Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium
   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
S1How Temu's semi-managed model could change everything  When we started writing about Temu one and a half years ago, few people were paying attention to the new Chinese webshop. How have times changed? In the past few months, we have been getting weekly interview requests about the topic. The world has woken up to Pinduoduo’s cross-border e-commerce platform.
Still, we notice that there is a lot of misunderstanding about Temu in the mainstream press, and many reporters are not well-informed about its parent company, Pinduoduo. And that’s where the danger lies because we see the same dismissal of Temu’s platform as when Pinduoduo launched in China. Eight years later, Pinduoduo, arguably China’s second-largest e-commerce company, has conquered significant market share from Alibaba. In recent years, Alibaba and JD have tried launching Pinduoduo clones like Taote and Jingxi with little success. In 2023, these giants started focusing on offering inexpensive goods on their main platforms. As they say in China: ‘First they laughed at Pinduoduo, then they studied Pinduoduo, now they want to be Pinduoduo’.
Continued here
|
S2Could dreams during anaesthesia help to heal life's trauma? | Psyche Ideas is a staff writer at Psyche. Her science journalism has appeared in Vice, The New York Times and Wired, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
After her son’s death, 59-year-old Mare Lucas often woke up screaming. In her dreams, she would see her son Zane, and then slowly realise that he was gone. ‘I would start reliving the shock that I went into when he died,’ she says.
Continued here
|
S3Startup leadership wisdom: From "hands-on humility" to trusting your gut Sujal Patel is the co-founder and CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology, a life sciences company on a mission to properly understand proteins. Unpacking the devilishly complex proteome carries the golden promise of a revolution in drug development, and demands a synthesis of vision, leadership, and entrepreneurial courage that Patel is uniquely placed to deliver.
His track record is impressive: In 2001 he founded data storage company Isilon Systems, which was sold after little more than a decade to EMC (since acquired by Dell) for $2.25 billion. He is no stranger to investment, having backed upward of 85 startups, and is a strategic director at Madrona Venture Group. He also holds a generous fistful of patents.
Continued here
|
S4The Top 5 Challenges to Trust-Building In teamwork, if there is no trust, there is no growth. Trust is a key element in the most effective teams. When everyone is on the same page, collaboration is easy and businesses thrive. At Opkalla, we hold trust as one of our foundational values, recognizing its importance not only within our team, but also in our customer relationships. Trust forms the cornerstone of our interactions, fostering an environment where transparency, honesty, and reliability flourish.
Open communication is key in all human relationships, and for work teams. Without it, people often misunderstand each other, and this can lead to mistrust. The main problem with not having open communication is that small issues can become bigger problems in people's minds. Instead of hashing out any issue, resentment can grow over a misunderstanding.
Continued here
|
S5Anduril Is Building Out the Pentagon's Dream of Deadly Drone Swarms When Palmer Luckey cofounded the defense startup Anduril in 2017, three years after selling his virtual reality startup Oculus to Facebook, the idea of a twentysomething from the tech industry challenging the giant contractors that build fighter jets, tanks, and warships for the US military seemed somewhat far-fetched. Seven years on, Luckey is showing that Anduril can not only compete with those contractorsâÂÂit can win.
Last month, Anduril was one of two companies, along with the established defense contractor General Atomics, chosen to prototype a new kind of autonomous fighter jet called the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, for the US Air Force and Navy. Anduril was chosen ahead of a pack of what Beltway lingo dubs âÂÂdefense primesâÂÂâÂÂBoeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
Continued here
|
S65 Characteristics of Stress-Resilient People (and How to Develop Them) It’s not unusual for our stress levels to spike during career transitions like moving from school into the workforce, taking on a new role, or switching fields. Even when we know high stress is a part of the job and understand it will be temporary, our stress can become debilitating if we lack the tools to manage it. Here are the top five characteristics and behaviors stress-resilient leaders practice, along with tips for how to develop each one.
Continued here
|
S7S8
S9What A Rembrandt Can Teach you about Software and Programmers Suppose you visit an art museum and walk up to a painting. I say “Ah ha! I see you’re admiring some powdered pigments, mixed with oil and smeared onto what appears to be a canvas panel.” You say “No, you moron. I’m admiring a Rembrandt.” Good. You’re three-quarters of the way towards a deep understanding of software.
