Building the Future:
How Instrument Turns Ideas into Impact
What earned us a spot on Fast Company’s 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators list.
WRITTEN BY LAUREL BURTON, CEO OF INSTRUMENT
AI, automation, and rapid technological shifts are reshaping industries and redefining the future of work. For many organizations, the instinct is to chase every new shiny tool, trend, or headline. We see it differently at Instrument. True innovation isn’t about adoption; it’s about choosing, applying, and scaling what drives real impact. We believe innovation happens when the right people come together, break down barriers, and build with intention.
That mindset is why Instrument has been named to Fast Company’s 2025 Best Workplaces for Innovators: Flexible Workplace list, alongside companies like Mattel, Johnson & Johnson, SoundCloud, and SharkNinja. But this recognition is not about one initiative—it reflects a way of working we’ve cultivated for 20 years.
Innovation isn’t a department. It’s embedded in our DNA.
Across every team, we integrate technical leadership, build custom AI tools tailored to client challenges, and create personalized learning pathways that empower employees to experiment, adapt, and stay ahead of the curve. Freed from rigid structures and equipped with the right tools, our teams don’t just keep pace with change—they drive it.
Our Build Week brings this culture to life. Employees from across the country dedicate their skills to supporting local BIPOC-owned businesses through rapid sprints, delivering brand platforms, websites, campaign strategies, and marketing activations at record speed. Founders gain transformative solutions, and our teams experience firsthand the power of curiosity, creativity, and collaboration in action.
Innovation at Instrument is as much about culture as technology.
Personalized learning, cross-functional collaboration, and the freedom to experiment create an environment where employees feel empowered to take risks, explore new ideas, and challenge assumptions.
This recognition from Fast Company validates this approach, but more importantly, it challenges us, and every company on this list, to keep pushing forward.
Innovation isn’t a box to check. It’s the ripple effect of empowered teams, fearless creativity, and ideas that take shape in the real world.
At Instrument, we grow that ripple every day, turning curiosity into action, technology into impact, and culture into lasting change.
