After three years of corporate tug-of-war, the return-to-office battle has reached something like a resolution. But it's not the resolution that either side wanted. The fully-remote evangelists predicted that offices would become obsolete, that companies would embrace distributed work permanently, and that the old model of commuting to a cubicle five days a week would be relegated to history. The fully-in-office traditionalists predicted that the remote work experiment would

While the tech press fixates on AI unicorns and the latest mega-merger, something remarkable is happening at the other end of the business spectrum. Small businesses are forming at the highest rates in decades. New business applications in the United States have been running well above pre-pandemic levels for four years straight. And this isn't just a statistical blip driven by gig economy registrations. A significant portion of these new businesses are employer firms, the ki

After one of the longest IPO droughts in recent memory, the market for public offerings is showing real signs of life. Several high-profile companies have filed or are expected to file in the coming months. Institutional investors are expressing appetite for new listings. And the performance of recent IPOs, while mixed, has been strong enough to encourage others to follow. But if you're a private company thinking about going public, the rules have changed. The investors on th

After two years of relative quiet, the mergers and acquisitions market is coming back to life. Deal volume is climbing. Valuations, while still more rational than the peak of 2021, are firming up. Private equity firms are sitting on mountains of uninvested capital. And the strategic logic driving acquisitions has shifted in ways that matter for anyone paying attention to the business landscape. The 2021 M&A boom was driven largely by cheap money. Interest rates were near zero