fortune--2020-10-27--Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield on Zoom, growth, and the changing nature of work

Although Slack has grown during the coronavirus pandemic, investors are concerned that the workplace software company isn’t growing fast enough.
It’s a dilemma for Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, but he believes that it’s only a matter of time before investors understand the company’s business better.
Slack has reported earnings only five times since going public in June 2019. But it takes about seven to nine quarters before a “pattern is established” and investors become more familiar with a company, Butterfield said Monday at the Fortune Global Forum.
Part of the problem may be that videoconferencing company Zoom has stolen some of Slack’s thunder in the workplace, experiencing massive growth as people shift to videoconferencing during the pandemic. In some ways, Zoom is sort of like Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky, Butterfield said.
“It’s totally unheard-of in the history of software,” Butterfield said, referring to Zoom’s rise.
Zoom’s videoconferencing is easier to grasp than Slack’s workplace chatting service. When Slack put up a billboard to promote the company, he said some people may have thought, “What is this, a spreadsheet?”
Indeed, Slack is researching new unconventional ways people could use its service. For instance, it’s looking into features that may seem like “Instagram Stories,” which “might sound absurd,” Butterfield said. For those unaware, Instagram Stories are the short, disappearing videos or photos people send to their friends on Facebook’s photo-and-video sharing service. Butterfield hypothesized that an Instagram Stories–like feature for companies may be more inviting to people who may be burned out on having to constantly attend video meetings.
The goal is for Slack to create workplace tools that feel more “organic” and lend themselves more to “serendipity,” he said, so that people don’t feel overburdened with online communications.


fortune--2020-10-27--Will a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court roll back regulations on business? Not so fast

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With Monday’s confirmation by the Senate of Amy Coney Barrett, the country will soon have a Supreme Court with six Justices nominated by conservative presidents. What can we expect from that court when it comes to regulation of business and the economy?
We know that conservative Republicans—including the judges they nominate—don’t like extensive economic regulation. So, we’d expect the Supreme Court to look at regulations with a skeptical eye. But for multiple reasons, a more conservative high court is likely to have less impact on deregulation than liberals fear or that libertarian conservatives hope—even if President Trump is reelected.
The major tool used to deal with national regulations is the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA sets out the procedures the national government has to use when it regulates—or, as the Trump administration found to its dismay, when it deregulates. It also requires that every regulation has to be rooted ultimately in a statute Congress has passed.
On the procedural side the APA can be used against government agencies that fail to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s the courts find in the APA. We can expect the 2021 Court to accept looser procedures than recent DACA and Census decisions suggest. And, of course, good administrative lawyers can show that they really care about all the t’s and i’s, which might incline the Court not to unexpectedly add new ones.
Sloppy lawyering doomed many Trump administration regulatory and deregulatory efforts. Good administrative lawyers can guide their government clients through the APA’s procedural thicket. When they do, APA-based procedural challenges to new regulations won’t get far—which means that the 2021 Court might well uphold regulations that conservative judges dislike on the merits.
Who turns laws into rules?
Administrative law does limit what agencies can do no matter how careful they are procedurally. Some statute has to authorize the regulations. The doctrine the Supreme Court applies has several prongs. Congress can prescribe the regulation— “phase out the use of some specific pesticide over a three-year period”—and leave it to an administrative agency to work out the details, like how much has to be decreased each year.
Here we’re in a period of doctrinal uncertainty. The formal term is “nondelegation.” For about a century all Congress had to do was pass a law that gave agencies an “intelligible principle” to use when they filled out the details. Recently conservatives have argued that that’s not good enough, though they haven’t yet come up with a decent alternative. What might be emerging is a rule that Congress itself has to resolve “major questions,” though again what counts as “major” isn’t clear from the opinions using that language.
Going forward Congress might be able to decide the major questions—think about what’s in the Green New Deal, for example. Sometimes, though, the need to compromise to get a big statute enacted will lead to compromises that fudge on some major issues, and the Court might say that agencies couldn’t deal with those details on their own.
Doctrine dealing with statutes already on the books is more complicated. Those statutes might have been written with the older “intelligible principle” rule in the background, and they might be vulnerable to the new nondelegation doctrine. What’s more, suppose the Supreme Court agrees that the agency is simply working out the details. That agency still has to act on the basis of what the statute says. And sometimes—maybe often—statutes aren’t completely clear. Since at least the 1970s the Court has allowed agencies to implement any reasonable interpretation of their unclear statutes even if the judges themselves would interpret the statutes differently. This doctrine is called Chevron, after the first major case laying it out.
Here too, conservative jurists have challenged the doctrine. They argue that under our system courts, not agencies, are supposed to interpret statutes. And, they worry, agencies try to push the envelope—stretching the words in old statutes to let them adopt innovative regulations that no one previously had thought of.
If and when gridlock ends
One thing about the new nondelegation doctrine and the challenge to Chevron: Conservatives were attracted to them because they provided a weapon against regulation in an era of gridlock. New statutes dealing with “major questions” have been rare (Obamacare is basically the only exception over the past fifteen years), and Chevron mattered when agencies stuck with old statutes tried to use them innovatively, as in the Obama administration’s Clean Power initiative.
If gridlock breaks, the doctrines that conservatives have developed might not stand in the way of new and quite extensive regulations.
That problem, from a conservative point of view, might be exacerbated by another part of conservative constitutional doctrine. Going back to the Reagan administration, conservative constitutional thinking has advocated for a powerful and unitary executive. All to the good, from their point of view, when a Republican is president. But a powerful unitary Democratic president can do a lot of regulatory stuff that conservatives won’t like.
What the Constitution doesn’t say
There’s one last piece of the picture. For almost a century it’s been quite difficult to mount successful constitutionalchallenges to economic regulations. The Constitution’s provision barring a taking of property without just compensation did a little work, and a requirement that all statutes have some rational basis did a little more. Recently there’s been an uptick of conservative interest in strengthening those doctrines by requiring that judges decide whether a regulation actually promotes some general public interest.
Conservatives have been divided about the wisdom of insisting that judges look in some detail at whether a regulatory statute actually does any good. But, even if this so-called judicial engagement increases, it’s going to let judges invalidate some silly cartel-protecting laws (licensing for florists and makers of burial caskets, for example), but leave important regulations untouched.
Beefing up “takings” doctrine is also pretty difficult. It’s not hard to come up with a coherent alternative to existing doctrine, but the main candidates have the feature, attractive only to libertarians but not to other conservatives, of threatening enormous swathes of the modern state. And there doesn’t seem much in between: Either the Constitution is libertarian, or the takings doctrine can limit the regulatory state only slightly more than it already does.
Now the qualifications. Most important, perhaps, is that new political circumstances can lead people to rethink their prior conclusions about what the law requires. The doctrines conservatives have been advancing for several decades worked well, from their point of view, with Republican presidents and a gridlocked Congress. If they start to work badly with Democratic presidents and an active Congress, conservatives will almost certainly start to reconsider their positions – and, I stress, the rethinking will be sincere: New circumstances, everyone agrees, change the context in which law operates, and principles should respond to their context.
A cloudy crystal ball
Recent developments have driven home the point that things change unpredictably. We can’t assume that the Court that exists on January 21, 2021, will have the same members over the next few years. And we don’t know who might leave and what kind of judge will be the replacement.
That’s important for a couple of reasons. Students of the Supreme Court have shown pretty clearly that it takes somewhere between three and five years for a new justice to get her “sea legs”—that is, to get comfortable with the entire range of things a justice has to do. And that’s true even of judges who come to the Court with a fair amount of prior experience as judges. The effect is that every new justice seems to be more moderate in the first few years than she’ll turn out to be—whether liberal or conservative.
And it takes a while for issues to get to the Supreme Court. Of course challenges to new statutes can’t be brought until the statutes are enacted. And even where issues have been rattling around in some form for a while, getting them in shape for a Supreme Court decision takes time—along with strategizing by interest groups and, importantly, by the justices themselves. We know that Roe v. Wade has been hanging by a thread for years, but the cases that the high court has dealt with haven’t required it to cut the thread, and the justices have figured out ways of dealing with the cases without facing up to Roe itself.
The flip side of all this, though, is that the justices can reach pretty much any question they want to—but we have to know not just what they think about the issues, but what they want to do on any given Monday. And that’s something we really can’t tell in advance.
The bottom line? A Supreme Court inclined against economic regulation is working with a doctrine that doesn’t give them a lot of room to go with that inclination, if a future Congress and President get their pro-regulation act together.
Mark Tushnet is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and the author of Taking Back the Constitution: Activist Judges and the Next Age of American Law.


fortune--2020-10-27--Those ‘accept cookies’ banners on websites undermine your privacy—but they can be fixed

