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 S28S55First Mover or Fast Follower?   Transformational developments are swirling around the banking industry — as they are in nearly every industry. Companies like Citigroup are reimagining bank branches. Startups like Simple are suggesting that it’s time to get rid of branches altogether. Square, Swiff, Silver, and PayPal want to bring payments processing to smaller merchants. Mobile phone companies are getting into financial services. Microlending has exploded. Companies like Facebook and Tencent make hundreds of millions through microtransactions. The mobile wallet is coming, with Apple and Google lurking in the background.
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S51What You're Getting Wrong About Customer Journeys  Companies often believe they should make their customers’ experiences as effortless and predictable as possible. But the authors’ research shows that this approach is overly simplistic—and can even backfire. While in some instances (say, watching movies on Netflix) customers want their journeys to be easy and familiar, in others (working out on a Peloton bike or playing World of Warcraft) they want to be challenged or surprised.
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S58Aereo and the Strange Case of Broadcasters Who Don't Want to Be Broadcast The Supreme Court’s big Aereo decision today came down to whether the company’s internet TV service more closely resembled a cable company or “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card” (the quote is from Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion). A majority of six justices decided it was more like the former, which seems pretty reasonable. But that led them to declare that Aereo’s business of giving customers access to free, over-the-air television programming via the internet amounted to a copyright violation, which seems a little crazy.
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S27Bitcoin: four reasons why the price should surge in 2024  The year 2023 will be remembered as turbulent for cryptocurrencies, with numerous important developments that ultimately helped to “clean up” the space to potentially make it more attractive to mainstream investors. Notably there was the conviction of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried for fraud. Top exchange Binance also reached a US$4 billion settlement (£3.1 billion) with the US treasury department over money-laundering charges, which saw CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao agreeing to step down and pay a US$50 million fine.
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S44What Entrepreneurs Get Wrong Salesmanship is central to a start-up’s success, but many entrepreneurs ignore this simple fact. They may believe that their idea will sell itself or that there’s no point visiting a prospective customer without a finished product in hand. Those who search for sales advice find mostly tools and techniques for established companies.
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S31Taxes on e-cigarettes: South Africa must strike a balance between economic arguments and health concerns  The 21st century has seen a massive expansion in the ways that people can consume tobacco and nicotine. Innovative new products include electronic nicotine delivery systems (“ENDS” or e-cigarettes) and heat-not-burn (HnB) products. Combustible tobacco products like cigarettes and loose tobacco are generally taxed at similar rates since the harmful behaviour tied to these products – inhaling tobacco toxins released by burning – is the same. But e-cigarettes don’t contain tobacco and HnB devices do not burn tobacco. Nevertheless, they contain nicotine, which is addictive.
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S48A Small Business Is Not a Little Big Business A traditional assumption among managers has been that small businesses should use essentially the same management principles as big businesses, only on a smaller scale. Underlying that assumption has been the notion that small companies are much like big companies, except that small businesses have lower sales, smaller assets, and fewer employees.
