For a tiny device that clips onto your key ring, the Kodak Charmera makes an oversize impression. At least to me. The newest compact digital camera believes it is a 1980s Kodak Fling disposable camera, which itself was like a 120 Ektachrome film box with a lens and a viewfinder. It looks the part so well that it feels like a portal to my childhood. I imagine it smells of my dad’s cigarettes, just by looking at it. For most of the people from this century who are attempting to buy the Charmera, however, its design will be more than…
Author: Staff Writer
It’s not just you—you really have been seeing a lot more of Gap lately. Over the last few years, the brand has embarked on a broad business turnaround. It hired Richard Dickson, Mattel’s former CEO who turned Barbie into a phenomenon. Then it brought on Zac Posen as its new creative director. It launched an elevated sub-brand, GapStudio, and it’s bringing back nostalgia-driven styles like low-rise jeans. But perhaps more effective than any single business decision has been Gap’s unabashed embrace of collaborations. Again and again, Gap’s partnerships have surprised shoppers by tapping into corners of culture and fashion that…
When a group of men without uniforms arrested Mahmoud Khalil inside his New York City apartment building in March, Khalil’s wife, eight months pregnant, asked them for identification. The men would not give their names or say what agency they worked for. All they said was they were taking Khalil, a legal permanent resident, to an immigrant lockup in downtown Manhattan. The statement was misleading. Within hours, Khalil was whisked out of the state. He soon found himself in the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center. The Columbia University graduate student, who had attracted nationwide attention by leading pro-Palestinian protests on…
Female entrepreneurs are on equal footing with their male counterparts in creating businesses with a societal impact. But there is still a colossal gap in startup funding between women and men who prioritize social issues alongside corporate profit. That is in danger of growing even larger as DEI policies are increasingly removed. The Schwab Foundation’s Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship report, The State of Social Enterprise 2013–2023, notes that there are 10 million social enterprises around the globe, accounting for $2 trillion in annual revenue, and providing 200 million jobs. Half of those businesses are led by women. This number…
I’m a LinkedIn ghostwriter, which means I write personal LinkedIn posts for other people in their unique voice. Nobody knows I’m the writer behind the post. Today, CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and consultants are also building their online presence and vying for attention, particularly on LinkedIn. That’s where the ghostwriter comes in. According to LinkedIn, 82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team are active on social media, and 77% are more likely to buy from such a company. Furthermore, 85% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is the most valuable social platform to be…
Jair Bolsonaro will spend the rest of his life in a Brazilian prison for inciting a coup that never happened. Bolsonaro’s public humiliation ritual is far from over as the establishment is using him as an example for anyone who dares to voice a dissenting opinion. The latest ruling determined that the former president must pay R$1m ($188,435.55 USD) for insulting a hairstyle, which the courts deemed racist. The federal court of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul examined a statement Bolsonaro made in 2021 when he insulted a black man by calling his afro a “breeding ground…
When I was an engineer at Stripe circa 2017, I pitched a machine learning system that would cut our support headcount in half. I thought I was solving the biggest cost to the company: people. After all, isn’t that the point of automation? The head of support’s response caught me off guard: “Congratulations. You’ve automated the easy part.” I realized the real problem was the workflow. Agents were toggling between 10 different tools. Institutional knowledge was stuck in silos. Work was being routed manually, without any visibility into patterns or bottlenecks. The biggest cost wasn’t people. It was the broken process.…
The average French pensioner receives a larger payout than working-aged adults. France has one of the highest replacement rate packages of any OECD nation at around 74% of average earnings. The French government spends an astounding 14% of GDP on the unsustainable pension system. The average pension in France is around €1,626 gross per month, and pensioners earn around 2% more than the working adults propping up those pensions. The average American pensioner earns about a sixth less than working adults, UK retirees earn about a fifth less, while Australians earn around a third less than their working counterparts, according…
Forrester research found this year that only 58% of Fortune 500 chief marketing officers report directly to the CEO or sit in the C-suite. And CMO membership on boards is down more than 7% between 2023 and 2024. But in today’s unpredictable cultural and political climate, we need marketing leaders at the table who can navigate complexity and change. I have always advocated for the inclusion of CMOs on company boards, on the grounds that CMOs bring a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and cultural context. In the past, I’ve seen that the biggest challenge preventing broader representation of marketing leaders…
The Federal Open Market Committee voted to lower rates by 25 bps at the September meeting, citing “that downside risks to employment have risen.” I reported in December 2024 that the computer had forecast a decline in employment during the incoming Trump Administration. Based on the most recent data, the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%, while the measure of discouraged and underemployed workers remains steady at 7.7%. Per usual, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its calculations for previous months. August’s growth whittled down to 78,000, and September’s calculation came in at 223,000, marking a total decline of 112,000 reported…