Both are necessary to the finished product. But they are unequally decisive to its character. If Rembrandt had (while trying to shake out a tablecloth) accidentally chucked his favorite paint set into a canal on the very morning he was destined to make our painting; if he’d accordingly been forced to go down to the basement and hunt up another set—the finished product would be the same. But if he’d altered his mind-plan—the disembodied painting—before setting to work, our finished painting would obviously have been different.
Continued here
|
S10Agnes Martin on The Secret of Happiness Before you train yourself to stop thinking … I don’t believe what the intellectuals put out. The intellectuals discover one fact and then another fact and then another and they say from all these facts we can deduce so-and-so. No good. That’s just a bad guess. Nothing can come but inaccuracy.
The last point is perhaps the most important. This one strikes at the heart of today’s culture and into the value of an empty mind — free from busyness and distractions. Martin believes that when you have an empty mind, you can see things when they come into it. Imagine the freedom of an empty mind — one not bound by to-do lists, meetings, work and the other muck we dump into it. When the mind is full our attention revolves around the meaningless. And yet attention is perhaps the most valuable thing we have.
Continued here
|
S11S12
S13S14
S15S16
S17S185 Myths Expats Believe About Local Employees Corporate employees undertaking expatriate assignments rely on support from local employees. This dynamic is underappreciated and understudied. Both individuals and their employers will benefit if people understand and correct the mythology that’s grown up around the vital role local employees play.
Continued here
|
S19Inflation and the Housing Market | Susan Wachter Professor Susan Wachter looks at ongoing issues in the housing market and how they connect to inflation.
Wharton real estate professor Susan Wachter talks about rising housing prices and affordability issues, and what can help bring the housing market back into alignment in the next few years. This episode is part of a series on “Real Estate.”
Continued here
|
S20Who Will Survive a Shakeout in the Electric Vehicle Market? The edge goes to vertically integrated EV makers like Tesla and China’s BYD, along with legacy automakers and well-funded startups, according to Wharton’s John Paul MacDuffie.
The ongoing deceleration in demand for electric vehicles is an early warning signal of a shakeout in the nascent industry, according to Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie, who is also director of Wharton’s Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation. EV leader Tesla is laying off more than a tenth of its global workforce, and other manufacturers like Lucid and Rivian have reported losses. Government subsidies have helped cushion those impacts, and more support by way of higher tariffs on imported EVs is on the way.
Continued here
|
S21Better Decisions with Data: Asking the Right Question In this Nano Tool for Leaders, Stefano Puntoni and Bart De Langhe, authors of "Decision-Driven Analytics," explain how to get the most out of your data.
Nano Tools for Leaders® — a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management — are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.
Continued here
|
S22Why Representation Matters in Marketing Do TV commercials featuring diverse actors help increase sales? Wharton’s Zhenling Jiang tests this idea in her latest study on mortgage ads.
Marketing to minority consumers has been around since the 1950s, when advertising agencies realized the untapped potential in Black consumers who were the second-largest racial group at the time. Advertising has come a long way since then, and so has the emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The result is a wider variety of ads that feature minority actors, models, and celebrities enticing minority consumers to buy. But does representation make a difference?
Continued here
|
S23The problem with being "too nice" at work Are you "too nice" at work? Social psychologist Tessa West shares her research on how people attempt to mask anxiety with overly polite feedback — a practice that's more harmful than helpful — and gives three tips to swap generic, unhelpful observations with clear, consistent feedback, even when you feel awkward.Continued here
|
S24Dinosaurs needed to be cold enough that being warm-blooded mattered Dinosaurs were once assumed to have been ectothermic, or cold-blooded, an idea that makes sense given that they were reptiles. While scientists had previously discovered evidence of dinosaur species that were warm-blooded, though what could have triggered this adaptation remained unknown. A team of researchers now think that dinosaurs that already had some cold tolerance evolved endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, to adapt when they migrated to regions with cooler temperatures. They also think they’ve found a possible reason for the trek.
Continued here
|
S25S26The Woman Who Made America Take Cookbooks Seriously Judith Jones edited culinary greats such as Julia Child and Edna Lewisâand identified the pleasure at the core of traditional "women's work."