Between working remotely, spending more time at home this year, and businesses across many industries shifting entirely to digital, we’re online more now than ever. This means we’re also seeing more “accept cookies” banners—a bug on the Internet’s windshield and an eyesore we hurriedly click “yes” to so we can see what we actually came to a site to check out.
At best, the banners are a nuisance, and at worst they undermine their original purpose: to protect user privacy. As the CEO of a company that deploys what I hope is the least intrusive form of these dreaded banners, I can say there has to be a better solution, and one that is more focused on the end user’s best interest.
This was not always the norm. Amid the flurry of new privacy laws over the past few years like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies resorted to accept cookies banners as a means of compliance. But are they actually working? A recent study shows they may actually undermine EU privacy laws. The EU even released new guidelines this spring saying that companies cannot require users to accept cookies to access their website—because consent is only valid if it’s freely given, not in the form of a cookie wall that demands it.
Businesses are also manipulating users with design and copy choices that persuade them to click accept. Research shows that seemingly small cookie implementation decisions—from the placement on the screen to use of “dark pattern” techniques like user interface design that steers website visitors toward a particular choice—can impact how people interact with consent notices.
The bottom line: Cookie banners create a false perception of privacy at the user’s expense.
So what’s next?
I’m an advocate for federal privacy legislation that protects consumer privacy and empowers businesses to use data appropriately, but we don’t need a specific law to account for the accept cookies trend. As an industry, we need to approach consent with user experience and innovation in mind—not compliance.
Some initial ideas that would improve user experience without sacrificing privacy:
Streamline the cookie consent process by elevating it to the browser level. That would mean users could opt in to accept or reject all cookies, eliminating the need for individual websites to notify visitors.
Modify consent requirements based on the relationship between user and website. A new user registering for an account, for example, would require more data disclosure than one who visits a website once.
Let users track what they’ve consented to by making a record of it with consent receipts. These receipts would give each user and website a record of what the user has already agreed to, limiting the need for ongoing and ultimately meaningless accept cookies pop-ups.
Taking things a step further, it’s possible to envision a world where users could tailor their data collection preferences by industry, organization type, and data type. For example, I could adjust my setting so cookies are automatically accepted for news sites but rejected for e-commerce sites, or I could consent to my location data being collected but not allow organizations to track my search history. This would empower individuals to make thoughtful and informed decisions about their data privacy, versus the rushed and apathetic experience that accept cookies banners create.
At a time when we’re more reliant than ever on the digital world, we can raise the bar for users while still giving them choice around sharing their digital identities. We should use this moment to surface alternatives with privacy—not compliance—at the forefront.
Todd McKinnon is CEO of Okta.


fortune--2020-10-26--Land O’ Lakes CEO calls for big federal spending on rural broadband

Land O’ Lakes CEO Beth Ford called for $100 billion in government spending to expand high-speed Internet access to rural and underserved areas, and close the ‘digital divide’ that is costing residents there jobs, education, and progress.
Speaking at the Fortune Global Forum, Ford was echoed by HP CEO Enrique Lores, who said the coronavirus pandemic has driven home the importance of the issue. “I think that in the last six months we’ve learned about the many gaps we have in our country, whether it’s the digital divide or systemic racism.”
The numbers are certainly striking. According to the Federal Communications Commission, only 65% of rural residents have access to fixed-line high-speed Internet, compared to 97% of those in urban areas.
Because of that gap, the coronavirus pandemic has been particularly hard on rural families with school-age children, Ford said.
“Teachers are having to drive out to farms with paper homework so that kids can have an education,” said Ford. “It’s unacceptable … This is very basic wiring that’s missing in these communities.”
Basic, maybe – but not cheap. Ford estimates that wiring rural America will cost $100 billion, and she called on the federal government to take a leading role. Ford described rural broadband as a matter of national security, because strong rural communities are vital to America’s food supply.
“We need something like a 1930s rural electrification program to fill these gaps,” Ford said, referring to the Rural Electrification Act (REA), an initiative to fund the creation of rural electrical infrastructure that began under the Franklin Roosevelt administration as part of the New Deal.
As with the current state of rural broadband, market forces had previously failed to expand electrification sufficiently – as few as 10% of U.S. farms had electricity in 1930. But by the mid-1950s, the REA had helped create over 1,000 rural electrical cooperatives and electrified nearly all U.S. farms.
Land O’ Lakes is a cooperative owned by farmers and others in the agriculture industry, putting Ford in close touch with the needs of rural communities. She says a major push for rural broadband is necessary not just to increase educational opportunity and improve job creation in those areas, but because new data-driven approaches to farming promise big economic and environmental advantages. Real-time soil monitoring using connected devices, for instance, can reduce the need for fertilizer, but they need good connectivity to do it.
That points to another important economic benefit of expanding broadband: greater demand for the devices companies like HP sell. That’s exactly what happened during the electrification push enabled by the REA, which led to greater demand for toasters, vacuums, and other modern conveniences.
Democrats in the House introduced a bill with $80 billion for rural broadband as part of coronavirus relief spending. The bill hasn’t made much progress, though states including Tennessee have allocated some of their state relief funding to rural broadband.
Until the federal deadlock ends, Land O’ Lakes and HP are working on their own, smaller-scale solutions to the digital divide. Those include Land O’ Lakes partnering with Microsoft to install rural Wi-Fi, and HP’s Refresh program, which refurbishes computing equipment for donation to lower-income students and schools.
Both Ford and Lores, though, expressed optimism that more ambitious, national solutions are on the horizon, because the pandemic has driven home just how important broadband is.
“I’m encouraged. I’m optimistic,” said Ford. “You have to be an optimist to be a farmer.”


fortune--2020-10-26--‘Success of everyone’:  Chobani and PayPal are paying workers more—and rethinking capitalism

Companies that want to become truly successful have to fundamentally rethink the amount of money they are willing to spend on employees, especially the low-wage workers who have become “essential” during the pandemic, two prominent CEOs said on Monday.
“Success of the brand in business doesn’t translate automatically to success of everyone,” Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said on Monday at the Fortune Global Forum.
“Chobani will never be complete and our success will never be complete unless I see that everyone who participated in this journey has their fair share,” added Ulukaya, who spoke hours after announcing that Chobani would raise its starting hourly wage to at least $15 an hour, or more than double the federal minimum wage. About 70% of the food company’s employees are paid hourly.
The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009, the longest span in the nation’s history that the rate has not risen. And about 44% of U.S. workers between the ages of 18 and 64 qualify as “low-wage,” earning a median hourly rate of $10.22 per hour, or $18,000 per year, according to an analysis published last year by the Brookings Institution.
“Capitalism in its current form isn’t working for a large segment of the population,” added PayPal CEO Dan Schulman in a virtual joint interview with Ulukaya at the Fortune Global Forum.
Employees are “the single most important asset that a company has,” Schulman said. “Any company that hopes to move from being a good company to maybe someday being a great company has, as its foundation, talented, financially secure, financially healthy employees.”
PayPal last year spent tens of millions of dollars to increase worker salaries and decrease the cost of their benefits. Schulman also pledged early this year that his employees would be safe from layoffs related to COVID-19. The payments company was recently named No. 3 on Fortune‘s 2020 Change the World list of for-profit enterprises that are working towards a greater social purpose.
Many large corporations are increasingly embracing “stakeholder capitalism,” the belief that companies have responsibilities beyond just maximizing profits for shareholders. But Schulman warned that such commitments aren’t for the faint of heart, especially in these politicized times.
“We live in a culturally charged environment, where when we stand up for something, people always think you’re taking a political stance,” said Schulman, who says that he “frequently” receives death threats over PayPal’s unwillingness to do business with neo-Nazi and other hate groups.
“We’re not taking a political stance, we’re standing up for our values,” and “the stands we take are sometimes controversial, but we’re consistent on them,” he added. “Sometimes people are upset about that. But I think that is consistent with our value of inclusion. That courage to do that—your employees see it, your customers see it, and people want to be a part of a company that stands for something.”


fortune--2020-10-26--When COVID cases rise, Trump’s odds of winning the election drop

