Rolls-Royce’s new CEO told his employees that the company is a “burning platform” and that they should be prepared for an aggressive efficiency and optimization program (i.e. job cuts). Why? “Every investment we make, we destroy value,” he explained, according to news reports of his recent global broadcast to staff. Read more…
Millions of homes possess technology that can involve users as co-creators and participants in deeply nuanced immersive experiences, and all we get are games that let us shoot things or play sports. The gaming world is diverse. Games can be played on consoles, smartphones, and online. People can play them Read more…
The world’s ruling elite are going to gather in Davos in a few days “to address the state of the world and discuss priorities for the year ahead.” It’s deja-vu all over again, to quote noted social theorist Yogi Berra. Fifty heads of state. Fifty-six finance ministers. Nineteen heads of central Read more…
There’s been much reported on the aggressive efforts Big Oil made at the recent COP27 to obfuscate the issue of climate change and delay any action on it. Today’s “Big Read” in the Financial Times builds on this PR strategy, and the story borders on journalistic malfeasance. Headlined “Saudi Arabia’s Read more…
The fact that technology is changing the jobs landscape is nothing new, and government and social norms have learned to moderate the sharpest edges of such changes in the past…as well as adapt to them. It’s different this time. The scope of the change is far more massive and, by design Read more…
I was struck by Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Bankman-Fried’s recent mea culpas for driving their respective companies into the ground, like it was sincere or that it mattered. Zuckerberg’s apology came as he took away salaries and benefits for 11,000 people, after having wasted $15 billion on a bad business Read more…
My name is Jonathan and I’m an Amazonaholic. It’s taken a while for me to admit my addiction because it was years in the making. As a book lover, the premise that I could get pretty much any title in the known universe delivered to my door was my gateway Read more…
The world’s leading ad groups are forecasting increased spending on consumer branding as economies slow and costs go up. They couldn’t be more wrong. The claims, articulated in a recent Financial Times story, all rely on the mistaken belief that brands have “value” in excess of their functional qualities and Read more…
Intel plans to fire thousands of employees later this month around the same time it announces likely disappointing 3Q22 earnings. Its stock is worth less than half of what it was at the start of the year. You’d think they were in the buggy whip business or something. The Conventional Wisdom Most explanations for Intel’s Read more…
“We’ve heard the rumors that accounting is nerdy and boring,” says an unnamed trade group on its website, as reported in the Financial Times. Yup, it sure looks that way. The numbers don’t lie The Big Four firms couldn’t run away faster from accounting, pretending instead to be generic management Read more…