choose. The message echoes talking points from industry groups that have an interest in keeping homes hooked up to natural gas for stoves and water heaters.
This isnt the first time that weve seen efficiency standards thrust into the culture wars, said Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which advocates for stricter energy-efficiency legislation. But President Trump has put that into overdrive.
The push for more efficient appliances began in response to the fuel shortages sparked by the 1973 oil crisis. Republican President Gerald Ford signed the bipartisan Energy Policy and Conservation Act in 1975, laying the groundwork for the government to set standards on household appliances. But state laws for more efficient appliances came first, forcing manufacturers to navigate a patchwork of rules. So Congress set nationwide efficiency standards for water heaters, air conditioners, dishwashers, and many other household appliances with the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act in 1987, signed by another Republican presidentRonald Reagan.
Congress continued to expand those standards with bipartisan support in 1992, 2005, and 2007. In total, the Department of Energy now oversees standards for about 60 categories of appliances and other equipment in homes and businesses, spanning toilets to commercial refrigerators.
In January, the pre-Trump Department of Energy estimated that these rules, taken together, saved the average U.S. household about $576 a year on their bills. They also cut national energy use by 6.5% and water consumption by 12%, making them a key tool for addressing climate change and drought. Voters are broadly supportive of energy-saving policies, with 87% of Americans polled by Consumer Reports in March agreeing that new home appliances should be required to meet a minimum level of efficiencyincluding 82% of Republicans. People arent clamoring for products that needlessly waste energy and money, deLaski said.
Despite broad popularity, there have been flare-ups of pushback and public outrage against efficient appliances dating back to the 1980s. Reagan actually vetoed the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act, saying it restricted the freedom of choice available to consumers who would be denied the opportunity to purchase low-cost appliances, the year before he signed it. In a 1996 episode of Seinfeld, Jerry, Kramer, and Newman were so fed up with the new low-flow showerheads in their building, they resorted to buying black-market Yugoslavian models from the back of a truck. Another culture war brewed over energy-efficient LED light bulbs in the 2010s as older, incandescent models began to be phased out, with Tea Party Republicans declaring that light bulb choice was a matter of personal liberty.
President Donald Trump speaks to workers at a Whirlpool manufacturing facility in 2020, in Clyde, Ohio. [Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images]
Matthew Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming, said that efficiency rules are most likely to become a cultural flashpoint when people see them directly affecting their lives. People do notice the flow of their showerheads, he said. People do notice whether their stove is gas or electric. Some of the political tension over appliances resulted from ambitious changes, he said, such as when Berkeley, California, tried to ban gas connections in new buildings in 2019.
Every hour, the McDonalds in Hong Kongs crowded Admiralty Station sees more than 1,200 people bustle through its golden arches to grab a coffee or a burger. Thats one customer every three seconds. Its the second-busiest McDonalds in the world and the most-frequented restaurant in Asiaand now, its getting a makeover.To celebrate 50 years of McDonalds in Hong Kong, the Admiralty Station has been renovated for the first time in 10 years. The design takes inspiration from the subway station itself, using a clever new installation to set a mood, evoke the excitement of travel, and, crucially, keep foot traffic moving through the bustling restaurant. It also takes a tentative step away from the millennial gray branding thats dominated new McDonalds locations over the past several years, embracing a slightly more nostalgia-powered look.[Photo: Andrew Meredith/courtesy Landini Associates]The Millennial gray-ification of McDonaldsThe new Admiralty Station McDonalds design was led by the Sydney-based design agency Landini Associates. Back in 2015, Landini Associates also spearheaded Project Ray, an all-encompassing McDonalds rebrand named for Ray Kroc, the businessman widely credited with turning McDonalds from a small hamburger stand into a fast-food corporation. Project Ray included rethinking the chains interiors, modernizing its graphic design, and even changing employees uniforms, all in a bid to make McDonalds cool again and re-attract millennials to the brand. The first Project Ray redesign originally debuted at Admiralty Station, introducing a sleeker, more minimalist McDonalds model accented with concrete, glass, and stainless steelquite the contrast to the bright red-and-yellow stores customers might remember from the 80s and 90s. Landini Associates idea of a modern McDonalds quickly caught on at other locations in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Beijing, and more.[Photo: Andrew Meredith/courtesy Landini Associates]The energetic environments that have been the signature for McDonalds are now replaced with a simpler, calmer, and more classic feel, Mark Landini, creative director of Landini Associates, told Architectural Products of Project Ray in 2023. Ten years on, Project Ray is still expanding to new McDonalds restaurants. Still, the concepts millennial gray-ification of McDonalds has perhaps become a bit of a relic of the mid-2010s, when many fast-food restaurants began stepping back from expressive design for a more standardized fast-casual look. In contrast, over the past several months, McDonalds has been more broadly embracing its fans nostalgia for its 80s and 90s marketing, bringing back brand characters like Grimace, CosMc, and Uncle OGrimacey. Landini Associates updated Admiralty Station, which its calling a Ray-Naissance, seems to lean into this new tack by incorporating a bit more color, energy, and a few classic callbacks into its design.[Photos: Andrew Meredith/courtesy Landini Associates]McDonalds of the futureWhen visitors enter the new Admiralty Station McDonalds, theyll first be greeted with a gigantic, modernized version of the original golden arches, complete with a few subtle nods to the iconic branding of the very first McDonalds restaurants. As customers rise from the station below, theyre welcomed by a reflective double-canopy entrancea contemporary homage to McDonalds original roofline and a nod to Ray Krocs classic design, a press release on the redesign reads. Now framed by glowing feature walls in McDonalds signature yellow, aimed at creating an unmissable beaconjust like the earliest restaurants once were.[Photo: Andrew Meredith/courtesy Landini Associates]Past this bright yellow entryway is the new restaurants defining feature: a 70-foot-long curving digital screen called the Mood Engine. Shape-wise, its a bit reminiscent of the subway trains themselves, and its moving images also build on the idea that its a fantastical continuation of the stations transit. According to the press release, it pulses with curated animations, dynamic color transitions, and playful bursts of McDonaldland characters, bringing in a bit of the classic McDonalds character that mightve been missing in the previous design.To be clear, the new Admiralty Station McDonalds is a far cry from the fast-food restaurants of the 80s, when McDonaldland characters abounded. The concept is clearly intended for customers of the future, including a fast-service lobby filled with digital kiosks that can serve those 1,200 customers per hour; a first-of-its-kind McCafé Bar space made entirely from recycled plastic; tabletops made with 100% recycled laminate pulp and coffee grounds; and a fully LED lighting system intended for energy efficiency (that includes the Mood Engine wall.) Still, the design provides a sneak peek into what McDonalds might look like several years from now: slightly brighter, more personalized, and tied to the companys roots.Our original design for Ray has proven its intent, to be a classically neutral and long-lasting space, Landini said in the press release. This Ray-Naissance can now shift from calm to energetic, playfully branded to locally nuanced. . . . Like a chameleon, it responds to its environment.
