 |
|
|
|||||
Over the past two years, a troubling trend has started to take shape in the media; for a large majority of journalists, DEI framing became the default for covering Black businesses. What should be stories about innovation, resilience, market disruption, and leadership have increasingly been flattened into a single, repetitive narrative: DEI. Not the company’s business model. Not the founders vision or entrepreneur journey. Not the problem being solved or the customers being served. Just DEI. And its often framed through the lens of rollbacks, political backlash, or cultural controversy. This didnt begin overnight, but in recent years and especially amid the political climate shaped by the Trump administration, it has accelerated to the point of absurdity. Today, if a business is Black-owned, media coverage almost reflexively treats it as a DEI case study rather than a company. The founder becomes a symbol, success becomes secondary, and the story becomes predictable before the first paragraph is even finished. One Narrative, Over and Over Again If you listen closely to news interviews from 2024 until now between reporters and Black founders, nine times out of ten a pattern quickly emerges. The questions sound eerily similar. How are DEI rollbacks affecting your business? What does the current political climate mean for Black entrepreneurship? How do you feel about corporate pullbacks from diversity initiatives? My company, Brennan Nevada Inc. New York Citys first and only Black-owned tech PR agency, has been able to witness this firsthand through my daily interactions and interviews with members of the media. Ive prioritized spending more time and conducting the necessary due diligence that preps my clients on how to engage, navigate, or just not participate in the same DEI obsessed interview. With these interviews between journalists and Black founders, the most important questions often go unasked, like What problem does this business solve? Or What makes it competitive? How did the founder build it? And What lessons can other entrepreneurs learn from its success? And when coverage does come out, it typically leads with the current administrations DEI rollbacks, and less like profiles of thriving companies. The rhetoric reflects commentary on diversity politics, with the business itself serving as a backdrop rather than the subject. When Black-Owned Becomes a Category, Not a Credential The underlying issue is subtle but very damaging: Black-owned has become synonymous with DEI in media framing. That equation is flawed and needs to be reworked. A Black-owned business is not inherently a diversity initiative or a political statement. It is first and foremost a business built by someone who just so happens to be Black. Thats it. Yet most media coverage today increasingly suggests that Black success exists primarily within the context of diversity efforts, and worse, that it is somehow dependent on them. When DEI programs face scrutiny or rollbacks, Black businesses are often portrayed as collateral damage rather than as resilient enterprises capable of thriving on merit, strategy, and execution. This framing does a disservice not only to Black founders, but to readers and audiences as well. It robs them of real business insight and reinforces the idea that Black success must always be explained through an external lens. The media tends to shift its tone to whats currently happening in the cultural moment, especially when towards Black businesses. Five years ago during George Floyds murder and the Black Lives Matter movement that happened around Juneteenth in 2020, the media positively highlighted a lot more Black businesses alongside brands that pushed for DEI to address systemic barriers. The Cost of Poor Storytelling This media obsession with DEI is getting old really fast. It reduces complex entrepreneurial journeys into political soundbites. And it quietly undermines the credibility of Black founders by implying that their success is inseparable from institutional support rather than personal vision and capability. Im not saying this is being done on purpose, because even well-intentioned coverage can fall into this trap, and oftentimes does. When every story leads with race rather than results, representation becomes reductive instead of empowering. The irony is that truly compelling stories are being missed. There are Black founders building category-defining products, solving real-world problems, scaling companies, and creating jobs; stories that deserve the same depth and seriousness afforded to any other entrepreneur. But those stories require more work. They require curiosity beyond a headline. They require journalists to move past the easiest narrative available. Whats Next for Black Stories in 2026 As media organizations reassess their role in shaping public discourse, 2026 presents an opportunity for a long-overdue reset. What would it look like to cover Black businesses the same way we cover all businesses, by focusing on innovation, leadership, and success first? What if founders were allowed to be experts in their industries rather than spokespeople for diversity debates? What if success stories were told as success stories? None of this means ignoring race or pretending systemic inequities dont exist. Thats not what Im saying since that context absolutely matters. But its my belief that context should inform a story not consume it. A Black-owned business should not automatically trigger a DEI narrative. And Black entrepreneurship should not be treated as a subplot in a political storyline. If the media wants to tell better stories in 2026, it needs to start by asking Black founders better questions, and by remembering that Black businesses are not symbols. We are enterprises. We are innovations. And we deserve to be covered as such.