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Some political analysts predicted that Trump’s measured performance in the Oct. 22 debate, coupled with Joe Biden’s call for shuttering the job-rich oil and gas industries, should give the President a big lift in the final days of the campaign. Furthermore, the contrast between Biden’s sauntering pace and the manic barnstorming that’s taking Trump through three battleground states a day would also, in theory, help him build momentum.
Instead, what appears to be dictating Trump’s chances of victory is the same irresistible force that’s been shaping his poll numbers and odds on political betting sites since late May: the course of the pandemic. The post-debate period hasn’t seen any decoupling between the zigzagging good and bad news about the plague, and Trump’s up-and-down prospects for winning. As COVID-19 goes, Trump’s fortunes follow. Most important is the trend. When the curve of new infections heads downward, the public believes, or at least hopes, that the worst is over, and that Trump is getting the ravages under control. When cases jump, folks fear that their lives won’t get back to normal, and lost jobs won’t return, for a long time. They blame the President for a strategy that’s consistently erratic.
Unfortunately for Trump, the pandemic is staging a big resurgence just when he needs the trajectory to go in the opposite direction. The surge in daily cases swamps the Biden fracking gaffe and is blunting any Trump momentum. His riposte on the stump that voters should just go about their lives and stop worrying is unlikely to sell.
To review the pandemic’s unyielding power in the election, let’s look at the period starting before the debate through today. Our measure is the correlation between the number of new daily cases and Trump’s odds of winning on the political futures sites where people put “skin in the game” by wagering cash on a Trump or Biden victory. For the betting odds, we’ll use two sources: the RealClearPolitics average of eight top venues, and PredictIt, the only U.S. site approved for betting on U.S. elections. (The PredictIt futures are not included in the RealClear average.)
To put the recent moves in context, let’s look back to late September, when Trump’s numbers looked pretty good. On Sept. 29, Trump’s RealClear odds trailed Biden’s 45.2% to 54.7%, not a huge deficit. That difference had been fairly constant for the previous three weeks. The stable gap, showing Trump within striking distance, correlated closely with a sharp drop, then a leveling off, of COVID cases. By Sept. 5, the daily count had fallen to around 37,000 from 66,000 in late July. Then, the curve dipped even more, before flatlining until early October. At that point, infections took off, hitting 53,000 on Oct. 15. From the close of September to that date, Trump’s odds fell from 45.2% to 36.3%. Over the same period, Trump’s line on PredictIt went from 42% to 39%.
Then, cases briefly went flat, averaging in the mid-50,000s from Oct. 16 to Oct. 20, two days before the debate. Trump’s odds also improved, rising to 39% on RealClear and 38.5% on PredictIt. The Thursday night debate gave Trump a further boost on PredictIt to 40%. Interestingly, bettors on the sites polled by RealClear marked Trump down after he crossed swords with the former Vice President, lowering his chances from 39% to 35%. The PredictIt bump was short-lived; Trump now stands at 38.5%, right where he was before the face-off with Biden. On RealClear, Trump’s prospects are unchanged at 35%.
Trump got a reprieve when cases briefly steadied before the debate, but garnered either nothing, or the slightest lift, from what appeared to be a good showing in Nashville. The reason? The day of the debate, cases started a moonshot. They vaulted from 60,000 on Oct. 21 to 74,000 the next day as the candidates took the stage. Infections kept climbing to 83,000 on Oct. 23, breaking the mid-July record of 75,000. Whatever good the debate did Trump was countered by the wallop of the resurgent pandemic.
It would be a boon for Trump if cases retreat in the week of the election. A downward inflection, even a brief one, has helped him in the past. But as the gambling sites show, the odds of that happening are long, and time is short.


fortune--2020-10-26--Target’s CEO says its mask-wearing requirement is about safety, not politics

During this worsening pandemic, few things have created more debate among a large swath of the population than requiring people to wear masks in indoor public places, including stores.
That controversy has placed many retailers in a tough spot, with store workers often confronted by angry consumers as they try to enforce mask use. Early in the pandemic, big chains were reticent to impose such rules; some were undoubtedly spooked by a big online campaign calling for a boycott of Costco for requiring masks. But ultimately they followed suit, as Target did in July.
It was no longer enough for the discount retailer to impose safety measures on its 300,000 store workers while merely asking, but not requiring, customers to comply, Target CEO Brian Cornell told the Fortune Global Forum on Monday.
“We recognized that we had to ask the guest to also participate,” said Cornell. And what if they don’t want to, asked Fortune’s Jen Wieczner? “We’re going to encourage that guest to use one of our other fulfillment options,” Cornell said.
Target gets about 30 million shopper visits a week. In its most recent quarter, Target’s comparable sales rose a record 24%, helped by the fulfillment options Cornell spoke of, which include curbside pickup of online orders and same-day delivery.
Cornell said his considerations here were solely practical.
“These are not political statements. They’re just the right thing to do,” said Cornell, who took the reins six years ago. The CEO added: “This is about the right safety messaging during a time where we’re still facing a pandemic and we have months ahead of us.”
Last week, Target announced it would set up a reservation system for days during the holiday season when shoppers might have to line up to avoid crowding.
The country’s race relations is another arena Target has had to deal with. In May, after George Floyd was killed by a policeman in Target’s hometown of Minneapolis, a Target store near the site of Floyd’s death was destroyed. The company ended up closing 200 of its 1,900 stores temporarily as a result of the ensuing nationwide unrest.
“Watching what happened to George Floyd, watching his murder, my first reaction was, that could have been one of my Target team members, it could have been one of our leaders,” said Cornell.
Target, which according to a Bloomberg report had only two Black executives out of 51 in June, last month pledged to make moves to increase racial equity in its ranks, including increasing the size of its Black workforce by 20% over the next three years and adding more Black vendors to Target’s rosters.
“At Target, we absolutely don’t tolerate racism,” Cornell told the Global Forum.


fortune--2020-10-26--‘You can’t feel sorry for yourself’—How companies from Honeywell to Marriott are adapting to life wi

‘You can’t feel sorry for yourself’—How companies from Honeywell to Marriott are adapting to life with coronavirus

The pandemic has shaken up dozens of industries over the past eight months or so, from travel and hospitality to energy, airlines, and retail.
Those areas hit home for CEOs at conglomerate Honeywell, hotel chain Marriott International, and retail credit card titan Synchrony—all of which have felt the undulations of a rocky business environment this year.
But Honeywell’s chairman and CEO Darius Adamczyk is facing 2020’s challenges with a certain attitude: “The first thing you can’t do is you can’t feel sorry for yourself. That sort of makes the organization rigid and you have to pivot very, very quickly,” Adamczyk said at Fortune‘s virtual Global Forum on Monday.
He compares it to the movies: “We knew what was coming, we kind of knew what the next frame in the movie was going to be and we knew we were in for a very tough environment, but very quickly we focused on: Fine, some of our markets are facing a very challenging time for the several months, maybe years ahead. What can we do differently, how can we innovate and change?” Adamczyk said.
Adapting and innovating to meet the moment has meant different things for different organizations. Honeywell has been helping customers develop ventilators and is ramping up some smaller-scale M&A to keep investing for post-pandemic times. Marriott International’s president and CEO Arne Sorenson, who was certainly dealt a tough hand (he says “our business functionally disappeared globally in March”), has had to lay off workers this year, but also opened Marriott’s first hotel in Indonesia—a move Sorenson believes will pay off when the virus is in the rearview mirror.
Synchrony’s CEO Margaret Keane has focused on trying to support small businesses—a cohort that makes up 1 million of their customers. Keane says Synchrony has held sessions on how to open stores and offices safely: “Any help we can give them to make them be successful is not only good for Synchrony, it’s also good for our country keeping small business alive,” she said. Meanwhile, Synchrony also launched a credit card for Venmo with PayPal—a big program launched all virtually (“That’s really about being agile and having that deep partnership together,” she notes).
For CEOs facing their own troubles this year, that agility has been the message: “As much as we hated the situation we were dealt, it really taught the company something in terms of innovation and what we can do when we’re [in] crisis,” Honeywell’s Adamcyzk says. “It’s too easy to just focus on the now and how do we get through now and next year—you also have to think about what will the business be like five years and 10 years from now.”
Pandemic lessons
While execs note we’re certainly not out of the woods yet, they have learned a lesson or two along the way.
For Synchrony’s Keane, “the biggest lesson I’ve learned is you don’t need PowerPoint—you can make a decision and then get out of the way and let the best people do their job.” Marriott’s Sorenson agrees: “Delegate. Rely on your team. Particularly early, we faced decisions that had to be made quickly,” he says. “We had to move faster, … make a decision, make a decision even with imperfect information, adjust it later if you have to, but speed and delegation is really important. I think that’s something we’ll hang on to as we go forward.”
For Honeywell’s Adamcyzk, the revelation is simple: Turn on your Zoom camera (“That actually creates a stronger bond with people,” he says). “Connecting with people and over communicating is critically important in this time because people feel isolated.”


fortune--2020-10-26--Larry Culp: We’re in the second or third inning of GE’s turnaround

Few challenges in the business world are of the magnitude that Larry Culp faced when he took over as chairman and CEO of GE in 2018. The ailing multinational was a shadow of its former self, in the process of shrinking in market cap from $600 billion in its heyday to around $60 billion today, and shedding dozens of business units along the way.
Then, in his second year on the job, Culp got thrown a monkey wrench in the form of the coronavirus.
“We came into this year knowing that our two biggest and best businesses—aviation and health care businesses—were really going to carry us through 2020,” Culp told Fortune CEO Alan Murray on Monday at the Fortune Global Forum. “Aviation was then clearly the hardest hit of our business [by COVID-19], and health care was right behind that.”
But Culp doesn’t see woes in the aviation industry lasting permanently.
“Aviation will come back now, and people will fly again,” Culp said. I think you saw over the course of the summer, really both here and in Europe, the public getting back in the air. We’ve seen China reach near pre-COVID levels of activity. So all in all, I think we’re gonna see the industry come back. Our view is, it’s just going to take a little while.”
Culp got the gig at GE on the strength of his performance as CEO of Danaher, a position he held from 2001 until 2014. There he embraced the principles of lean manufacturing, a philosophy he brought with him to GE.
But is there a risk to a lean operating philosophy during a catastrophe like the pandemic? Does it come at the expense of being resilient?
“I don’t see that tradeoff. I think you can be efficient, and you can be resilient,” said Culp. “Lean is very much a problem-solving philosophy, to solve problems well at root cause and to solve them sustainably.”
So how is that working out for GE? Murray asked Culp to put it in baseball terms: How many innings into the GE turnaround are we?
“Alan, as a Red Sox fan, I’m trying to not think about baseball this season. But if we were playing a little bit of baseball, I think we’re probably in the second or third inning,” Culp replied. “I think it’s very early in the transformation of GE. Certainly COVID-19 has pushed us back a bit, but the way that we are going to play to this company’s historical strengths, and add new capabilities and assets, I think, is a long-term play.”


