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When Howard Schultz joinedand later acquiredStarbucks in the 1980s, he was deeply inspired by the communal culture of Italian coffee bars. From the beginning, Schultz envisioned Starbucks as more than a transactional stop for coffee. He wanted to build a community-centered space for people to congregate and connect. That vision helped redefine what a coffee shop could be. In recent years, however, that vision has lost momentum. Shifts in how and where people work, rising costs, and intensifying competition have challenged Starbuckss dominance in the coffee shop landscape. In New York City, the company recently lost its position as the citys largest coffee chain to Dunkin, according to a report from the Center for an Urban Future. Starbucks has since closed 42 stores in the cityroughly 12% of its New York locationsas part of a broader $1 billion restructuring plan that shuttered 400 metropolitan stores nationwide. The company that once felt like it occupied every corner is now becoming more selective with its presence. As part of that reset, CEO Brian Niccol, former CEO of Chipotle and Taco Bell, is attempting to reestablish Starbucks as a true third place, distinct from both home and work. The third place is not something we need to reinventits who we are, Schultz said at the Starbucks Leadership Experience 2025. The strategy, branded Back to Starbucks, calls for a shift away from the grab-and-go model that has dominated in recent years and toward a more inviting in-store experience with comfy chairs, couches, and power outlets, according to a CNN report. Starbucks plans to renovate 1,000 U.S. storesabout 10% of its domestic locationsas part of the effort. As Niccol pushes to restore the brands third place ethos, Starbucks is betting that customers still want a place to stay, not just a place to order, in a market increasingly built around speed, convenience, and efficiency. By Leila Sheridan This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
For totally logical reasons, this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy is bucking the trend of a single host city and splitting its sporting events between two main locations, Milan and Cortina. Milan, the second most populous city in Italy, is the urban setting for indoor events like ice hockey and ice skating. Cortina, a ski resort town 250 miles away, provides most of the snowand hill-based venues for quintessential Winter Olympic sports like alpine skiing and the bobsled. But the two separate locations posed a problem for one of the key parts of the Olympics: the opening ceremony. How could there be one grand show when the sporting action was split in half and separated by hundreds of miles? The solution was to put on the show simultaneously in both places. When the opening ceremony is televised around the world on February 6, its pomp, performances, and athlete parades will be broadcast from both Milan and Cortina, with segments from each location woven together into one show. Creative director and executive producer Marco Balich, a veteran of 16 Olympic ceremonies, says the decision to include both locations became a kind of guiding concept for the ceremony itself. Marco Balich (left) with Claudio Coviello and Antonella Albano (right) – Principal Dancers of Teatro la Scala [Photo: International Olympic Committee] Cortina, he says, is “pure mountains,” while Milan is the opposite, “a total industrial, design- and fashion-driven city.” “The narrative that we figured was going to be interesting was the relationship between a location in a city and a mountain, creating a metaphor between man and nature,” he says. [Image: International Olympic Committee] The dichotomy led to the theme of the show, Armonia, or Harmony. “The message that we humbly propose to the world would be to take the metaphor of man and nature and underline that we need to create dialogue between those two elements,” Balich says. Balich and his firm Balich Wonder Studio used this concept to guide the design of everything from the rainbow of costumes dancers will wear to the spiraling stage for the Milan segment of the ceremony. Caterina Botticelli, Costumes Manager [Photo: International Olympic Committee] Balich, who is Italian, also worked on the last Olympics held in Italy, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, and he says that opening ceremony played heavily on Italian history. This year’s version is much more driven by the impact of Italy on the world, and will include references to Italian inventors, Italian design, and Italian fashion. A special segment of the show will honor the late fashion designer Giorgio Armani. Elements of the ceremony will also feature the mountain areas Valtellina and Val di Fiemme, where other outdoor events will take place. All athletes competing in this year’s Olympics will be able to participate in the ceremony. [Photo: International Olympic Committee] Despite the technical challenges of filming the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in multiple locations, Balich says the overall production is intended to be very analog and very human. “The images that I remember of the Olympics are always human driven, whether it was Muhammad Ali lighting the cauldron in Atlanta or the drumming in Beijing 2008,” he says.
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E-Commerce
Forget Donald Trump. A new analysis suggests the U.S. publics sharp lurch into polarization began in 2008, years before his first presidential campaign. Researchers at the University of Cambridges Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008. The research uses a machine-learning approach to move beyond party labels and better understand what actually drives Americans political views. Instead of relying on whether respondents identify as Republican or Democrat, the team grouped people based on patterns in what they believe across a range of issues, from abortion and traditional family values to race, inequality, and health insurance. That distinction matters because in many countries politically opposite parties do not exist, says David Young, a psychology researcher at the University of Cambridge, U.K., and one of the studys authors. You might even want to study countries where there are no parties, like Saudi Arabia, he says. The paper challenges the idea that polarization is solely a Trump-era phenomenon. It points to 2008 as the major turning point, a year that also included the financial crisis, Barack Obamas election, and the widespread adoption of the iPhone-era internet. Our ability to nail down when it starts is slightly divided by the fact that we only have data points every four years, Young says. Still, we know that this increase starts from our 2008 data point, he adds. Thats our best guess at the starting point. The researchers argue that the widening gap is driven less by the right drifting further right and more by the left moving rapidly in a progressive direction. Based on the issues surveyed, the left cluster became 31.5% more socially liberal by 2024 compared with 1988, while the right cluster shifted only 2.8% more conservative. Its not necessarily that left-wingers and right-wingers have become more extreme, Young says. Its more that theyve become more kind of consolidated.
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E-Commerce
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