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s Q1 2026. Your chief financial officer is cutting innovation budgets by 20%. Your AI pilot showed 94% accuracy improvements. The LLM is yielding solid results. You’re getting defunded anyway. The reason? You solved a problem AI can solve. Your budget-holder needed you to solve theirs. Companies launch AI pilots that produce results, then stall at scale. The team’s diagnosis: “They don’t get it.” What’s really going on: These projects never earned budget-holder buy-in. Passing the budget-holder test requires three things pilot teams fall short on: analytic proof that you move their needles, execution confidence that scale is achievable, and relational trust that you have their back. As economic headwinds hit 2026, here’s how to know if your project will surviveand what to do about it now. Analytic ProofDo You Move Their Needles? Budget-holders don’t fund impressive technology. They fund solutions that move metrics they get credit for at bonus time. Your pilot team celebrates: “Our AI improves processing accuracy by 40%!” Your budget-holder asks: “Does that improve my customer retention rate? Lower my cost per acquisition? Move my net promoter score? Show me the math and where this shows up in monthly financial reports.” Most teams can’t answer. They proved the technology works. They got great feedback from customers. They didn’t prove it moves the drivers of financial outcomes that matter to the person holding the purse strings. One of the most challenging barriers I encountered in banking: We proved migrating customers to digital self-service generated huge impacts on customer segments aligned to product P&Ls. But accounting systems didn’t attribute these improvements to each P&L owner. They couldn’t “get the credit” in performance reviews. Without attribution in the system of record, results almost didn’t exist. P&L owners had no incentive to shift resources from familiar approaches to digital initiatives they wouldn’t get recognized for. You may prove improvements in metrics everyone claims to supportcustomer experience, innovation, digital transformation. But if those improvements aren’t attributable to line items on their scorecard, they won’t survive prioritization discussions. This requires analytic work most pilots skip: understanding what drives the budget-holder’s financial metrics, connecting AI outputs to those drivers with causation and magnitude, and confirming results will manifest in financial reporting. When the CFO asks “prove ROI,” showing AI accuracy improvements isn’t an answer. Showing how accuracy translates to their measured outcomes is. Execution ConfidenceCan You Actually Scale This? Your pilot worked in controlled conditions with a small team, friendly users, and tolerance for iteration. Your budget-holder knows what you might not: What you needed to test is totally different than what you need to scale. They’re assessing execution risk. Can you articulate what’s different about scaling? Have you anticipated the capabilities to address those differences? Four capability gaps erode budget-holder confidence. Strategic optionality: AI evolves faster than traditional planning cycles. If your road map locks the organization into today’s context, you’re creating risk. Human judgment integration: Edge cases that were 2% of your pilot become thousands of customer impacts at scale. Do you know where human judgment is essential, or will you create operational chaos? Quantitative versus qualitative reality: Your dashboard shows 85% adoption. But are users completing tasks because the experience works, or because they have no alternative? Sustaining motivation: Organizational anxiety about AI is realpeople fear being replaced. What’s your impact on the budget-holder’s team motivation to achieve 2026 targets? Budget-holders who’ve seen technology work in pilots but fail at scale won’t fund projects where execution risks aren’t anticipated and addressed. Relational TrustDo You Have Their Back? This is the most critical dimension. Your budget-holder is assessing: Do you understand my pain? Are you here to make me successful, or to pursue the latest “shiny object”? The gap shows up in how teams frame problems. “We can use AI to automate customer service” starts with what AI can do. “Your call center costs are 15% above target and customer satisfaction is droppinghere’s how we address both” starts with their problem. It shows up in how you treat pushback. If the budget-holder or their team are “obstacles” to what you believe should happen, you’ve already failed. Their messages are loaded with intelligence about what they need before they’ll get on board. A team I worked with spent two years trying to get a test file of customer names from an operations team to validate a hypothesis. They kept asking without diagnosing the real issue: colleague fear of a new approach that seemed implausible and raised risks to predictable results. It could be overcome only through trust-building and patience. Given anxiety about AI replacing jobs, are you building confidence or eroding motivation among the people who need to execute? Budget-holders fund teams they trust understand their reality. Active champions invest in your success. Passive tolerance means you’re first on the cut list. The MetroCard Lesson In 2006, my team at Citi partnered with Mastercard and the Metropolitan Transit Authority to prove contactless payments worked in subway turnstiles. The technology performed. User feedback was strong. But scaling required three complex organizations to align business models, priorities, cultures, and decision-making. The execution capability took two decades to build. Today’s AI leaders don’t have 20 years. You have until Q1 budget reviews. What to Do This Week Assess where you stand on all three dimensions: 1. Analytic ProofCan you draw a direct line from AI outputs to your budget-holder’s measured outcomes? Not “Our accuracy improved, but “Here’s how accuracy translates to the retention rate you’re accountable for and will show up in your results”? If you can’t make that connection, do that analysis before asking for scale funding. 2. Execution ConfidenceCan you articulate what’s different about scaling versus piloting? Have you identified execution risksstrategic optionality, human judgment integration, what dashboards miss, organizational anxietyand built capability to address them? If you think scale is just “bigger pilot,” you haven’t earned their confidence. 3. Relational TrustHonest assessment: Are you focused on making your budget-holder successfu, or on building impressive technology? Are you treating their concerns as intelligence or obstacles? What’s your impact on their team’s motivation? If they’re not actively championing your project, you’re at risk. The AI projects that survive 2026 won’t necessarily be the most technologically impressive. They’ll be the ones where teams built all three dimensions of budget-holder confidence. Economic pressure doesn’t care about your pilot. It cares whether you solve their problem or yours.
