Mariah Carey’s seasonal ubiquity illustrates the new economics of musicTHE BATTLE to be top of the charts on Christmas Day has been won in recent years by the likes of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande. But lately these singers have faced competition from an unexpected source: the 20th century. Despite the best efforts…
LONG BEFORE the invention of stakeholder capitalism, a core principle—that the interests of customers, employees and society should be as high or higher than those of shareholders—was carved into the plaster at Johnson & Johnson’s head office in New Brunswick, NJ. “Our Credo” as J&J calls its mission statement, dates back to 1943, when it…
A group of 65 people have each achieved inventions worth $1bnIT IS TESTAMENT to human inventiveness that 50m patents are estimated to have been granted globally. But in aggregate much of the collection resembles an intellectual junkyard. Included are plausible ideas that no firm ever wanted to pay for, plausible ideas that fell short, and…
AFTER SEVERAL false starts, office workers are returning to their desks—for good this time, employers hope. As covid-19 restrictions are scaled back, people must again get used to crowds. Financial giants such Wells Fargo have joined Wall Street titans such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley in urging people back to the office. The great…
It will take time to readjust to the presence of real-life colleaguesTWO YEARS ago this month the era of remote working abruptly began. As the first wave of covid-19 cases prompted lockdowns in the West, white-collar workers had to get used to new ways of conducting themselves. Unmuting was not yet a reflex movement, Zoom…
DEAR TOP TABLE, We have discussed many of the risks that threaten us in the coming year: the pandemic, our supply-chain troubles and staff retention. But I want to raise a more personal concern: the possibility that I will have to make a public apology. Everywhere I looked over the past 12 months, executives were…
The next wave of digital tech, or “smart tech,” has the potential and power to help us rehumanize work. Rather than doing the same work faster and with fewer people, smart tech creates an opportunity to redesign jobs and reengineer workflows to enable people to focus on the parts of work that humans are particularly…
Women face specific challenges around mental health in the workplace. They are more prone to certain diagnoses; they are twice as likely as men to experience depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD, and much more likely to battle eating disorders. Pay inequity, caregiving responsibilities, and gender-based violence are among the contributing risk factors to common mental…
The ride-hailing app’s misadventure on the New York Stock Exchange was short-livedFEW BLOCKBUSTER public share sales have been as tortured as Didi Global’s. Within four days of raising $4.4bn in New York in June the Chinese ride-hailing group was hit with an investigation by the authorities in its home market and its mobile application was…
His successor will have his hands full“THE COMPANY is ready to move on from its founders,” explained Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, a distributor of short messages, as he announced on November 29th that he would step down and hand the reins to the firm’s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal. “About time,” was the…