Business lessons of 2026, from Airbnb, Meta, Linkedin, and more

This year delivered whiplash: geopolitics, tariffs, and technology all shifting at once. And heading into 2026, the disruption isn’t easing up. Bob Safian distills hard-won lessons from his Rapid Response podcast this year on how to lead when the ground won’t stop moving—featuring standout moments from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela, Meta’s Clara Shih, LinkedIn’s Aneesh Raman, Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson, and the NWSL’s Jessica Berman, with practical takeaways for turning uncertainty into advantage. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response , hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Lesson number one: As tech moves fast, we need to move even faster Among the most challenging aspects for leaders is the speed of change and how it requires us to reset our expectations and practices. Here’s the CEO of AI video company Runway, Cris Valenzuela, talking with me about planning in the eye of the AI storm. How far out do you think of your product roadmap? Or is that something you’re reassessing all the time? Cris Valenzuela: Yeah, it’s a weekly thing, to be honest. If you’re planning on a quarterly basis, you’re not going to make it. You’re done. In four weeks, you’re going to get leapfrogged and things will change. We’ve historically taken this open-ended research approach. Instead of defining very specific goals you want to accomplish, you define the boundaries on which you want the team to play and experiment. And then setting the boundaries and the limits is kind of the hard thing because if it’s too open, then there’s nothing really directionally happening. If it’s too broad, then it’s just an objective that’s very clear. If it’s broad enough and has enough of the right incentives, then people are going to stumble on things that are new, that you’ve never thought of before, that have a great value. And those are the things that we care the most. Valenzuela’s approach is so different from traditional leadership, leaning into experimentation rather than specific goals, and reframing plans on a weekly basis. It’s an approach that could make a lot of people uneasy. I talked about this with Clara Shih, who’s led AI business at Salesforce and at Meta. She offered practical insights about navigating what’s hype and what’s imperative. Here’s me and Shih . How do leaders strike the balance between I got to be in this, versus it’s not really showing any measurable impact now yet? Clara Shih: I see this all the time from various leaders that I meet with. I think it’s first being hands-on and really getting in there and understanding the capabilities because I think with that judgment, with that firsthand experience, only then can leaders really know, “Okay, I want to apply...

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