fortune--2020-10-26--The governors of Rhode Island and Maryland are from different parties—but agree on these two things

With tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders out of work as a result of the pandemic, Gov. Gina Raimondo knew that traditional job training programs alone would not be enough to solve the state’s unemployment crisis.
Focusing instead on the “matching problem”––the connection between worker and open position that she believes to be one of the biggest barriers to job creation––Raimondo in July launched ‘Back to Work RI,’ a new initiative in partnership with Google Cloud. In addition to providing job training, the cross-sector partnership helps to match people out of work with open positions that make sense. RIPL, a Rhode Island technology nonprofit that’s involved in the effort, also provides career coaching in the form of Skipper, its artificial intelligence-driven bot, which helps individuals prepare for the job openings they’ve been matched with.
“It’s a public-private partnership…where we’re providing job training, but we’re doing it in concert with companies who are willing to hire the folks––they are committed to hiring the people who have been trained through this initiative,” Raimondo said at the Fortune CEO Initiative virtual conference on Monday. “So, this isn’t train and pray; it’s train, graduate, and promise to get a job.”
This Google partnership is just one example of how Raimondo and her peers are leveraging private-sector relationships to respond to the simultaneous public health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. Back in April, Raimondo helped organize a partnership between Rhode Island and CVS Health to strengthen the state’s testing capacity before calling upon Amazon Web Services and Salesforce to help process unemployment insurance claims and assist with contact tracing efforts, respectively.
Raimondo’s fellow panelist, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, also spoke to the value of consulting with private-sector companies to improve workforce development efforts, citing an existing program with IBM that works to ensure disadvantaged youth have access to job training, mentorships, and summer internships.
However, acknowledging that the reasons behind rising jobless claims go beyond the issue of workforce training and matching inefficiencies, Hogan emphasized the importance of the $500 million in emergency relief funds Maryland is spending on small businesses themselves.
“We have a AAA bond rating and had an excess of $1.3 billion in a rainy day fund, and we’re taking some of that money and investing it into keeping some of our small business moving forward,” Hogan said. “We’re trying to keep these small businesses alive, so they can keep their employees on the payroll and so we can make it through this pandemic.”
With this in mind, both Raimondo and Hogan––who sit on opposite sides of the partisan aisle, with the former a Democrat and the latter a Republican––expressed their displeasure with the lack of additional federal support. Raimondo called for immediate action.
“Congress should pass a stimulus and send it to the states,” she said. “The pain and suffering to the American people and all of our economy will be so much worse, deeper, and long lasting if Congress doesn’t do the right thing and send aid to states.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article misidentified the creator of A.I. bot Skipper. The bot was created by RIPL, a Rhode Island technology nonprofit.


fortune--2020-10-26--How we can collaborate to empower the future workforce

The world of work has been undergoing change for years, driven by technological, economical, and societal factors. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated and intensified those changes.
We see it in the way jobs are changing. In industries most impacted by the pandemic—including health care, hospitality, retail, transportation, entertainment, and tourism—jobs must adapt to shifting business models. Affected workers are having to gain different skills and must also have a way to show how their existing skills are valuable in new roles. And with more people working remotely, the need for digital skills has intensified for all types of jobs.
At the same time, the pandemic has dramatically altered our economy, resulting in high unemployment and making it difficult for an increasing number of people and families just to make ends meet.
There are many reasons why we’re so focused on the future of work, and we believe there’s never been a more important time than now to be talking about it. Since day one at Workday, our specialty has been building technology that puts people first. Helping people work most effectively, sharing the skills they need in order to grow, and making opportunities available to people—all people—are deeply ingrained in everything we do.
With many of the largest companies in the world as our customers, we feel enormous responsibility for the role we play in helping shape the future of work. Without effective, immediate action by both businesses and governments, we see a future that puts many people at risk of falling ever further behind. And based on conversations we’ve had with several governors, it’s clear they feel a responsibility to help get people back to work, and that they also realize that high unemployment negatively impacts their states’ financial stability in many ways.
Connecting people with employers
We believe there is an innovative solution to help address these challenges: the creation of skills-based talent marketplaces. If we know the skills of individuals in a community, and what employers are looking for, why not create marketplaces where we can leverage these insights and help people get back to work? And, in such a marketplace, those who need reskilling or upskilling could identify and access the training they need.
Unfortunately, employment markets today fall short of this ideal. While numerous job boards seek to match workers with opportunities, too often the job descriptions focus on pedigree, such as degrees earned, rather than the skills needed for the role. This excludes from the job market those—in many cases women and people of color—who have the skills required but attained them through work or related experiences rather than secondary education.
To create a true talent marketplace, as a society we need to shift to skills-based employment practices. Machine learning (ML), a form of artificial intelligence, plays a particularly powerful role here, as ML can identify thousands of skills derived from millions of data points, and show relationships among those skills. In fact, the nonprofit organization Opportunity@Work is going to leverage ML-powered technologies to match workers who don’t have four-year degrees but are what Opportunity@Work calls “STARs”—skilled through alternative routes—with employers who are in need of their skills, through a partnership with Workday.
Three critical steps
In order to create the skills-based marketplaces employers and workers need, we must combine open skills data sets with real-world information. To do that, all of us need to work together to collect and share data on skills needed for the jobs of today and in the future. Three steps are critical:
Identifying the skills employers need. Through partnerships with their largest employers, states could identify the skills needed for their economies. They could then use that information to drive worker training programs, utilizing increasingly sophisticated online learning platforms.
Through partnerships with their largest employers, states could identify the skills needed for their economies. They could then use that information to drive worker training programs, utilizing increasingly sophisticated online learning platforms. Identifying existing skills in the community. States could collect skills information, submitted voluntarily from those filing for unemployment, and use that information to attract employers looking for particular skill pools.
States could collect skills information, submitted voluntarily from those filing for unemployment, and use that information to attract employers looking for particular skill pools. Enhancing public-private sharing of skills data. Companies should commit to sharing real-time jobs and skills data on open platforms for shared analysis, with governments helping to bring industries together via voluntary data reporting systems.
In addition to existing worker training programs, we believe governments should support employer-provided training that helps workers advance their careers and stay ahead of technological change.
Working together, we can solve these challenges. We can identify the skills individuals have and provide the training they need to improve their skills and themselves. We can help employers find people with the skills they need. And for towns, cities, and states, we can do our part to create thriving economies with opportunities for all.
David Somers is the general manager for talent optimization at Workday. Aneel Bhusri is a cofounder and co-CEO of Workday.


fortune--2020-10-26--Stocks of companies that beat earnings targets are falling, while those that miss are outperforming

Stocks of companies that beat earnings targets are falling, while those that miss are outperforming the S&P 500

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Talk about backwards.
Companies crushing 3Q earnings largely haven’t been rewarded by investors, while those missing the mark have seen a stock pop, compared to the S&P 500.
“So far this quarter, companies that beat on both top and bottom line have underperformed the S&P 500 by 5bps the day after (worst in history), and misses outperformed by 60bps, highest in history,” strategists led by Savita Subramanian at Bank of America wrote in a note Monday.
That pattern, as odd as it may look, has happened before: Stocks reacted similarly during the Tech Bubble in 2000, “the only earnings season in history when surprises saw perverse rather than intuitive reactions—beats were not rewarded and misses were not penalized,” Subramanian notes.
It’s certainly not the first time the current market has been compared to the Tech Bubble this year. But so far, the portion of companies beating earnings on the top and bottom for Q3 this year is the “strongest post-Week 2 proportion of beats in our data history” since 2011, Subramanian points out (see chart).
Third quarter EPS is “now pointing to $34.90 (-17% y/y), up 6% since the start of October,” according to BofA, and earnings expectations for the fourth quarter are “rising in virtually every sector, suggesting that the strong earnings momentum has legs,” UBS’s head of equities Americas David Lefkowitz and associate equity strategist Americas Matthew Tormey wrote in a note Friday.
So, why the unusual reaction? UBS’s Lefkowitz and Tormey argue the market is being dominated by bigger questions: “What’s going on? We think the market is concerned about the election, prospects for additional fiscal stimulus, and rising COVID-19 infections,” the strategists wrote.
BofA’s Subramanian is of the same mind, noting “the lack of alpha indicates a lot of good news (or bad news) is priced in already, and investors are more focused on the upcoming election and macro factors … than what happened in 3Q.”
Unease over the outcome of the election (and, perhaps more importantly, over the possibility of a contested election dragging on after Election Day) could continue making investors touchy, while a near standstill on Capitol Hill over a fresh round of stimulus has sent the markets lower.
For now, despite companies posting impressive earnings so far this quarter, UBS’s Lefkowitz and Tormey warn: “The triple whammy of election, stimulus and COVID-19 uncertainties may be keeping investors sitting on their hands.”
But better times may lie ahead: UBS estimates the S&P 500 will hit 3,700 in June next year—that would be more than 9% higher than Monday’s levels.


fortune--2020-10-26--Poll: Investors have a preferred candidate in the 2020 election

