Small businesses are increasingly prioritizing resilience over rapid growth because of rising costs and selective lending. Over half of small businesses require $50,000 to $500,000 in initial capital, leaving little margin for error. Despite these challenges, 74% of small business owners anticipate revenue growth in 2026, although only 60% plan to expand operations.

Businesses are finding that generative AI, exemplified by OpenAI's ChatGPT, falls short of miraculous expectations as companies, including Nvidia and Alphabet, invest heavily in it. Many companies are dissatisfied with AI's performance, with 42% having abandoned most of their AI initiatives by mid-2025, up from 17% the previous year. Businesses are advised to reassess AI investments, focusing on practical solutions that address real operational issues rather than hoping for transformative miracles.

Marketers must balance customer insights, organizational capability and company culture to drive business performance, writes Johnny Corbett, founder of WhichWayUp. Corbett introduces "The Sweetspot," a framework that views marketing as a discipline instead of a department, emphasizing the need for marketers to influence business strategy and collaborate across functions.

LinkedIn has shared strategies for maximizing visibility in AI-generated search results, emphasizing the importance of structured content, clear HTML and credible authorship. As SEO evolves, with 60% of Google searches ending without a click, LinkedIn's approach focuses on LLM referral traffic and AI visibility tools. This shift away from traditional SEO underscores the need for small businesses to build credibility and maintain a presence across multiple platforms to enhance discovery by AI tools.

While trainings and workshops provide language and knowledge to your staff, it may also result in a "knowing-doing" accountability gap that must be filled by applying these skills in real-life situations with ongoing coaching and measurement, writes consultant and speaker Marlene Chism. Be aware of four main issues, including how culture may be undermining competence, how accountability is measured and if managers are confusing conflict management with crisis intervention, Chism warns.

The US services sector showed strong growth in January, with the Institute for Supply Management's index remaining at 53.8 for the second consecutive month. This marks the strongest back-to-back expansion since October 2024, highlighting increased business activity in the nation's largest economic sector.

Rev. Dr. Robert Turner offers four steps to rediscovering joy at work, emphasizing the internal nature of joy compared with external happiness. The steps include finding purpose, fostering a joy-centric organizational culture, leveraging coaching and practicing conscious recognition. Turner illustrates these points through the story of Cyrus, a software engineer who reignites his passion for work by mentoring, continuous learning and aligning with his core values.

Lego released a kit in 2021 to allow fans to build a typewriter, but it wasn't functional, so a LEGO builder known as Koenkun Bricks has constructed a working typewriter using rare and traditional Lego pieces -- including letter tiles -- along with elastic bands. After much trial and error, he was able to type messages on a spinning board. He even used his creation to type a love note to LEGO itself, proving bricks can be romantic too.