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S41How to Get Your Side Hustle Off the Ground  People pursue side hustles for all kinds of reasons: they want to earn extra money, they’re interested in starting a business, or they’re attracted to the flexibility of being their own boss. But these ventures often take capital to get off the ground. How can you get yours up and running? Here are five approaches:
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S30Senegal's small scale gold miners still use poisonous mercury: how to reduce the harm  These warnings are shown at thousands of lakes and rivers globally, as well as on numerous fish products.But eating mercury-laden fish is not the only source of mercury exposure. Even more dangerous is the inhalation of mercury vapours, which are released as mercury is used in the extraction of another trace element – gold. Miners inhaling mercury vapour can experience the same toxic effects as people eating mercury-laden food: limb tremors, blurred vision, loss of limb functionality, and even death. Globally, between 10 million and 19 million people work in artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
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S62S61S63S53How Sephora Reorganized to Become a More Digital Brand  Sephora, the cosmetics retailer, has been widely recognized as a leader in integrating its digital marketing efforts into its overall strategy. As one sign of that, Sephora has a single executive who serves as both chief marketing officer and chief digital officer. Julie Bornstein told HBR how she’s leading Sephora’s efforts online and offline. Edited excerpts:
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S39How EMDR therapy helped me heal from the trauma of a carjack | Aeon Essays  is a freelance journalist with a background in news production. She is based in New Orleans, Louisiana.I wore leggings that Tuesday. I never wore leggings to work, but that winter three years ago the New Orleans heat was in hibernation. Ice climbed up my windows, and my sweater almost reached my knees. I whispered: ‘Be good, I love you,’ to the puppy sound asleep in his crate and the groggy cat still snuggled in bed before I stepped out into the unseasonably cold January air. A neighbour’s motion-sensor light blinked on to help me navigate the blackness. It was 12:50am; my shift at the news station started in 10 minutes. My fingers became numb quickly, making it difficult to turn the key in the lock. I speed-walked to my car, my beautiful, white Hyundai Kona, my college graduation gift from my parents. I twisted the heat all the way up, slapped the seat-heater button, and turned my Spotify to Maggie Rogers’s new album. With my hands pulled into my North Face sleeves, I grabbed the wheel.
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S46S49S60S15During Pregnancy, the Placenta Hacks the Immune System to Protect the Fetus  When you were a child, it seemed like an ingenious plan: Splash hot water on your face and stagger into the kitchen, letting out a moan that could make angels cry. One touch of your flushed forehead would convince your parents to diagnose a fever and keep you home from school.No matter how elaborately planned and performed, these theatrics probably weren’t as persuasive as you had hoped. But new research, published in Cell Host & Microbe, suggests that long before birth, a similar tactic helps developing humans and other mammals put on a more convincing show.
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S26Khowsey: a festive South Asian spaghetti curry  Khowsey is a beloved spaghetti curry in Karachi, Pakistan, with different dialects spelling and pronouncing it as khao suey, khoi soi, khowsa, khawsa and many other ways. It is championed most fervently by the Memon community, a Muslim ethnic group known for their affinity for trade and entrepreneurial prowess in the city. However, historically, it isn't a Pakistani dish at all.Memon businessmen and traders who had established themselves in British-occupied Burma (now Myanmar) in the 19th Century were forced to return to the subcontinent after the military junta regime in the 1960s. When they returned to Pakistan and India, they brought a version of flavourful Burmese Ohn-No Kyaukse, noodles with chicken in a coconut milk-based broth (often thickened with chickpea flour). When the Memon traders settled in Karachi, they made the dish their own by heaping on the spice and zest. They swapped out egg noodles for easily accessible spaghetti, and a served rich curry made with yoghurt and gram (chickpea) flour on the side to drown the noodles, before adding a decadent, fall-apart meat gravy on top.
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S54How P&G and American Express Are Approaching AI  There is a tendency with any new technology to believe that it requires new management approaches, new organizational structures, and entirely new personnel. That impression is widespread with cognitive technologies — which comprises a range of approaches in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and deep learning. Some have argued for the creation of “chief cognitive officer” roles, and certainly many firms are rushing to hire experts with deep learning expertise. “New and different” is the ethos of the day.
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S56Sony: Winning the DVD Battle But Losing the Innovation War? It’s often said that generals “fight the last war.” They use tactics that worked in the last war and struggle when conditions change in ways that render those tactics ineffective. For example, after years of bloody trench warfare in World War I, France built heavy fortifications along its borders (the “Maginot Line”) to prevent a full-on assault. The German’s innovative “blitzkrieg” model obviated France’s brute force.