Among Republicans, 91% think Trump would do a better job growing the stock market. Meanwhile, 82% of Democrats say Biden.
But what about the much-sought-after Independent voters? 51% of them say Trump would be better for stocks; 33% say Biden. That’s despite regular polls that show Biden leading Trump among Independents.
During his 2016 run for office, Wall Street widely assumed that Trump would be bad for the markets. But after his win, many investors warmed to Trump—who would go on to enact corporate tax acts in his first year.
That faith was shaken at the onset of the pandemic as the S&P 500 Index plunged -34%. The index bottomed out at 2,337 on March 23—just two days before the passage of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in the Senate. As of Monday afternoon, the S&P 500 sits at 3,390 points.
Ultimately, in Trump’s first term the S&P 500 index grew 11.6% on an annualized basis. That’s higher than the annualized return of the past three Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan (10.2%), George H.W. Bush (10.9%), and George W. Bush (-12%). But it’s below the levels seen under Bill Clinton (15.2%) and Barack Obama (13.8%).
*Methodology: The Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll was conducted among a national sample of 2,246 adults in the U.S. between October 12 and 13. Among those, 1,443 buy or sell stocks. This survey’s modeled error estimate is plus or minus 3 percentage points. The findings have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography.


fortune--2020-10-26--How Saks Fifth Avenue is providing luxury shoppers with ‘comfort food’ during the pandemic

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The coronavirus pandemic has radically changed American shopping habits, with consumers shifting more spending to essentials. And when they do have discretionary money, it has tended to go to home improvements or clothing suited to work-from-home and lounging.
So it might seem counterintuitive that some stability has returned to shopping, particularly at high-end retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue. After all, as Saks president Marc Metrick, tells Fortune, “Nothing we sell is essential, even when there is not a pandemic.”
And yet business has ticked up at Saks, which skews higher-end than rivals like Nordstrom and Macy’s Bloomingdale’s, Metrick says. Saks, owned by Hudson’s Bay Co., managed the crisis by cutting store hours, canceling some orders and delaying others, and will be reassessing its assortment with moves such as dialing back its men’s suits selection.
Saks has seen modest comparable sales increases since the summer, driven by its soaring online business. The retailer has also tapped into a desire among the most affluent, helped by a strong stock market, to splurge. And it is not alone: Nordstrom’s CEO last month said that the chain’s high-end designer business was doing “pretty darn well,” while at Bloomingdale’s luxury is now 30% of sales, up from 20% and doing better than the rest of the business, executives said in September.
Metrick himself professes some surprise at luxury’s performance. “Christian Louboutin pumps, really? When are you wearing those?” he asks—rhetorically but with gratitude.
He spoke with Fortune to discuss how Saks is managing the pandemic’s effects on its business. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Fortune: Why is luxury spending at Saks holding up relatively well?
Metrick: It’s all about fashion and about having the right balance. If you think about the other luxury players talking about their business these days, they sell a lot more men’s tailored suits than we do.
Our top-performing businesses right now are men’s footwear, men’s sportswear, women’s footwear, leather goods, fragrances. Everyone wants to smell good because they’re hanging around the same people all day.
How are shifting spending patterns helping Saks, particularly among shoppers newer to the chain?
Take aspirational shoppers: We are their experiential spend. We’re comfort food. Every once in a while, they treat themselves. During a pandemic, comfort food is blowing healthy food off the shelves. We are the comfort food of fashion.
How has the pandemic changed how Saks plans and places orders?
There are such long lead times in luxury—the goods that were coming in March were bought months and months before. We got out of it as much as we could, and we worked with our brand partners.
The luxury delivery cycle is so off from actual consumer demand. It never made sense to me, because by the time it gets warm, we mark [late spring and summer items] down to make room for things coming in July like coats and cashmere sweaters.
So this year, we said, let’s take a pause, let’s delay the product, let’s delay stuff that’s not been made yet. So by time we opened in June, product was seasonally appropriate, and there was less marking down.
And what about the upcoming seasons?
We are taking a much harder look at our evening dress business, our tailored men’s suit business, and de-emphasizing those. We’re probably a little while away from 300-person black tie galas and big weddings being back.
You look at Jos. A Bank, Men’s Wearhouse, or Brooks Brothers [which have sought bankruptcy protection], and you say, where was this business heading anyway? We have great brand partners that make suits but also make sportswear.
Your New York City flagship is high on the list of attractions for many visitors to the city. But this year, international tourism has collapsed. How is business at the store—which analysts estimate generates 20% or so of your total sales?
People aren’t traveling abroad either, so we have a certain level of captive clientele. At the higher end of our portfolio, where they used to go to Paris every summer shopping, they can do it New York now.
You say business is strong in your regional stores, like those in Birmingham, Ala., and Raleigh, N.C., Why might that be?
We’re seeing very healthy business in other markets in the U.S. where we think some of these people were moving around more, and now they’re not as much, like Atlanta, Houston, and Philadelphia, which have seen outsized growth. In some cases the regional stores are doing better. People in Birmingham aren’t going to Atlanta to shop.
Are smaller regional stores worth it for Saks, with the shift to digital?
The smaller stores don’t have a heavy load for operating. With the online ecosystem, when you open a store, the digital footprint expands, and you do more volume online. When you open a store in Raleigh, the store might not do hundreds of millions of dollars, but you notice you get a pickup in the digital footprint.
Saks spent $250 million on its flagship in recent years. Given the social distancing imposed by the pandemic and the restrictions on things like how to sell beauty products, was it worth it?
I believe that having a flagship store that is beautiful speaks to our brand. Theater to our consumer is going to be very important. Is it important right now? But we are going to find a way to make this very special again, there is no doubt.


fortune--2020-10-26--Coronavirus deaths are rising again in the U.S.

Deaths per day from the coronavirus in the U.S. are on the rise again, just as health experts had feared, and cases are climbing in nearly every state, despite assurances from President Donald Trump over the weekend that “we’re rounding the turn, we’re doing great.”
With Election Day just over a week away, average deaths per day across the country are up 10% over the past two weeks, from 721 to nearly 794 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections per day are rising in 47 states, and deaths are up in 34.
Health experts had warned that it was only a matter of time before deaths turned upward, given the record-breaking surge in confirmed cases engulfing the country. Deaths are a lagging indicator — that is, it generally takes a few weeks for people to sicken and die from the coronavirus.
The virus is blamed for more than 8.6 million confirmed infections and over 225,000 deaths in the U.S., the highest such totals anywhere in the world, with a widely cited model from the University of Washington projecting about 386,000 dead by Feb. 1.
Deaths are still well below the U.S. peak of over 2,200 per day in late April. But experts are warning of a grim fall and winter, as “pandemic fatigue” — or weariness with wearing masks and staying away from others — takes hold and cold weather forces people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.
The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases hit a record high on Sunday of 68,767, according to Johns Hopkins, eclipsing the previous mark of 67,293, set in mid-July. The U.S. recorded more than 80,000 new cases on both Friday and Saturday — the highest marks ever — though testing has expanded dramatically over the course of the outbreak, making direct comparisons problematic.
The true number of infections is thought to be far higher because many Americans have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected without feeling sick.
Fears about the virus’s toll on the economy — and fading hopes that Washington will be able to deliver more relief anytime soon — had stocks plummeting in afternoon trading on Wall Street. The S&P 500 was 2.3% lower and on track for its worst day in more than a month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 800 points, or almost 3%.
In the Texas border city of El Paso, authorities instructed people to stay home for two weeks and imposed a 10-p.m.-to-5-a.m. curfew because of a surge that has overwhelmed hospitals. The state has designated part of the city’s civic center as a hospital.
Violators of the curfew are subject to $500 fines, though the order does not apply to people who are going to or from work or are out for essential reasons, such as food shopping and health care.
“We are in a crisis stage,” El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, the county’s top elected official, as he issued the stay-at-home order over the weekend.
On Monday, the county reported a record high in daily cases, with 1,443. The county had 853 patients hospitalized because of the virus, up from 786 a day earlier.
Just last week, the president during the last presidential debate downplayed the virus’s effect in Texas, saying: “There was a very big spike in Texas, it’s now gone.”
The state has provided over 900 medical personnel to El Paso, some of whom will staff the convention center site.
On Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said that “we’re not going to control the pandemic” and that the focus should be on containment and treatment.
Trump, who spent several days in the hospital after contracting the virus, said repeatedly over the weekend that the country is “rounding the turn.” His remarks came amid another outbreak in the White House inner circle. Several close aides to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive, including his chief of staff.
“We want normal life to resume,” Trump said Sunday. “We just want normal life.”
The U.S. has seen a steady increase in daily new cases over the past three weeks, accruing over 1.25 million over that period. Nearly a third of that came from Texas (8%), California (6%), Illinois (6%), Wisconsin (5%) and Florida (5%).
In Kentucky, the state shattered its record for the number of new cases per week, with 9,335.
“We must do better,” Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said, adding that he plans to make recommendations soon for counties with high rates of infection.
Arizona is seeing a slow but steady increase in the average number of COVID-19 cases reported each day, reversing a decline in August and September. Deaths have reached nearly 5,900.
In Massachusetts, where Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has won accolades for helping to contain the virus, the Marblehead school district decided to shift to fully remote learning after students attended a house party where they shared drinks and didn’t wear masks.
Marblehead Superintendent John Buckey said in a letter to families on Sunday that he understood “young people’s desire to be together, as far away from adults as possible,” but that ignoring the rules was “potentially harming the community at large.”