In the summer of 1948, a young American, a Bennington College graduate visiting Paris, lost her purse in the Jardin des Tuileries. Inside it were her passport and ticket home. Many travelers in her situation would panic. She decided it was a sign that she wasn't meant to leave France. She quit her job at Doubleday, then the biggest publisher in New York, and moved into a friend's aunt's apartment, where she launched a clandestine supper club to support herself. Perhaps she'd "open a small restaurant," she wrote to her horrified parents. In another letter, she reassured her father that although she knew she'd made a risky choice, "one has to take chances and there are many advantages to be had. Anyway, I am an adventurous girl."
Continued here
|
S27Amazon Returns Have Gone to Hell After ordering two packs of 11-inch, rope-woven storage cubes from Amazon.com recently, I found that the resulting cubes were, in fact, 11-by-10.5-by-10.5 inches. Alas, they weren't what I expected. I elected to return both sets.
Thus began the latest of my ill-fated journeys through logistics at what strives to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." The system promised to be easy: First I'd set up the return within the Amazon app, then scan the QR code it gave me at a self-serve kiosk in my local (Amazon-owned) Whole Foods Market store. After that, I'd simply load my items into a proffered poly bag, print off a mailing label, and drop the package in a chute that the kiosk would unlock for me.
Continued here
|
S28Is America Ready for 'Degrowth Communism'? Kohei Saito's theory of how to solve climate change is economically dubious and politically impossible. Why is it so popular?
Kohei Saito knows he sounds like a madman. That's kind of the point, the Japanese philosopher told me during a recent visit to New York City. "Maybe, then, people get shocked," he said. "What's this crazy guy saying?"
Continued here
|
S29Trump Has a New Plan to Deal With Campus Protests Speaking to donors earlier this month, former President Donald Trump laid out his plan for dealing with campus protests: Just deport the protesters.
"One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they're going to behave," the presumptive Republican nominee for president said on May 14, according to The Washington Post.
Continued here
|
S30A Chilling Effect of Louisiana's Abortion Law This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Louisiana just became the first state to reclassify abortion pills as controlled dangerous substances. The law may signal a new strategy to curb reproductive-health-care access in post-Roe America.
Continued here
|
S31Imperiled Eagles Are Altering Their Migration Routes to Avoid the War in Ukraine Researchers found that greater spotted eagles migrated longer distances and made fewer rest stops following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, compared to previous years
Greater spotted eagles—large, dark brown raptors that live in Europe, Asia and Africa—are “extremely rare.” Fewer than 10,000 individuals are estimated to exist worldwide, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies them as a vulnerable species with a declining population. The eagles have almost entirely disappeared from Western Europe, and now, according to a study published in Current Biology last week, they have another threat to contend with: the war in Ukraine, which is altering the birds’ migratory journeys.
Continued here
|
S32S33The Higgs boson's most captivating puzzle still remains In some ways, the deepest question one can ask about our physical reality is simply, “What is the Universe made of?” In the early 1800s, we thought we knew the answer: atoms. By the early 1900s, the answer had grown much richer: atoms themselves were composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, which were capable of both emitting and absorbing photons: particles of light. However, it was the 1932 discovery of the neutron — along with the puzzle of radioactive beta decay — that would kick off the series of events that led to our modern theoretical picture of particles in the Universe: the Standard Model of elementary particles, including quarks, leptons, and all of the force-carrying bosons.
Even though the last of the undiscovered particles of the Standard Model was finally found in 2012 with the announcement of the Higgs boson, our understanding of what the Universe is made of is still not complete. From a different perspective, we still don’t know:
Continued here
|
S34Baltoscandia: The geopolitical ghost that may just have a future You’ve probably never heard of Baltoscandia. It sounds like a made-up country, and that’s because it is a made-up country. But even without a government, a flag, and most other trappings of actual nationhood, Baltoscandia has a history, a raison d’être, and perhaps even a future.
As the name suggests, and the Euler diagram illustrates, Baltoscandia is a mashup of the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) with the three Scandinavian ones (Denmark, Sweden, Norway), plus Finland.
Continued here
|
S35Event Strategies for Asian American Markets Events can be a game-changer when it comes to connecting brands with the community, but it's crucial to approach the event planning process with cultural sensitivity and a genuine understanding. During the last few years, we have seen an increase in brands tapping into events to engage with the Asian American market.
One key mistake we often see when brands implement events marketing to Asian Americans is that they keep playing to stereotypes and don't consider the impact that cultural nuances can have on the audience. Brands fail to establish a physical presence within the community and can be perceived as opportunistic instead of having a genuine intention to develop a relationship with the community.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives
About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click)
You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India
|
