The reality show’s popularity in India may reflect a growing fondness for free enterpriseSPEAK TO THE bankers and industrialists at the top of India’s economic pyramid and you hear a common refrain. All Indians, they contend, are at heart socialists—themselves included. The popularity of the Indian version of “Shark Tank”, a TV celebration of capitalism…
Video-conferencing and the selfie culture are behind the crazeCOSMETIC PROCEDURES used to be the preserve of middle-aged women and often involved surgery. Today they are increasingly sought by girls who want the photoshopped faces of their favourite social-media influencer, and by a growing number of men wishing for fewer wrinkles, fuller lips and sharper jawlines.…
SHARP ATTIRE and a purposeful stride. The left-hand turn on the plane away from the cheap seats. Skipping the in-flight film to refine a presentation. Over the past two pandemic years these obvious giveaways of the globetrotting executive became a rare sight. According to the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), a trade body, worldwide spending…
With more and more people quitting, leaders need to find new ways to boost retention. One under-recognized way to keep employees on board is to give them the flexibility and resources they need to pursue their out-of-work passions. Drawing on their research, the authors offer practical strategies for creating “passion opportunities” so that you can attract…
Digitisation of everything, cloud computing and hybrid working is fuelling a boom in Indian IT consultingTWO DECADES ago India’s information-technology (IT) firms were the stars of the rising country’s corporate firmament. The industry’s three giants, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, became household names at home and familiar to chief executives of big businesses…
“SNATCH GROCERIES first, then get a covid test” has quickly become an anthem for the lockdown that started suddenly in Shanghai in the early hours of March 28th. Local hip-hop artists CATI2, P.J. and Keyso describe scenes of panic buying—qiang cai, or snatching groceries—and the threat of being locked out of one’s home amid a…
The war in Ukraine is pushing up costs just as shoppers become fed up with inflationTHE MARKET for packaged foods is a competitive one, where price rises by one firm risk pushing shoppers into the arms of rivals. Companies in the industry deal with soaring costs by hedging against spikes in commodity markets using forward…
“WHEN YOU gaze into TikTok, TikTok gazes into you,” wrote Eugene Wei, a tech blogger, in 2020, explaining the almost clairvoyant nature of TikTok. What the algorithm sees as it gazes into your columnist, a neophyte user, is anyone’s guess: a random feed delivers tips on how to design a ball gown, someone barking at…
The written word will flourish in the post-pandemic workplaceTHE PANDEMIC has given a big shove to all forms of digital communication. Video-conferencing platforms have become verbs. Venture capitalists make their bets after watching virtual pitches. Products like Loom and mmhmm help workers send pre-recorded video messages to their colleagues. More than a third of Slack…
March 29, 2022 As the acclaimed documentarian releases a new two-part PBS series about Ben Franklin, he describes how the U.S. founding father transformed himself from teen runaway to newspaperman, then inventor, then political elder. He explains what current leaders can learn from how Franklin approached business, scientific discovery, and his fellow nation-builders. Ken Burns,…