fortune--2020-10-26--Uber sued by non-white drivers alleging race-biased ratings lead to firings

Uber Technologies Inc. was accused in a lawsuit of violating the U.S. Civil Rights Act by firing minority drivers based on how they’re rated by customers.
“Uber is aware that passengers are prone to discriminate in their evaluation of drivers, but Uber has continued to use this system, thus making it liable for intentional race discrimination,” former driver Thomas Liu said in his complaint, filed Monday in San Francisco federal court on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of non-White drivers.
Liu first brought that claim four years ago to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which did not reach a conclusion about the allegations but in August authorized him to pursue them in court.
Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman called the lawsuit “flimsy” and said in an emailed statement that ride-hailing “has greatly reduced bias for both drivers and riders, who now have fairer, more equitable access to work and transportation than ever before.”
The lawsuit is the latest volley in a high-stakes struggle over whether ride-hail companies can keep classifying drivers as contractors, who are excluded from legal protections covering minimum wage, unionization, and harassment as well as discrimination.
Read More: Uber, Lyft hit with bombshell driver ruling as key vote looms
While Uber insists its drivers are independent contractors, who aren’t covered by the workplace protections of the Civil Rights Act, Liu contends the ride-hailing giant wields enough control and relies enough on the drivers’ labor that they’re actually employees who fall under the 1964 law.
Uber prompts customers to rate drivers on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, and then “deactivates” workers whose average rating it deems unsatisfactory, according to the lawsuit. Liu says that while driving for Uber in San Diego, he experienced signs of bias such as customers canceling when they saw his photograph, or asking in an unfriendly manner “where he was from.” He claims Uber terminated him in October 2015 because his average customer rating fell below its minimum of 4.6.
That 4.6 cut-off “automatically deactivated anyone who looked different, dressed different, talked different, or acted different,” Liu said in an interview.
Liu said in the complaint that Uber has previously acknowledged the issue of customers’ bias when it cited evidence of racism in tipping as an argument against allowing in-app gratuities.
“Customer discrimination is not an excuse for employers to discriminate,” Liu’s attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said in an interview.
The company says that its rating system includes steps to mitigate bias, such as prompting drivers to explain low ratings and not counting those that are based on issues such as traffic. Uber also uses ratings to protect workers by banning customers who get very low ratings from drivers, according to the company.
The EEOC said in August that after investigating Liu’s claims, it was neither concluding that the company had violated the law nor certifying that it was complying with it.
In California, app-based transportation and delivery platform companies have put around $200 million behind a ballot measure that would exempt their drivers from recent legislation that designates many gig workers as employees under state law. The measure, Proposition 22, would require that they provide drivers an appeals process for terminations, and that they not discriminate.
Uber and Lyft Inc. are being sued by the state for refusing to reclassify their drivers as employees, and a state appeals court last week upheld an injunction that would require them to do so if the ballot measure isn’t approved in the Nov. 3 election.
The case is Liu v. Uber Technologies Inc., 20-cv-07499, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco.)


fortune--2020-10-26--The COVID-19 pandemic could fuel a hunger pandemic as food insecurity worsens

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An additional 100 million people or more could be facing starvation this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic weakness has combined with the effects of climate change to put many more people at risk.
“One of the key challenges right now is to make sure that the health pandemic doesn’t turn into a hunger pandemic,” Svein Tore Holsether, president and CEO of Norwegian fertilizer company Yara International, said at the Fortune CEO Initiative virtual conference on Monday. “The difficult reality right now is that we are moving in the wrong direction on hunger. The numbers are increasing.”
While over 800 million people around the world do not have enough food and go to bed hungry at night, about 135 million were close to starvation level before the pandemic, he noted. “That number is doubling, and COVID-19 is a key driver,” Holsether said.
Holsether’s warning echoed a report on food insecurity from the United Nations in April. While 135 million were at risk of “acute food insecurity” in 2019 in 55 countries, another 130 million people could be pushed into the near-starvation category by the end of 2020 owing to COVID-19 and the resulting economic effects. The collapse of oil prices, for example, put people living in South Sudan at grave risk, the UN noted. About 10% of U.S. households have experienced food insecurity this year, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Still, the pandemic and the reduction in travel and shipping has helped slow global climate change. Businesses and large organizations could build on that trend to improve the environment, with a resulting increase in health and security, Joseph Ucuzoglu, CEO of Deloitte US, told the Fortune conference.
“Societally, there are some tectonic shifts taking place right now that are going to improve the human quality of life over the long term,” Ucuzoglu said, ticking off the increase in remote working and reduction in time spent commuting which has helped “lower our carbon footprint with corresponding benefits on the environment.
“These are frankly perhaps not receiving quite the same level of publicity [as the harms of the pandemic] but have an opportunity to meaningfully improve the human quality of life,” he said.
To best address the various crises, leaders need to take a different approach, given the pandemic, Nandita Bakhshi, president and CEO of Bank of the West, explained at the conference.
“Gone are the days when leaders had to know everything and had to be powerful,” she said. “I think it’s important to show vulnerability; it’s important to show empathy; all of those are extremely important to create a safe environment.”
Bret Taylor, president and COO at Salesforce, agreed.
“We’re in the midst of a health crisis; we’re in the midst of an economic crisis; we’re in the midst of a social justice crisis, particularly here in the United States, and I think we’re in the midst of a leadership crisis, as well,” he said. “The old standards of leadership have shifted.”


fortune--2020-10-26--The White House won’t release a new tax-cut plan before Election Day, despite earlier promises

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President Donald Trump’s administration has no plans to release a second-term tax plan before the election, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, despite promises that voters would get a detailed look at his agenda.
The president’s aides are “deep into discussions” about further tax cuts if Trump wins another term on Nov. 3, but there’s no need to lay out policy specifics, Kudlow said Monday in an interview with Fox News.
“Look, we’ve put out a lot. We’ve mentioned it. I’ve talked about it,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why we have to put out a detailed plan.”
That’s a reversal of what Kudlow said in January, when he promised Trump’s plan would be released by late summer to use as a campaign pledge.
Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to pass another bill to cut taxes for the middle class and provide incentives for companies that bring back jobs from China, but he has yet to say what that plan would do.
The Trump campaign in August released a bulleted wish list of ideas for a second term that included items such as “Cut Taxes to Boost Take-Home Pay” and “Create 10 Million New Jobs in 10 Months.” The campaign hasn’t detailed how it would go about achieving those goals.
Kudlow also said he is working on plans for trade, deregulation and energy independence.
It’s unlikely that Trump will have the political support on Capitol Hill to approve another tax bill. Trump would need Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. Democrats are favored to hold and potentially expand their House majority and have a shot at gaining a narrow Senate majority. Senate Republicans have also bucked Trump’s tax ideas in recent months, refusing to consider a payroll tax cut as a stimulus measure to combat the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.


fortune--2020-10-26--Jack Ma just added billions to his fortune. Here’s where’s he ranks now

Jack Ma, the former English teacher who co-founded Alibaba Group with $60,000, is poised to become the world’s 11th richest person after Ant Group priced shares for a record initial public offering.
Ma’s 8.8% stake is worth $27.4 billion based on the stock pricing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. That will take the 56-year-old’s fortune to $71.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, exceeding that of Oracle’s Larry Ellison, L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and individual members of the Waltons, whose family own Walmart.
Ant’s mammoth listing is poised to boost the fortunes of a group of early investors and employees. The company has granted staff share-based awards since 2014 and at least 18 other people have become billionaires from the IPO. Lucy Peng, a director at the payments giant, is the biggest individual Ant owner after Ma, and has a $5.2 billion stake. Chairman Eric Jing’s holding is worth $3.1 billion.
Ant is set to raise almost $35 billion, beating Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion sale last year. The Shanghai stock priced at 68.8 yuan ($10.27) apiece and its Hong Kong shares at HK$80 ($10.32) each. The company could raise another $5.2 billion if it exercises its green shoe options, taking its market value to about $320 billion. That would be more than JPMorgan Chase. and four times bigger than Goldman Sachs.
The big winners of the listing own their stakes through two limited partnerships registered in Hangzhou that together hold about 40% of Ant. Alibaba, in turn, has a third of the fintech firm. Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, the family behind a French supermarket giant, the son of a Taiwanese real estate billionaire and Chinese retail tycoon Shen Guojun are among the other owners who have invested in the company over the year.
Ant began when Alibaba launched the Alipay payments app in 2004 as an escrow service for buyers and sellers on Ma’s e-commerce website. In 2013, they were given the ability to save money and earn interest on the balances stored on their accounts. The firm then started offering credit to small businesses, branching out from its consumer-finance focus, and eventually expanded to services such as block chain, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.


fortune--2020-10-26--How to turn on Zoom’s new end-to-end encryption—and why you may not want to

