A farewell to Fast Company's 10th annual Innovation Festival

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A farewell to Fast Company's 10th annual Innovation Festival

By Anna-Louise Jackson

All good things must come to an end, and after four days of programming, the 2024 Fast Company Innovation Festival concluded on Thursday with a lively closing party.

This year’s festival served as a celebration of sustained innovation and featured the magazine’s selection of the 10 most innovative people of the last decade. These leaders and doers, who are shaping our future, left festival goers with many provocative ideas to ponder regarding pressing issues that range from sustainability to AI to the upcoming U.S. presidential election. While many speakers gave audience members reason to laugh, some put reporters on a deadline to file the news they announced while on stage.

A week of announcements, experiences and topical conversations

At the company's panel on Tuesday, City of Hope announced it had received a $150 million gift from the inaugural Stephenson prize for innovation in pancreatic cancer research.

Mental health at work took the stage with Rare Beauty, Ikea and Pie, as did music and creative control with Mastercard OnesToWatch and Timbaland with Sound Exchange.

Attendees were also able to discover new experiences exclusive to Fast Company Innovation Festival.

The evenings finished with post-panel parties that celebrated honorees for Fast Company programs such as Best Workplaces for Innovators and Innovation by Design. Intimate Taste of Innovation dinners allowed innovators to enjoy each others' company, sample some of the city's best restaurants, and hear from the restaurateurs and chefs who bring the spaces and food to life.

Fast Tracks also took attendees out of the main venues and across New York City, starting Monday morning with a Brompton Bikes bike ride and continuing throughout the week with conversations with Adidas, Tony's Chocolonely, and Robin Hood—among so many others.

The Main Stage and 10 Most Innovative People of the Last 10 Years

Ryan Reynolds opened the Main Stage programming on Tuesday, kicking off 11 thought-provoking discussions with visionary leaders of our time—mainly consisting of Fast Company's 10 Most Innovative People of the Last 10 Years, who were announced ahead of Festival and graced 10 different cover versions of our September magazine issue.

Reynolds has become a household name with memorable roles in both film and TV series, while also enjoying the opportunity to go off script and deviate from a “concrete, inflexible plan,” when possible.

David Hogg , cofounder and president of Leaders We Deserve sat down with cofounder Kevin Lata and MSNBC 's Stephanie Ruhle for a panel discussion about Gen Z in politics.?

Sara Nelson , president of the Association of Flight Attendants, talked about the intersection of politics and workers’ rights, along with the value of seeking out different types of leaders.

On Wednesday, Lin-Manuel Miranda announced on stage that Grammy-winning songstress Lauryn Hill will headline Miranda’s new Warriors concept album that releases next month.

Meanwhile, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos offered a sneak peak at some streaming figures that were then released yesterday: Viewers spent a whopping 94 billion hours watching Netflix in the first six months of the year. “That’s a lot of time.”?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Satya Nadella , CEO of Microsoft, is very keen on artificial intelligence. In fact, he told festivalgoers that a collaborative AI tool—Copilot Pages , a new feature released by Microsoft earlier this week—has already become a part of his daily habit.

While Nobel Laureate and biochemist Jennifer Doudna has been behind CRISPR, the groundbreaking gene-editing technology, her creativity really flows without technology.

World-renowned chef José Andrés , who founded global food nonprofit World Central Kitchen, says the mangled handling of immigration is a byproduct of a blue-red divide that is not actually serving the needs of Americans or the economy.

Despite the success she enjoyed with her HBO series Insecure, actor Issa Rae has endured several canceled series and told the festival’s audience that the current landscape in Hollywood is very challenging. “There isn’t a lot of work,” she said Thursday. “It is hard, and it is a big, big waiting game just generally of figuring out what’s going to happen to the industry.”

Pat McGrath talked about creating her iconic beauty company, Pat McGrath Labs, and how she balances beauty as a passion and business.

Lina Khan has faced her fair share of criticism since she became the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but she has been able to achieve seemingly the impossible: bipartisan support to go after concentrated power and monopolies.

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