Our era has redefined Tip O’Neill’s famous adage “all politics is local” to be “all politics are personal,” and I wonder if it’s what impedes effective debate. We can’t discuss any issue or event without bringing up qualifiers about who’s doing the conversing: So-and-so belongs to one party or another, Read more…
California recently advised people that cell phones could harm their health. What should makers and carriers do about it, if anything? There have been longstanding suspicions that cell phone radiation causes tumors, and regular retorts that those fears have no basis in science (or in any reportable health statistics). My smartphone produces Read more…
Two recent research papers suggest that companies need to address social welfare as a matter of business practice, not just good works or marketing strategy. BCG’s Total Societal Impact details the ways companies are being pushed to take responsibility for issues that affect their stakeholders, but aren’t a direct outcome of their Read more…
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 wasn’t BP’s worst PR disaster; that honor goes to its “beyond petroleum” rebranding, and it’s relevant again now that it has bought nearly half of Europe’s largest solar company. Back in mid-2000, BP debuted a $200 million branding campaign intended to position it Read more…
As the worldwide debate about climate change rages nowhere except in certain American electoral districts, the market is busy making air pollution less profitable. ExxonMobil will be more transparent on “energy demand sensitivities” resulting from increases in temperature, and what it’s doing to prepare for a lower-carbon future, joining almost all of Read more…
The exchange rate for bitcoin is madly swinging from the absurd to the incomprehensible. It’s a classic market bubble that doesn’t do justice to the actual promise of blockchain technology. Its price increase is solely the result of supply/demand, just as it was for skyrocketing values for tulips and South Sea stocks. I’d Read more…
The goal of an activist’s failed attempt to scam the Washington Post into sourcing a bogus story was to make people think any news it published could be “fake.” Instead, it revealed a possible way to assuage that distrust. Imagine if every news story came with a legend that explained how it came to be; think Read more…