May 16, 2013
AFTER a Soviet missile shot down a South Korean airliner that strayed into Russian airspace in 1983, President Ronald Reagan made America’s military satellite-navigation system, GPS, available to the world. Entrepreneurs pounced. Car-navigation, precision farming and 3m American jobs now depend on GPS. Official weather data are also public and avidly used by everyone from insurers to ice-cream sellers.But this is not enough. On May 9th Barack Obama ordered that all data created or collected...
- THE business climate in Congo “is disgusting”, says an adviser to the government in Kinshasa. Any casual visitor has probably noticed. Traffic police stop cars for no reason, force their way in and...
If you think breaking rocks is hard, try fighting corruption
HUAWEI, a Chinese maker of telecoms equipment, has found Europe, by and large, a welcoming sort of place. Gartner, a research firm, estimates that last year it doubled its share of the western European market for mobile operators’ infrastructure, to 19%. Its share in eastern Europe is even higher. But in America, where Chinese kit is seen as a security threat, Huawei cannot get a sniff. In Australia it was blocked on similar grounds from bidding for a broadband project last year.Now Huawei...
- SAINT GORAN’S hospital is one of the glories of the Swedish welfare state. It is also a laboratory for applying business principles to the public sector. The hospital is run by a private company, Capio, which in turn is run by a consortium of private-equity funds, including Nordic Capital...
- DILBERT, a cartoon character, once strapped a barrel-sized mug of coffee to his back to keep himself alert. Americans who dislike coffee have other options. “Wired Waffles” come with caffeinated maple syrup....
Side-effects: a craving for human flesh
- WHEN a power cut interrupted this year’s Super Bowl, advertisers lit up. “Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now,” tweeted Audi, swiftly plugging its own LED-accented car while taking a dig at its rival Mercedes, sponsor of the New Orleans Superdome. Tide, a detergent, came...
- AN ADDICTION to short-term financial results was one of the flaws in American capitalism that Sony’s co-founder, Akio Morita, used to bewail. (That was back in the 1980s, when the Sony Walkman, a portable music-player, was trampling its...
Time to dump 007?
May 9, 2013
FOR years French governments have promised to permit class-action lawsuits. But French businesses hate the idea and besides, who wants to copy the Americans? Now, however, François Hollande and his Socialists may allow such suits, if a bill on consumer rights presented to the Council of Ministers on May 2nd is adopted in anything like its present form.This has upset people who fear that ambulance-chasing and colossal damages are invading Europe. But that is not what Mr Hollande has in mind....
- ONE of the most popular videos this month on YouTube, an online video site, is a commercial by a bottled-water firm, Evian. In it, adults walking by a shop window see their baby lookalikes reflected, and start dancing with their former selves. The grown-up YouTube, however, looks nothing...
ONE in six Americans is Hispanic. In politics, ignoring the Latino vote is suicidal, which is why the Republican Party is at last getting serious about immigration reform. In business, ignoring Latino tastes is equally daft, which is why American firms are at last getting serious about pursuing the Hispanic dollar.
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