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S40For ages, solo sex was hardly taboo. What led to its centuries-long dry spell? | Aeon Videos  For the vast majority of humans throughout history, masturbation has been a natural norm rather than a taboo. The brief animation ‘Masturbation: A Short History of a Great Taboo’ (2022) traces much of the blame for ‘the offensive against solo sex’ across the past several centuries back to a curious pamphlet titled Onania: Or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (c1712), which, written by a now-unknown author, attributed both moral injury and physical malady to self-pleasure. The short is part of the documentary series Magical Caresses, dedicated to ‘solo sexuality’, by the Canadian filmmaker Lori Malépart-Traversy, who previously employed her charming animation style to explore sexuality with Le Clitoris (2016).
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S59"It Will Need to Be the Most Amazing Thing Humankind Has Ever Done"  Climate change is a pressing concern for Bill Gates, who has just published a new book on the subject. He spoke with HBR’s editor in chief about the need to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050—and the difficulty of that undertaking. It will require new government policies, changes in corporate and individual behavior, and, above all, more R&D funding and innovation to create cleaner technologies and green products. Gates is optimistic that we can succeed but clear-eyed about what lies ahead if we don’t: rising temperatures, the disappearance of ecosystems, disastrous crop failures, economic pain, and massive loss of life.
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S52Customers as Innovators: A New Way to Create Value How has GE Plastics fueled much of its growth, generated one-third of its new customer leads, and cut customer-service calls in half? It enables its customers to improve products—by accessing GE’s engineering knowledge and simulation software through its Web-based product-development “tool kits.”
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S32The Biggest Election Year in History  Democracy, according to many observers, is now in the hands of a small band of voters in a half-dozen swing states, whose feelings about Donald Trump will determine whether it endures or falls. From that perspective, all the other voting across the country this year, beginning with the Iowa caucuses, next week, is merely a gruelling prelude to the tense wait, on November 5th, for results from Maricopa County and the Philadelphia suburbs. Much does depend on those voters. But democracy’s struggles will play out on a far vaster field. Thanks to an alignment of calendars, 2024 will set a record for the greatest number of people living in countries that are holding nationwide elections: more than four billion, or just over half of humanity. Even more depends on them.This year is about voting, in all its hazardous glory. There are different ways of counting, but The Economist has tallied seventy-six countries where the whole eligible population has the chance to vote, even if, as in Brazil, it’s only for local offices. (That election, in October, should serve as a midterm assessment of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.) The countries involved—from Algeria to Iceland, Indonesia, and Venezuela—are startlingly varied, including in their commitment to actual democracy. The Economist rated forty-three of the elections as free and fair, with flaws even in the freest, ours among them. One of The Economist’s tests is whether an election has the capacity to bring about real change, in terms of policy and who is in power. Put another way, the stability of democracies depends on the capacity of elections to be destabilizing. An election that doesn’t involve some risk, to someone, is hardly any good.
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S68S64S36Can Home Electronics Harm Your Pet? A Veterinarian Reveals What To Turn Off  Sirens, thunder, vacuum cleaners, and fireworks can wreak havoc on your pet. Subtler sounds — ones that don’t even register to human ears — may also affect them. But how can you know what your pets can hear, especially if you can’t hear it yourself? Understanding your pet’s hearing capabilities and the quiet cacophony of your home could help identify any nuisances.If something bothers our pet, it often shows up in their behavior. Katherine Houpt, professor emeritus of behavioral medicine at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, recounts to Inverse one instance she remembers about one couple whose dog “suddenly began to pace.” Worried, “they took it to the emergency room where they had a huge bill. But they noticed that as soon as they left the house, the dog was fine.”
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S69The sound maps that predict poachers' movements  In the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest lies the world-renowned Iguazu Falls. On one side of the towering cascades is the Iguazú National Park of Argentina, on the other is the Iguaçu National Park of Brazil. Greened by over 2,000 plant species, the landscape is home to an array of creatures, including the charismatic jaguar. And to the million-plus tourists who visit each year, the region may appear to be part of a vast expanse of thriving biodiversity.But for those like Yara Barros, who know it well, Iguazú's parks are in fact "an island of life in the midst of deforestation". Barros is a biologist and coordinator of Onças do Iguaçu, a Brazilian jaguar conservation project. She explains that in the Atlantic Forest's entire 140,000 sq km (54,054 sq miles), there are only 300 jaguars. As many as one-third now live inside the narrow 2,400 sq km (927 sq miles) corridor protected by the parks.