Category:
E-Commerce
An Olympic torch is a small, flaming time capsule. Since the start of the modern Games in 1936, the torch has been passed by thousands of runners in a relay that goes from Olympia, Greece to the host city’s stadium. It’s a feat of engineering, since it needs to be durable enough to resist wind and rain, while keeping the Olympic flame arrive. But torch designers also imbue them with symbolic meaning. 1936 Berlin [Photo: IOC] The Berlin 1936 torch was engraved with the Nazi iconography of an eagle. The Sapporo 1972 torch was a thin, cylindrical combustion tube that was a marvel of Japanese engineering. The Rio 2016 torch featured rippling blue waves celebrating the country’s natural beauty. 1972 Sapporo [Photo: IOC] What kind of torch represents the world we now live in? Carlo Ratti, the Italian architect and designer tasked with creating the torch for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, pondered this question for a long time. Ratti’s work largely explores the future of cities, particularly as global warming looms. For him, the biggest issues of our time are climate change and political polarization. Three years ago, he began the process of making a torch that captured these big ideas. 2026 Milan Cortina [Photo: IOC] His torch is perhaps the most sustainable one we’ve seen. It is made of recycled materials and it is designed to be refilled, so it can be used up to 10 times. It is minimalist to a fault, meant to fade into the background so that the world focuses on the flame within it. The flame, he says, is a powerful symbol of our joint humanity. At this time of deep polarization and divisions, he says, we tried to strip down most of the things from the torch and really let the fire speak. Fire, after all, predates every nation that now passes it along. Its one of the first technologies of mankind, Ratti notessomething ancient, sacred, and shared long before borders existed.” A Lineage of Torch Makers Before sketching a single form, Ratti traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland, where every Olympic torch is preserved at the Olympic Museum. Seeing them in person, rather than online, made the pattern unmistakable. Everybody somehow tried to capture the moment of their time, Ratti says. Each torch, he observed, follows the same basic logic: a burner at the core, wrapped in a designed shell meant to convey meaning. Like car design, he explains, the engine is hidden beneath an eye-catching exterior. And then the second thing is capturing the momentconnecting with local motifs. 1992 Albertville [Photo: IOC] Early torches, beginning with the relay introduced at the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, leaned heavily on classical references. The London 1948 torch resembled a chalice, while the Rome 1960 torch was designed to look like a column. 1994 Lillehammer [Photo: IOC] Toward the end of the 20th century designs were more sculptural and declarative, often mirroring national ambition. The 1992 Albertville torch, designed by Philippe Starck, was in the shape of an elegant curve and was meant to reflect French modernism. The 1994 Lillehammer torch had a distinct Viking aesthetic. 2000 Sydney [Photo: IOC] In the 21st century, the emphasis shifted again to focus on technological innovation. The torch for Sydney 2000 famously combined fire and water. Beijing 2008 engineered its torch to survive the winds of Mount Everest. 2008 Beijing [Photo: IOC] A Radical Shift Against that backdrop, Rattis instinct was to do something quietly radical: design the flame, not the torch. That idea led to an inversion of the usual process. Rather than starting with an expressive exterior, Ratti and his team began with the burner itself, shaping only the minimum structure needed to hold and protect it. The result is the lightest Olympic torch ever producedsmall, slender, and almost an afterthought in the runners hand. We just start from the inside, Ratti says, and we do the minimal shape around the burner. [Photo: IOC] The effect is intentional disappearance. In photographs, the torch nearly dissolves into its surroundings, reflecting sky, snow, or cityscape depending on where its carried. The runner and the flame take precedence; the object recedes. Ratti describes the earliest sketch as a runner with a flame in her or his hand instead of the torch itself. 1964 Tokyo [Photo: IOC] There are a few earlier torch designers who had similar instincts. Ratti points to the torches designed by Japanese industrial designer Sori Yanagi for Tokyo 1964 Summer Olympics and Sapporo 1972 Winter Olympics as key inspirationsboth exercises in restraint. What has changed, he argues, is technology. Today, advances in aerodynamics, materials science, and fuel systems make it possible to minimize the object without compromising the flame. That same logic extends to sustainability. Milano Cortinas torch is not only smaller but engineered to be refilled and made largely from recycled aluminum. For Ratti, this approach is part of his broader philosophy. He argues that any designer working today must consider the environmental impact of their work. This applies to his work as an architect, creating a floating plaza in the Amazon River where people can experience the impact of climate change to turning a former railyard in Italy into a logistics hub featuring a renewable energy plant. The first step in order to adapt is to use less, to use less stuff, he says. [Photo: Andrea Amato/NurPhoto/Getty Images] Looking back at Olympic history is bittersweet. Earlier generations didn’t have to focus as much on sustainability because the climate hadn’t yet been so damaged. But today, it is impossible to design a torch without thinking of its environmental impact. For Ratti, it was important to imbue the torch with a clear message because the passing of the torch is seen by millionspossibly billionsof viewers around the world. By designing a torch that fades into the background, Ratti is making the case that we should pull back on overconsumption and excess, and focus our energies instead how we can work together to keep thriving as a species. Maybe humanity will lose interest in oversized ballrooms and gilded pastiche, he says.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||