Overall it's a very positive thing as it enables basic mindfulness teachings of being in the present and non -distracted, body awareness and watching the arising and passing of thoughts to reach a wider audience and is a path for the Buddha's teachings to bring benefit in a secular context.
You say it's a mixed bag...well, I've stumbled upon different data. But I'm a "glass is half empty" kind of guy.
Secular contecst
is a problem. Such Mindfulness is like a chopped off limb, often without crucial component of the Buddhistic ethics. Like distrust toward senses...toward pleasure. Toward any form of becoming. Those are not the truths you can use during corpo briefings, when motivating your team. So I doubt Mc Mindfulness even touchess it.
Of course there is a question, how to preach Dhamma in the West, without enough monasteries and supporting lay people, etc. But I doubt making it a succesfull bussines branch is a best idea. I don't like tons of people selling some twisted echoes of Dhamma, meditation apps and such. It encourages greed and it's often driven by greed. Buddha really insisted, that Dhamma is not a product and a source of income.
Here goes my personal example. My zen teacher's teacher. He got greedy and started to sell his luxury meditation workshops, in various versions, including special offer for millionaires. He made this neo Dharma sound pretty secular, too. And as he lacked basic sila, he got involved into sex scandals, of course. It killed my sangha.
And then goes economic aspect of Mc Mindfulnes. People often do those butchered practices as a part of some corporation policy, instead of asking for a rise, ot better working conditions. Some even start to hate it. Or they buy pointless apps - which cost - instead of learning how to give up uselesss, material things, be more free. Or they join intense Goenka retreats without establishing Right View, and get nuts.
I must add, that I'm not a big fan of a vipassana brand per se. I believe it's a modern reinterpretation of Dhamma, but it helps many people - including me at some point
- so okay. But secular mindfulness just sucks. It's like a new version of a difficult, classical novel, rewritten by censors, with simple vocabulary and without any disturbing images and thoughts.
Why not read the original instead? Why not look for a real Dhamma? I don't percieve a twisted, fragmentated, greed driven shadow of Dhamma being present everywhere, as a good thing. Bad money pushes away the good money.
Plus, there is lot of data about secular mindfulness actually hurting people...including it's teachers. Broken Bones showed some interesting link about that recently. They sell mindfulness as an universal medicine, but it's not. I found this lady, Willoughby Britton, medical expert on the subject. According to her, noticing too much sensations may overstimulate parts of your brain and make it anxious.
https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/bri ... 0thing.pdf
Actually, it would be interesting to know, if the modern monastics are also suffering becouse of the vipassana overdose. Perhaps it could be an interesting new topic.