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S20The Anticlimactic End of Israel's Democracy Crisis  The Netanyahu government’s signature legislation went out with a whimper. But the forces behind it have bigger plans.On Monday, Israel’s Supreme Court issued arguably the most momentous ruling in its history: A slim one-vote majority of the justices struck down an attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb their power. And yet, the country largely shrugged. After months of mass protest and talk of constitutional crisis, an event that was supposed to be seismic turned out to be a sideshow. External war had eclipsed internal war.
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S16The Best Smart Shades, Blinds, and Curtains  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDSmart shades and automatic curtains used to be luxury gadgets found only in high-end hotels or the homes of the rich and famous. Nowadays, they are more affordable and accessible than ever. You can measure up, order, and install them yourself. We have spent months testing to find the best smart shades and retrofit options to smarten up your regular shades, blinds, or curtains.
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S17NASA beams home cat video from 19 million miles away  For the first time, NASA has used lasers to send data from deep space to Earth — and the data for the history-making demonstration was a cat video.Deep space communication: Sending data from spacecraft to Earth or vice versa using radio signals can take a long time — NASA sometimes waits several hours for a single high-resolution photo from a Mars rover to fully arrive.
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S38'Dune 2' Needs to Change the Book's Ending in One Brutally Necessary Way  In March 2024, the big-screen version of the first novel will be complete, but the story is far from over.In March 2024, the big-screen journey of Timothée Chalamet’s version of Paul Atreides will be over. Dune: Part Two adapts the second half of the famous Frank Herbert novel Dune, and, effectively concludes the journey of Paul from a wise teenager to Emperor of the Universe. And if the ending of the movie is anything like the ending of the novel, audiences will certainly leave with a clearer sense of closure than they got in 2021.
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S34Netflix Just Quietly Released the Most Wildly Entertaining Action Thriller of the Year  Netflix hasn’t had a particularly great track record when it comes to the action comedy show. Medical Police and Teenage Bounty Hunters only lasted a single season, the dismal critical response suggests Obliterated will follow suit and even the almighty presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t stop FUBAR from flying under the radar. However, proving Michelle Yeoh can do no wrong, The Brothers Sun is the streaming giant’s first such show that could be classed as unmissable.Created by regular Ryan Murphy cohort Brad Falchuk and relative unknown Byron Wu, the eight-part drama stars Yeoh as Eileen ‘Mama’ Sun, a Taiwanese native who’s spent the last 10 years living the domestic life in Los Angeles mollycoddling her medical student son Bruce (Sam Song Li). But their peaceful existence is shattered one day when her estranged first-born Charles (Justin Chien) shows up at their front door.
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S24S67S50Cracking the Code That Stalls People of Color  It’s a topic which corporations once routinely ignored, then dismissed, and are only now beginning to discuss: the dearth of professionals of color in senior positions. Professionals of color hold only 11% of executive posts in corporate America. Among Fortune 500 CEOs, only six are black, eight are Asian, and eight are Hispanic.
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S23Trump's Supreme Court Blunderbuss  The Supreme Court will decide whether the Colorado court was right to bar the former president from the ballot. Donald Trump is well on his way to becoming history’s greatest litigation loser ever. But in the multifront war of Trump v. Seemingly Everyone Else, he has just prevailed in one small skirmish: The Battle of the Questions Presented.
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S42Before You Start a Business, Listen to Your Ego  When I meet entrepreneurs I always ask them why they started their companies and they almost always say something like “because I had a great idea the world needed.” But when you peel back the layers you discover far different motives – motives they don’t want to acknowledge because they’re directly related to primal desires and fears. Yet the well-being of their businesses depends on their understanding those real motives.
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