IN THE AUTUMN of 2010 le tout Paris of business braced for the sad, if predictable, end of an era. After 173 years and six generations, Hermès, a purveyor of handbags to bankers and neckties to their husbands, was to become part of LVMH. The champagne-to-evening-gowns mastodon, home to Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, among…
THE BEST way to stay innovative, many bosses will tell you, is to hire the best people and let them get on with it. Few take this as literally as Reed Hastings of Netflix. The video-streamer’s employees can take as much holiday as they fancy and put anything on the company’s tab so long as,…
“WHEN DID Walmart grow a conscience?” The question, asked approvingly in a Boston Globe headline last year, would have made Milton Friedman turn in his grave. In a landmark New York Times Magazine essay, whose 50th anniversary fell on September 13th, the Nobel-prizewinning economist sought from the first paragraph to tear to shreds any notion…
A RECENT VIDEO of Elon Musk taking a spin in a new all-electric Volkswagen with Herbert Diess, the German carmaker’s boss, set tongues wagging. VW was forced to deny that a deal with Tesla was in the offing. A deeper bromance between Mr Musk’s firm and his main rival in the market for electric vehicles…
Eminem is often cited as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Yet, the behavior of his fans and other bizarre hangers-on have made the news more than anything musically that the rapper has done. Perhaps it’s time to stop with the “stan” behavior and start focusing on what made Marshall Mathers famous in…
Bernard Looney wants to revive the British oil major’s old slogan and move “Beyond Petroleum”. But not all at onceALL EYES of the oil world were on BP this week for the British energy giant’s annual three-day investor jamboree. Bernard Looney, who became chief executive this year, wants BP at last to make good on…
Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software Comprehensive Digital Twins, Flexible Apps, Open Ecosystems – And Putting Humans First Like the rest of you, we at Siemens Digital Industries Software have spent much of 2020 learning new ways of working (from home), collaborating with colleagues, and supporting customers. A division of Siemens, we are a global…
MicroStockHub/Getty Images The idea that your actions at work contribute to the betterment of society — to help protect the environment, end poverty, or promote social justice — is an inspiring one. Recent research suggests that it can be a powerful motivator too. Indeed, the once-monolithic view of financial incentives as the way to motivate…
akinbostanci/Getty Images With renewed corporate attention to racial equity — and a growing body of evidence showing that diversity programs don’t work, especially for Black employees — many companies are turning to a different approach for diversifying their pipelines to the top: sponsorship. As I described it in a recent article on increasing gender diversity…
HBR Staff/Yaroslav Danylchenko/Cactus Creative Studio/Stocksy Most knowledge workers in 2020 are familiar with mixed reality tools like Zoom, Teams, and Slack that enable them to meet in virtual locations. By merging real and virtual worlds to produce new environments, employees who relied on in-person office interactions as recently as nine months ago now meet on…