Videoconferencing service Zoom rolled out a major new security upgrade for users on Monday: end-to-end encryption. But the extra protection against hackers won’t be offered by default, meaning users will have to take several steps to turn it on.
Zoom initially announced the extra security in May, when exploding use of its service during the coronavirus pandemic led to a rise in security problems, including strangers joining calls uninvited, known as Zoombombing.
Users will have to give some serious thought to whether to enable end-to-end encryption. Although it increases security, it disables a number of key Zoom features.
The new encryption will be available to all Zoom users, whether they have paid or free accounts. Here’s everything to know, including how to decide whether you even need the extra protection.
What is end-to-end encryption?
Zoom calls are already encrypted by default, meaning that video and audio data are scrambled using an algorithm. Information is encoded by replacing readable characters with other data, using a unique key.
End-to-end encryption works on the same principle, but it changes how encryption keys are created and used.
Keys for Zoom’s current default encryption are created on Zoom’s servers, then distributed to users. This increases the chances that a determined hacker could intercept a key and access a meeting uninvited. In a worst-case scenario, hackers could steal thousands of keys at the same time directly from Zoom and then spy on Zoom’s users during their calls.
With end-to-end encryption, keys will instead be generated on the computers of Zoom users. This should mean third parties, including Zoom itself, can’t get their hands on encryption keys. This brings Zoom in line with end-to-end encrypted chat apps like Signal, Wickr, and WhatsApp—except in this case, it applies to video.
Who needs end-to-end encryption for Zoom calls?
Many users probably don’t need the extra protection provided by end-to-end encryption. Zoom’s previous security problems were mostly the result of user error, such as making meetings publicly accessible. So if you’re just trying to deter nuisance Zoombombings of an online high school history class, end-to-end encryption is probably overkill.
But the pandemic has also pushed many highly sensitive conversations online. For corporate discussions, government meetings, and health consultations, for instance, end-to-end encryption can provide peace of mind.
Of course, on the flip side, end-to-end encryption is also useful for criminals. Because companies using it lack access to their users’ encryption key, the companies are incapable of giving law enforcement access to users’ communications.
How to turn on end-to-end encryption in Zoom
For now, Zoom users will need to go through a two-part process to get end-to-end encryption. First, users must enable it in the security settings of their Zoom accounts.
Here’s what that looks like:
Zoom
Secondly, end-to-end encryption must be activated and managed by each meeting’s host. If it’s activated, attendees who don’t have end-to-end encryption activated on their own accounts will be unable to join meetings. So if you’re using end-to-end encryption, be sure to let invitees know they must activate the feature on their own account before joining your meeting.
Some key Zoom features won’t work with end-to-end encryption
Making end-to-end encryption work with multiparty video is a serious technical challenge, and at least with this early version, Zoom had to make some tradeoffs. Broadly speaking, Zoom calls using the technology will be less interactive, less convenient, and require more setup and preparation by both hosts and attendees.
Among the features Zoom says won’t work are recording meetings to the cloud; live emoji reactions from meeting participants; users’ ability to join a call before the host; streaming a meeting to outside viewers; live transcription; polling; one-on-one private chat; and splitting participants into breakout rooms.
But perhaps the most notable missing feature will be telephone dial-in. All participants in end-to-end encrypted calls must use Zoom mobile or desktop software and have end-to-end encryption enabled. That could be a significant hurdle for less tech-savvy users, or others who prefer using their phones to dial in to meetings.
However, some of these limitations may be temporary. This week’s planned rollout is “phase 1,” with a “phase 2” update planned for next year. It’s expected to include improved identity management, which might make joining encrypted calls easier or offset some of the other inconveniences of Zoom’s first iteration of total privacy.


fortune--2020-10-26--For years J.P. Morgan was skeptical of Bitcoin. Now the bank’s analysts say its value could triple,

For years J.P. Morgan was skeptical of Bitcoin. Now the bank’s analysts say its value could triple, challenging gold

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A team of analysts at J.P. Morgan’s Global Markets Strategy group are touting Bitcoin’s emergence as an alternative to gold among millennials, suggesting a “doubling or tripling” in the price of the cryptocurrency if current trends continue.
The prediction, which came in a research note published on Friday, is remarkable given the bank’s onetime skepticism toward Bitcoin, which included CEO Jamie Dimon calling it a “fraud” in 2017 and saying he would fire anyone trading it for being “stupid.”
J.P. Morgan’s bullish stance is driven in part by PayPal’s recent decision to offer Bitcoin to its customers and Square’s recent move to add $50 million of the cryptocurrency to its balance sheet. Another major factor for its position, though, is the demographic trend in which younger generations are choosing Bitcoin over gold.
“The older cohorts prefer gold, while the younger cohorts prefer Bitcoin as an ‘alternative’ currency,” says the research note.
The analysts go on to observe that, if this trend continues, there could be a challenge to gold in the long term—with important price implications for Bitcoin.
“Even a modest crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency over the longer term would imply doubling or tripling of the Bitcoin price from here,” the note states.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $13,000. That falls well short of its all-time high of nearly $20,000, which occurred during the crypto bubble of late 2017, after which Bitcoin fell to around $3,400 the following year. The current price run-up has been more stable, however, with Bitcoin staying above the $10,000 mark for an unprecedented three-month stretch.
Millennials’ embrace of Bitcoin has been underway for a while. Late last year, a Charles Schwab survey found that shares of GBTC, from Grayscale—a company that holds Bitcoin in trust—were more popular among the cohort than famous names like Netflix and Disney. Meanwhile, Grayscale has been fanning the trend with a national TV campaign called “Drop Gold.”
As a percentage of total investment capital, however, gold still dwarfs Bitcoin by a factor of ten. As J.P. Morgan notes, the value of gold and Bitcoin ETFs are about equal, but the yellow metal is worth $2.6 trillion in total (versus $240 billion for Bitcoin) because large amounts of it are held in the form of bars and coins.
J.P. Morgan sounds a note of caution, though, observing that, “for the near term, Bitcoin looks rather overbought and vulnerable to profit taking we think.” But the analysts also add the long-term prospects for Bitcoin could further improve because of its utility as a payment mechanism compared with gold.
Business Insider first reported on the J.P. Morgan memo, a copy of which Fortune obtained independently.
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:


