The death of its patriarch leaves South Korea’s biggest conglomerate with familiar challengesIN THE SPRING of 1995 word got to Lee Kun-hee that a batch of Samsung’s brand-new mobile phones, which it had doled out as new-year gifts, did not work. Incensed, the group’s chairman ordered employees at the factory that had made the offending…
Smaller gatherings raise demand for smaller birdsIN BARNS OR pens, or already in freezers, 40m American turkeys await their fate. More than half of the whole turkeys sold in America each year are eaten over Thanksgiving, which this year falls on November 26th. Most of the rest are polished off the following month, at Christmas.…
A Chinese smartphone-maker shrugs off feelings of inferiorityLEI JUN, THE founder and boss of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone-maker, has long had something of an inferiority complex. For a decade Xiaomi has played second fiddle to Huawei, a rival Chinese producer of handsets. In a recent live-streamed address watched more than 30m times, Mr Lei admitted…
EVEN A HALF-EATEN apple shoved in Dara Khosrowshahi’s face by his young son during a Zoom interview does not ruffle Uber’s boss. “Not now, sweetheart,” was his calm response. Mr Khosrowshahi needs all the unflappability he can muster. Besides picking their president, on November 3rd Californians will vote on a ballot initiative, Proposition 22, that…
“TO SOME EXTENT, we try to scare off investors,” admits Mateo Jaramillo, co-founder of Form Energy. The startup is trying to solve one of renewables’ knottiest problems. Solar and wind power are intermittent, so green utility firms must store excess energy and release it when no sun shines or breeze blows. Large lithium-ion batteries can…
THERE IS NOTHING quite like a captive audience. When Sony, a Japanese electronics giant, reported its latest set of quarterly results on October 28th, the star performer was the firm’s video-gaming division, which makes the PlayStation line of consoles. Had it been a normal year, revenues would probably have been down, because Sony’s current model—the…
HERE IS A test. Assign a score of 1 to 5, where 1 is “strongly agree” and 5 is “strongly disagree”, to the following statement: “I really care about my work.” If you have answered that kind of question before, you have probably applied for a job at a large company. Psychometric tests, as they…
ON THE HUSTINGS, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden promised to revive America’s economy from its pandemic-induced funk. Doing so will require a turnaround for corporate America, which has suffered a savage downturn. When the occupant of the White House starts his four year term in January, in what state will American business be?Some recent…
IN THE 1990S, when a youthful Son Masayoshi, a Japanese entrepreneur, was pursuing acquisitions in his home country, he sought advice from a banker eight years his junior called Mikitani Hiroshi. They shared a lot in common: both had studied in America (Mr Son at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr Mikitani at Harvard Business…
Joe Biden has taken a small but critical lead over Donald Trump in the 2020 election.Trump’s waning support from Republicans is showing in the polls.When George W. Bush lost to Barack Obama in 2008, he showed us something that Donald Trump lacks: basic human decency and respect for democracy.He infringed upon our privacy rights. He…