Best Business Articles & Videos on the internet • Discoverology

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Read the best business articles from around the internet, or watch the most insightful business videos from platforms like Youtube, Vimeo or leading business publishers like Bloomberg, Quartz, Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

The Ticking Time Bomb In America’s Downtowns

The Ticking Time Bomb In America’s Downtowns

Business Cities Economics

The sad state of office buildings could cause something called the “doom loop.” $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate debt, is owed to banks, pension funds, and insurance companies before the end of 2025, and secured by properties that may not be worth what they were five or 10 years ago when those loans got made.

When Chinese Industrial Espionage Goes Wrong

When Chinese Industrial Espionage Goes Wrong

Business Crime Videos

Shannon You’s story is about so much more than just Coca-Cola’s other secret recipe. Her get-rich-quick scheme cast new light on how industrial espionage has become a big part of China’s economic growth, and provided fuel to those who accuse the country’s Thousand Talents Program of incentivizing technology theft on an unprecedented scale.

The Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Hooked Warren Buffett And The U.S. Treasury

The Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Hooked Warren Buffett And The U.S. Treasury

Business Crime Long Reads

Jeff Carpoff was a good mechanic but struggled as a businessman. His machine—a solar generator on wheels—was a sun-fueled alternative. He called it the Solar Eclipse. His invention, he thought, was “crazy, harebrained.” But investors saw the makings of a clean-energy revolution.

The Real Problem With The Cruise Industry

The Real Problem With The Cruise Industry

Business

What the novel coronavirus has revealed about the cruise industry is a “hidden in plain sight” problem — an international maritime regulatory structure that obfuscates and often ignores legal and social responsibility, accountability and culpability.

Virginia Mori

Inspiration
Virginia Mori
Credit Card Companies Are Tracking Shoppers Like Never Before

Credit Card Companies Are Tracking Shoppers Like Never Before

Business Tech

Transactions have given rise to a complex data-selling ecosystem. At the heart of it are credit card processing networks, including Visa, American Express, and Mastercard, the latter of which took in $4.1 billion in 2019 for services that include marketing analytics as well as fraud detection.

The Sickness In Our Food Supply

The Sickness In Our Food Supply

Business Food

A series of shocks has exposed weak links in our food chain that threaten to leave grocery shelves as patchy and unpredictable as those in the former Soviet bloc. The very system that made possible the bounty of the American supermarket suddenly seems questionable, if not misguided.

The Day The Pirates Came

The Day The Pirates Came

Business Long Reads

For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life. But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate’s life upside down. His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.

The Diamond Cartel: History's Greatest Monopoly

The Diamond Cartel: History's Greatest Monopoly

Business Videos

A cartel is a group of companies coming together to fix the price of a product. Like how major oil countries come together as the cartel OPEC, to fix the price of crude oil, except with a diamond. Once these locals catch on to how profitable the diamond trade is, they’ll started trading diamonds and smuggling it.

How IKEA Became Sweden’s National Brand

How IKEA Became Sweden’s National Brand

Business Videos

In 1950, Ingvar Kamprad began selling furniture. Seeing the logistical difficulty of shipping large items far away, Ingvar decided to flat-pack the furniture, which also reduced the chance of damage during transport. The company created a catalog that customers could browse through and order with from afar.

The Big China Short

The Big China Short

Business Crime Long Reads

Researchers had a hunch that Luckin Coffee, China’s fast-growing challenger to Starbucks and a company traded in the U.S. stock market, was falsifying financial statements to exaggerate its sales. A few months later, an anonymously written 89-page report landed on Wall Street and leveled one of China’s hottest startups.

How Much McDonald's Franchise Owners Really Make Per Year

How Much McDonald's Franchise Owners Really Make Per Year

Business Food Videos

The food at McDonald’s has always sold like hotcakes but once the restaurant started franchising, the world began eating up the brand. But being a franchise owner isn’t as easy, or profitable, as you might think. Buying into a McDonald’s franchise is expensive, between $1 million and $2.2 million.

Matt Rota

Inspiration
Matt Rota
Hangover Inc.: The Companies Getting You Over Last Night

Hangover Inc.: The Companies Getting You Over Last Night

Business Health

Once a hush-hush luxury for the quietly-pampered, banana bags outside the hospital are hitting the mainstream. Nurses stand ready to provide intravenous care to the dehydrated, alcoholically and otherwise, in their homes and hotel rooms, at walk-in centers and on a hangover bus for special events.

Why Planet Hollywood Went Bankrupt

Why Planet Hollywood Went Bankrupt

Business Food Videos

In the mid 1990’s, two entertainment moguls along with plenty of huge celebrities like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger came together to create a restaurant business unlike any other. But as quick as this idea grew, the sooner everything came crashing down. This is the story of Planet Hollywood.

