Philippa Kaur

IN Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “History of England”, the bustling coffeehouses of the 17th century were “the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself”. But what happens when the metropolis stays away? Laxman Narasimhan, boss of Starbucks, the world’s mightiest coffee chain, is finding out the hard way.Mr Narasimhan has been in the top job barely a year. He inherited sluggish growth in China and a unionising workforce in America. Since then, things have got much worse. During the first quarter sales in America declined by 3%, year on year, and the firm slashed its profit guidance for the rest of 2024. Long wait-times and unavailable products meant around 15% of customers using the firm’s mobile app did not bother to complete their order. Starbucks’ share price has fallen by a fifth this year. To cap it all off, on May 5th Howard Schultz, the caffeine king who grew the chain from obscurity to ubiquity, condemned the firm’s recent performance in a post on LinkedIn. More

Bestowing a name on a car, as on a child, is not to be taken lightly. By naming his newest progeny X Æ A-XII, Elon Musk has condemned the boy to a lifetime of befuddled attempts at pronunciation (“ex ash ay twelve”, for those wondering). Naming the first four models produced by Tesla, his car company, S, 3, X and Y was equally asinine.Yet model names that provoke derision or outrage are surprisingly common in the car business. The Ora Funky Cat, from a sub-brand of China’s Great Wall Motors, was recently renamed the Ora 03, ostensibly as part of a new global brand strategy but mainly because it sounded daft. Peugeot’s Bipper Tepee, now discontinued, was about as bad. (Peugeot is owned by Stellantis, whose largest shareholder, Exor, part-owns The Economist.) The Nissan Cedric, a large saloon on sale from 1960 until 2004, sounded like it belonged in the previous century. It eventually became the Datsun 200 series in many overseas markets. More

Heat pumps, a type of reverse-refrigerator used for warming homes, are not the type of tech that gets most investors hot and bothered. They were, after all, invented in 1856. Harald Mix and Carl-Erik Lagercrantz, two Swedish financiers, see things differently.The pair, whose investment group Vargas is behind Northvolt, a battery maker, and H2 Green Steel, which uses green hydrogen to produce steel, sense there are a big bucks in replacing Europe’s many oil and gas boilers with heat pumps. Earlier this year Aira, a company founded by Vargas, launched a new product that it hopes will entice more people to make the switch. It is not only profits that are at stake. More

If there is one thing anyone with a job and a pulse needs to learn, it is how to lead. That, at least, is the message from the tsunami of books, courses, videos and podcasts on the topic. Business schools offer all kinds of leadership training. Authors pump out books instructing you to eat last, be daring and take leaps—which risks stomach ache if nothing else. Gurus tell you how to lead without actually being a leader; you might be on the reception desk, but you’re really in charge.Missing in all this is an inconvenient fact. Most people in the workforce are not leaders and pretty much everyone reports to someone else. The most useful skill to have in your current job may well be how to be a good follower. More

It is a time-honoured tradition for bosses to grumble about the supposed laziness of their underlings. Doing so publicly, however, is rarely wise. China offers no exception to this rule. Earlier this month Qu Jing, the head of communications at Baidu, a local tech giant, took to social media to defend the company’s gruelling culture. The resulting firestorm has highlighted the growing dissatisfaction among China’s young white-collar workers with the punishing hours common in the country.In one video, which soon went viral, Ms Qu said it was not her responsibility whether her team’s relationships or health were affected by their jobs, declaring “I’m not their mother.” In another she added that a woman who opts to spend time with “her husband and kids” should not expect a promotion or raise. She claimed that she did not regret forgetting her elder son’s birthday nor which grade her younger son was in at school because she “chose to be a career woman”. “Keep your phone on 24 hours a day, always ready to respond,” was her advice to those lucky enough to find themselves in her line of work. More

The origins of Home Depot, a big American home-improvements store, are inauspicious. In 1978 two of its co-founders were fired from senior roles at Handy Dan’s, a similar chain in southern California, in a power struggle. They decided to start a rival firm. In an effort to lure in customers on opening day, the co-founders’ children stood outside the doors and handed out dollar bills. “By dinner time they still had plenty of cash,” lamented Bernie Marcus, one of the co-founders, in his autobiography.Today the company is a giant. Over the past 12 months it racked up $150bn in sales, making it by far America’s biggest home-improvements chain and its third-largest bricks-and-mortar retailer, after Walmart and Costco. The company now employs half a million staff, who profess to “bleed orange”, a reference to the firm’s striking colour scheme. Its market value, at $350bn, exceeds that of Chevron, an oil giant, and Netflix, a streaming darling. More

Since the first iPhone landed in people’s pockets in 2007, apps have steadily become the portal of choice to the digital world. The mobile devices on which they run now account for two-thirds of global web traffic. Inhabitants of rich countries spend about five hours a day, roughly a third of their waking lives, staring at apps. Globally some 3.5bn people use them each month.That has made the app stores that distribute them a lucrative business for Apple and Alphabet, the tech titans whose iOS and Android operating systems power the vast majority of mobile devices around the world. That, in turn, has drawn the attention of governments, which are leaning on the duopoly to limit access to disfavoured apps while also working to loosen its stranglehold over the market. They risk irking consumers on both counts. More

YOUNG JOB-SEEKERS are different from their elders. They expect employers to be cuddlier, more forgiving and more generous with perks and pay cheques. The way they go about hunting for work is also distinct. Rather than relying on family and friends, a growing number of Americans are turning to TikTok in search of advice that will help them climb those all-important first steps up the career ladder.Scrolling through their feeds on the short-video app they might come across a creator called Lauren Spearman. Ms Spearman uploads videos about “red-flag job postings” and “unreasonable job applications”. Or they might find Kennie Bukky, who shares her “salary journey” and hot tips for pay negotiations. If they scroll down further, sooner or later they are likely to happen upon Brittany Peatsch. She went viral after posting a video account of her own experience being laid off from Cloudflare, a software company, and now creates videos offering advice to others suffering through similar ordeals. More