fortune--2020-10-26--Amazon draws the battle lines at home and abroad

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Amazon is facing a battle for its current business as U.S. regulators seek to curb the tech giants and accuse them of monopolistic practices stateside. But in India, Amazon is fighting for its future—quite literally.
Over the weekend, Amazon won an emergency order to temporarily halt a deal that could give Mukesh Ambani—India’s richest man—an enormous leg up in the battle for e-commerce market share in India, a market that Amazon has sunk billions into already and expects to be among the largest in the world.
On Sunday, Singapore arbitration court placed a temporary hold on Ambani’s Reliance Industries’ planned $3.4 billion deal for rival Future Group, a rival retailer. That comes after Amazon fought hard against the deal, accusing Future Group, in which it has a stake, of breaching its contract. According to Bloomberg, Amazon has the right to acquire shares in Future’s flagship, Future Retail, in coming years.
Reliance has well-known ambitions to dominate India’s e-commerce marketplace, and as India’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, it has solid footing. Adding Future Group’s retail, wholesale, logistics, and warehousing units would more than cement that position.
Still, Amazon and even Walmart (which owns a majority stake in Flipkart) faces a larger uphill battle than just Reliance: India has grown increasingly wary of the influence foreign e-commerce players and their potentially monopolistic practices. Among other restrictions, in 2016, the government said such companies could still operate as marketplaces helping match buyers with sellers, but it could not sell their own products directly. And while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos visited India in 2014 posing in an ornately painted delivery truck while wearing a white Indian wedding suit, his most recent visit in mid-January was met with massive opposition in the form of protests from local retailers.
Complicating all of this back-and-forth between Amazon and Reliance Retail: The Indian retail company’s parent, Reliance Industries, reportedly offered to sell as much as 40% of the unit to the Bezos shop back in September.
But as my colleague Vivienne Walt put in in 2015, just two years after Amazon made its first steps into India, the battle for e-commerce market share in the country “is a fight that Amazon is far from certain of winning, yet one it cannot afford to sit out.”
A SHIFT AT UPFRONT VENTURES: Los Angeles-based Upfront Ventures promoted Kara Nortman into the role of co-managing partner, putting her in the top leadership role alongside managing partner Mark Suster. That comes as the firm, whose investments include Ring and thredUP, is in the process of raising some $280 million for its seventh flagship fund. Nortman, who joined Upfront as a partner in 2014, has helmed investments in the realm of cybersecurity and e-commerce (Fleetsmith, Parachute Homes) and prior to that, was at Battery Ventures. Nortman credits Suster with mentoring her up through the ranks—a “coach” role she has also enjoyed taking on as a founding member at All Raise— though she clarifies “Mark is not going anywhere, he’s still pretty young,” she says.
Upfront Ventures is also a very locally focused shop: Some 45% of investments go to L.A.-based companies. When asked if she believed that percentage would change as the coronavirus pushes some out of large cities, Nortman says no—because the culture does shift with geography.
“Geography still matters—you need to have a shared culture and shared understanding and need to have shared hard conversations,” she says. “I still have a strong desire to invest in the L.A. community.”
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- Scorpion Therapeutics, a Boston-based precision oncology company, raised $108 million in Series A funding. Atlas Venture, Omega Funds, and Vida Ventures led the round and were joined by Abingworth and Partners HealthCare Innovation.
- PrimaryBid, a U.K.-based fintech platform that connects retail investors with public companies raising capital, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Investors include London Stock Exchange Group, Draper Esprit, OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and ABN AMRO Ventures.
- TechSee, an Israel-based maker of a visual-based customer service platform, raised $30 million in Series C funding. Investors included OurCrowd, Salesforce Ventures, TELUS Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Planven Entrepreneur Ventures.
- Nava, a New York-based employee benefits brokerage, raised $20 million in financing. Thrive Capital was the investor.
- EdgePresence, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based operator of data centers, raised $30 million in funding from DataBank.
- KETOS, a San Francisco-based water intelligence and analytics provider, raised $15 million in funding. Motley Fool Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Citi and Illuminated Funds Group.
- StreetShares, a Reston, Va.-based business lending fintech, raised $10 million in funding. Investors included Motley Fool Ventures and Ally Ventures.
- Shouqi Yueche, a Chinese car-sharing platform, raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding in the “hundreds of millions,” per DealStreetAsia. Investors in the company have included Baidu Ventures and Nio Capital. Read more.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Carlyle and Pacific Equity Partners raised their takeover offer for Link Administration Holdings (AUX: LNK), an Australian fund administration firm, to about A$2.9 billion ($2 billion). Read more.
- Carlyle Group is nearing an agreement to acquire Flender, Siemens AG's (DE: SIEGn) mechanical drive arm unit, for about € 2 billion ($2.4 billion), per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Inspired Brands, formed by Roark Capital, is in talks regarding a potential acquisition of Dunkin’ Brands Group (Nasdaq:DNKN), the owner of Baskin Robbins and Dunkin’, per the New York Times. Read more.
- Revolution, backed by Arsenal Capital Partners, acquired Polar Plastics Corporation, an Oakdale, Minn.-based maker of plastic films and bags, from Spell Capital Partners. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- AE Industrial Partners acquired PCI, a Columbia, Md.-based provider of cybersecurity, computer network operations, cloud, systems engineering, enterprise IT, and data analytics to the intelligence and defense communities. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Bayer AG agreed to acquire Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, a North Carolina-based biopharmaceutical company specializing in the research, development and manufacturing of gene therapies, from TPG. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- The Carlyle Group acquired Calastone, a London-based maker of a funds network. Accel and Octopus Ventures back the firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
OTHER
- Cenovus Energy (TO:CVE) agreed to acquire Husky Energy (TO:HSE), a Canadian oil and gas producer and rival, in an all-stock deal valuing the latter at C$3.8 billion ($2.9 billion). Read more.
- Coca-Cola European Partners is in talks to acquire Coca-Cola Amatil, an Australia-based bottler and distributor of beverages in the Asia-Pacific region. Read more.
The family behind Lesaffre, a yeast manufacturer, may sell off stakes in the business. Read more.
IPO
- Databricks, a San Francisco-based data analytics company, is preparing for an IPO that could come in the first half of 2021, per Bloomberg. Databricks has raised from investors including a16z, Coatue, NEA, Tiger Global Management, and BlackRock. Read more.
- Sotera Health, a Broadview Heights, Oh.-based provider of lab services, filed to raise up to $100 million in an IPO. It posted revenue of $778 million in 2019 and losses of $20.9 million. Warburg Pincus and GTCR back the firm. Read more.
SPAC
- TS Innovation Acquisitions, a real estate-focused SPAC formed by Tishman Speyer, filed to raise $300 million. Read more.
- Acies Acquisition, a SPAC focused on live, location-based, and mobile experiential entertainment co-founded by a former MGM Resorts International CEO, raised $200 million. Read more.
- Kingswood Acquisition, a finance-focused blank check company formed by Kingswood Group, lowered the amount it plans to raise to $125 million. Read more.
F+FS
- Thoma Bravo raised $22.8 billion in capital commitments across three funds: Thoma Bravo Fund XIV, a $17.8 billion fund; Thoma Bravo Discover Fund III, a $3.9 billion fund; and Thoma Bravo Explore Fund, a $1.1 billion fund.


fortune--2020-10-26--A repeat of the 2016 polling error would see Biden win with a 342 electoral vote landslide

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In 2016, Hillary Clinton went into Election Day leading Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics poll average in Pennsylvania (+1.9 percentage points), Michigan (+3.4 points), and Wisconsin (+6.5 points). Trump would go on to win all three states by less than one percentage point—a polling error that shocked the world.
This time around, Democratic nominee Joe Biden also leads poll averages in Michigan (+8.1 points), Pennsylvania (+5.3 points), and Wisconsin (+4.6 points). But it doesn’t stop there. In all, Biden is leading in seven states Trump won four years ago, including Arizona (+2.4 points), Florida (+1.5 points), Iowa (+0.8 points), and North Carolina (+1.2 points). Trump holds narrow leads in Georgia (0.4 points), Ohio (0.6 points), and Texas (2.6 points).
But what’s the result if the polling error in 2020 is identical to that in 2016? To find out, Fortune used RealClearPolitics 2016 poll averages to calculate polling errors in 14 battleground states. Then we applied those 2016 state polling errors to states’ 2020 RealClearPolitics poll averages.
The result? Biden would win in a 342 electoral vote landslide.* In that scenario, he’d pull out narrow victories in four states Trump won five years ago, including Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Trump would take Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin—which had a 7.2 point polling error in 2016.
How is it possible for Biden to take Texas, yet at the same time Trump snags Wisconsin? While in 2016, Trump significantly outperformed his Midwest polls, he actually fared worse in Southwest states like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Trump led Clinton by a poll average of 0.8 points in Nevada—a state Clinton would win by 2.4 points. And in 2016, Trump’s 12.0 point poll average lead in Texas only translated to a 9.0 point win. If you apply that 3.0 polling error to Trump’s current 2.6 point poll average lead in Texas, it would translate into a 0.4 point Biden win in the Lone Star State.
But this scenario—despite the massive electoral vote tally—wouldn’t be the Biden runaway it appears. Applying a 2016 polling average, Biden would narrowly win Florida (0.5 points), Minnesota (1.3 points), and Texas (0.4 points). Those states account for 77 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win.
Keep in mind that while state polling was off by a lot four years ago, national polling was fairly accurate: Clinton had a national 3.2 point RealClearPolitics poll average lead, and she finished with a 2.1 point popular vote win. This time, nationally Biden has a 8.3 point poll average lead. If Biden beats Trump in the popular vote by 6 percentage points, his chances of winning the election are 99%, according to FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver. But if it’s only a popular vote win of 1 to 2 percentage points, Biden’s chance of an electoral college win drops to 22%.
As of Monday, FiveThirtyEight forecast the odds of Biden winning at 88%, while The Economist forecast the Democratic nominee having a 94% chance of winning the electoral college.


fortune--2020-10-26--Chobani’s radical plan to take care of its hourly workers: Pay them more

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For the first seven years after founding Chobani, CEO Hamdi Ulukaya rarely left his yogurt-making factory as he worked to get his business off the ground. “I saw the dedication, the work, the discipline, the human connections,” he says. “But I also saw the struggles.”
As the industry grew, Ulukaya also witnessed what he describes as a disconnect between the sector prospering but not all of its workers sharing in that success—especially those working the factory floor. “Society moves on the shoulders of people like that,” he tells Fortune.
In an effort to bridge the gap Ulukaya sees between employee and company success in the business world, Chobani plans to increase its starting hourly wage to at least $15 an hour—more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Approximately 70% of the food company’s employees are paid hourly.
With the wage increase that the company is announcing today, Chobani’s average hourly rate at its manufacturing plants in South Edmeston, N.Y., and Twin Falls, Idaho, will be about $19 an hour. The change will go into effect during the first quarter of 2021.
While COVID-19 has highlighted the critical role of factory employees, Ulukaya says Chobani has been working on this initiative since last year.
The pandemic “is an opportunity to see things a lot deeper and say, ‘These are fundamentals that need to change,’” Ulukaya says. “We do not have to wait for the government to act on it. We, as businesses and CEOs and brands must do our responsibility, and this is the time to do it.”
Chobani’s new hourly rate comes as the federal minimum wage has remained unchanged for more than a decade—the longest span in the nation’s history.
The company says it is not changing employee hours, benefits, or other compensation programs to fund the wage increase. “This kind of spending is not an expense,” Ulukaya says. “These are the best investments you can do for your company.”
“The return on this is enormous,” he adds, pointing to increased productivity and, in turn, profitability.
The wage increase builds on Chobani’s history of investing in its workers. In 2016, Ulukaya committed to giving employees up to 10% of the company’s shares if Chobani goes public or is sold. In 2017, Chobani expanded its parental leave policy and now offers generous fertility benefits.
“These are fundamentals that in my gut bother the hell out of me,” Ulukaya says. “That’s the problem I see in the world of business—maximizing profits is translated into cutting from everywhere else.”
Ulukaya says the demand for businesses that live up to the philosophy of conscious capitalism—a mode of doing business that puts purpose alongside profit—is going to increase within the next decade. That interest will come from consumers but also from employees who want to work for companies that share their values.
“People’s expectations from companies has never been this high,” Ulukaya says.