The World Is Paying A High Price For Cheap Clothes

The World Is Paying A High Price For Cheap Clothes

Business Nature

Fast fashion’s core business model is fueled by low prices, rapid consumption and fast-changing trends — all of which are in direct tension with its sustainability mission. The global fashion industry generates a huge amount of waste – one full garbage truck of clothes is burned or sent to a landfill every second.

The Malaysian Job: How Wall Street Enabled A Global Financial Scandal

The Malaysian Job: How Wall Street Enabled A Global Financial Scandal

Business Crime Long Reads

The story of possibly the largest fraud in financial history—in which, billions of dollars were diverted from a Malaysian sovereign-wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad into covert campaign-finance accounts, U.S. political campaigns, Hollywood movies, and the pockets of innumerable other recipients.

One Woman's Instagram-Fueled Ascent To ‘Boss Lady Status’

One Woman's Instagram-Fueled Ascent To ‘Boss Lady Status’

Apps Business Long Reads

For New Orleans entrepreneur Jesseca Dupart, social media isn’t just a tool for building her business—it’s a platform for inspiring other black women to do the same. She started as a simple hair salon in 2012, now her beauty products are available in stores in every state, as well as Canada, the Caribbean, and the UK.

The War On Coffee

The War On Coffee

Business Food

Epicurean coffeehouses in the United States numbered in the hundreds in 1989, and in the tens of thousands by 2013. A lot of that is Starbucks, but not all. Roasters in Italy went from exporting twelve million kilograms of espresso in 1988 to more than a hundred and seventy million in 2015.

How Global Trade Runs On U.S. Dollars

How Global Trade Runs On U.S. Dollars

Business Videos

Nearly 90% of international transactions in 2019 were in U.S. dollars, giving the U.S. extraordinary power over nearly every entity that imports or exports anything anywhere. Here’s how the global economy runs on the U.S. dollar — and why some countries are trying to chip away at its dominance.

Zoom Company Story: How Eric Yuan Defeated Skype

Zoom Company Story: How Eric Yuan Defeated Skype

Apps Business Tech Videos

Chances are you’ve used some sort of video call with family, friends or even to school and most likely it’s been Zoom, the videoconference software has taken the world by storm. But in the presence of giants like Microsoft, Skype, Teams and Google Hangouts, why is everybody using Zoom?

Joseph Ford

Inspiration
Joseph Ford
How Offshore Oil Rigs Work

How Offshore Oil Rigs Work

Business Explainers Videos

Offshore oil rigs are inherently a higher-cost, higher-risk method of oil extraction, but the oceans are, of course, home to a huge proportion of the world’s oil reserves so, if there are no more low-cost oilfields on land, that’s where the companies go.

Is The Cruise Industry Finally Out Of Its Depth?

Is The Cruise Industry Finally Out Of Its Depth?

Business

The question is whether the coronavirus will dent, deflect or alter what has been a phenomenon of our times, the many-times multiplication of ship sizes, of passenger numbers and of profits, generated by an industry that manufactures its own version of reality, then shapes the places that its ships visit in the image of that reality.

Tapping Into The Power Of Humble Narcissism

Tapping Into The Power Of Humble Narcissism

Business Life

The two qualities sound like opposites, but they can go hand in hand. Narcissists believe they’re special and superior; humble leaders know they’re fallible and flawed. Humble narcissists bring the best of both worlds: they have bold visions, but they’re also willing to acknowledge their weaknesses and learn from their mistakes.

Barilla Pasta’s Turnaround From Homophobia To National Pride

Barilla Pasta’s Turnaround From Homophobia To National Pride

Business Food

After chairman Guido Barilla rebuked gay families on national radio, his CEO spent five years cleaning up the company’s reputation. Barilla transformed from a pasta giant that would never feature homosexuals in its campaigns into one that sells spaghetti in homoerotic packaging.

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

Business Long Reads

My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine, under conditions that were surprisingly demoralizing and dehumanizing, even to someone who’s spent a lot of time working in warehouses, which I have.

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire

Business Videos

Michael Oswald’s film The Spider’s Web reveals how at the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions.

America Is About To Witness The Biggest Labor Movement It’s Seen In Decades

America Is About To Witness The Biggest Labor Movement It’s Seen In Decades

Business Economics

The past four decades have been perhaps labor’s weakest since the Industrial Age. For a half-century, those working for hourly wages have won almost no real gains. The real average hourly wage in 2018 dollars adjusted for inflation was $22.65 in 2018, compared with $20.27 in 1964 — just an 11.7% gain.

The Rise Of Nintendo

The Rise Of Nintendo

Business Tech Videos

Nintendo hasn’t always made video games. It was founded over a century ago and at one point sold ramen noodles and operated a taxi service. Today, Nintendo is part of a crowded video game market, up against companies like Sony, Microsoft, Apple and Google. When Nintendo first got into the home console business in the 80s, it dominated.

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