The 2024 Fast Company Innovation Festival continued on Tuesday with dozens of sessions and receptions covering a wide range of topics. The event even served as an opportunity to share some news—City of Hope announced a historic $150 million gift from the Stephenson family to support pancreatic cancer research.
But for many festivalgoers, the second day of programming was largely an opportunity to learn and laugh, while connecting with fellow attendees.
Below are some highlights from Tuesday:
‘We’re all fucking winging it’
While Ryan Reynolds has become a household name with memorable roles in both movies and TV series, he also enjoys the opportunity to go off script and deviate from a “concrete, inflexible plan,” when possible.
Likewise, the actor has found that creativity is essential in the business empire he’s building, which spans TV and film production, marketing and advertising, sports, a mobile network, spirits, and more.
Reynolds shared how he recalled feeling “so invested” in a multilayered, humorous ad for Match.com that he was on his “hands and knees” to get it greenlit. (It ultimately was.) But he also cautioned festivalgoers that failure is inevitable. “We’re all fucking winging it,” he quipped.
So long as creativity is part of the mix, however, that can yield success. Reynolds shared the company’s “north star” for Wrexham A.F.C., the Welsh association football club that he co-owns: “Bringing people together in smart, fun, and unexpected ways—and that leads to a lot of interesting opportunities when you’re treading in joy.”
‘Change is actually possible’
During a protest a few years ago, David Hogg said he asked Dolores Huerta, the American labor leader and civil rights activist, the most important thing people can do to create change. “She said, ‘You have to make people believe that change is actually possible,’” Hogg recounted Tuesday during a panel discussion about Gen Z politics.
Hogg, cofounder and president of Leaders We Deserve, rose to prominence after the 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, where he was a student. He helped to launch March for Our Lives, a nonprofit that lobbies for gun control legislation.
While young people may be dismayed by the amount of negativity or apparent lack of progress, Hogg reiterated how important it is to believe change is possible.
“The biggest obstacle to us ending gun violence in the United States of America is not whether or not it’s actually possible,” he said. “The biggest challenge is if we don’t believe it’s possible, it’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
‘Leadership comes in all forms’
Speaking of politics, Vice President Kamala Harris has become the face of a broader reassessment of who can be a leader, according to Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. During a wide-ranging discussion Tuesday, Nelson talked about the intersection of politics and workers’ rights, along with the value of seeking out different types of leaders.
“One of the reasons that we have thought that we don’t have all the leaders that we need in this time is because we have allowed our biases to put us in check about who can actually be a leader,” Nelson said. “We can see that we’re going to be stronger when we look for leaders that come in all kinds of different packages, with all kinds of different experiences and all kinds of different identities.”
The women-over-50 conversation
Qurate Retail Group, the shopping entertainment company that owns QVC and HSN, among other brands, has “planted a flag” in the demographic of women over the age of 50, David Rawlinson II, the company’s president and CEO, shared on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, the company announced its first-ever Quintessential 50—a group of women aged 50-plus that includes Martha Stewart, Patti LaBelle, Christina Applegate, Queen Latifah, and more.
Why go after this demographic? “We think about it as a life phase, and we think it’s a life phase that deserves to be celebrated,” Rawlinson said.
Expect to hear more from these women in the future, predicted actress Busy Philipps, host of “Busy This Week” on the QVC+ streaming network. She noted that women are aging differently now—and credited Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others, for broaching different types of conversations about menopause and women’s health.
“That conversation is only going to increase in the next few years and I really applaud them wholly for taking that stance,” she said.