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☆ Cancel That Brainstorm. There’s a Better Way to Spur Good Ideas.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Callum Borchers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

The value of gathering to swap loosely formed thoughts is highly suspect, despite being a major reason many companies want workers back in offices. “You do not get your best ideas out of these freewheeling brainstorming sessions,” says Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School. He discovered that his 16-person team, now fully remote, thrives when people develop ideas on their own and can share them in writing. An Amazon spokesman adds that the company’s brainstorming sessions are sometimes unstructured but often begin with colleagues sharing well-researched memos, reducing time spent on ill-conceived ideas. Oh, he’s also noticed that the duds tend to come first, so to leave time for the good stuff, he prescribes two-hour meetings.

☆ Office Brainstorms Are a Waste of Time
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Callum Borchers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Office wardrobe malfunctions? The value of gathering to swap loosely formed thoughts is highly suspect, despite being a major reason many companies want workers back in offices. “You do not get your best ideas out of these freewheeling brainstorming sessions,” says Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School. Mostly, though, grumblers have accepted such meetings as an inescapable office reality, like elevator Muzak and bad coffee. An Amazon spokesman adds that the company’s brainstorming sessions are sometimes unstructured but often begin with colleagues sharing well-researched memos, reducing time spent on ill-conceived ideas.

☆ Gas surcharges have ended. But not everyone is happy
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Nathaniel Meyersohn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Amazon, Uber and Lyft recently ended extra fuel surcharges as gas prices dropped late last year. These companies added gas surcharges in response to skyrocketing energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Gas prices swung wildly in 2022: At one point the national average for a gallon of gas was above $5 for the first time ever, according to AAA. Fuel surcharges went directly to ride-share drivers and were meant to help them soften the blow of high gas prices. It’s unlikely that gas prices will spike this year.

☆ FTC Alleges Supplement Company ‘Hijacked’ Amazon Reviews to Boost Sales
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Megan Graham | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Nutritional supplement company Bountiful Co. will pay $600,000 following Federal Trade Commission allegations that it made products on Amazon look like they had more reviews and higher average ratings than they really did. The FTC said the case marks its first enforcement action against a practice called “review hijacking,” in which a marketer makes reviews for one product appear to apply to another. Products considered variations share the same product page on Amazon as alternate choices, such as a T-shirt offered in multiple colors. The FTC said the decision to accept the proposed consent agreement was unanimous, with the commission voting 4-0 in favor of doing so. Though Amazon has been active in pursuit of fake review sellers, Mr. Freund said problems remain.

☆ ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Greg Bensinger | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

In the edition, Sammy the Squirrel, crudely rendered also using AI, learns from his forest friends about saving money after happening upon a gold coin. While that may not sound like much, it is enough to inspire him to compose other books using the software. There were over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store as of mid-February listing ChatGPT as an author or co-author, including "How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT," "The Power of Homework" and poetry collection "Echoes of the Universe." There is even a new sub-genre on Amazon: Books about using ChatGPT, written entirely by ChatGPT. In the video, White says anyone with the wherewithal and time could create 300 such books a year, all using AI.

☆ Here are the companies that have laid off employees this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Tech firms went on a hiring spree. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees. The crypto brokerage announced in early January that it’s cutting 950 people – almost one in five employees in its workforce. Departments from human resources to the company’s Amazon (AMZN) Stores will be affected. They’re not in heavy people expansion mode every year,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to employees.

☆ Amazon axes its charity donation program
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Jordan Valinsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN —Amazon is shutting down its “Smile” charity donation program as the company cuts costs and rethinks its strategy. In total, $500 million has been donated since its 2013 launch, with an average donation of less than $230 per charity, the company said. Charities enrolled in the program will get a one-time donation “equivalent to three months of what they earned in 2022,” Amazon (AMZN) said, noting that charities will still be able to accrue donations until the program closes. Amazon recently announced it would lay off roughly 18,000 employees. Amazon and other tech firms significantly ramped up hiring over the past couple of years as the pandemic shifted consumers’ habits toward e-commerce.

☆ Investors anxiously await jobs report for clues about Fed rate hikes
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Paul R. La Monica | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Traders are betting on a further deceleration in jobs growth because that could lead to a reduction in the size of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Further strength could set off more alarm bells about inflation and Fed rate hikes. Focus on worker payWall Street will also need to dive even deeper into Friday’s jobs report to get a better sense of what’s happening in the economy. Investors cheered the fact that wage growth, measured by average hourly earnings, rose only 4.7% over the previous 12 months in October. Big Tech keeps handing out pink slipsOverall, the jobs market is still in good shape.

☆ Amazon to make big business changes in E.U. settlement
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Amazon will make major changes to its business practices to end competition probes in Europe by giving customers more visible choices when buying products and, for Prime members, more delivery options, European Union regulators said Tuesday. The E.U.’s executive Commission said it accepted the legally binding commitments from Amazon to resolve two antitrust investigations. “As Amazon cannot populate both Buy Boxes with its own retail offers, this will give more visibility to independent sellers,” Vestager said. It will stop discriminating against Prime sellers that don’t use its own logistics and delivery services and will let Prime members freely choose any delivery service. The settlement comes amid a wider crackdown by regulators in Europe and elsewhere on Big Tech companies.

☆ Amazon UK adds e-cargo bikes, walkers in decarbonisation drive
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Reuters Staff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

FILE PHOTO: An Amazon delivery person pulls a cart full of packages in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., December 10, 2021. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File PhotoLONDON (Reuters) - Amazon UK said it would expand its electric-cargo bike fleet and make more deliveries on foot to accelerate the decarbonisation of the transportation network it uses to deliver packages across the country. Amazon is targeting net-zero carbon by 2040 and said that the extra e-cargo bikes, a four-wheeled vehicle with handlebars and a container on the back, and the walkers would carry 2 million deliveries a year. In 2021, Amazon delivered more than 45 million packages using its electric fleet. As well as the electric bikes, it already has 1,000 electric delivery vans and five fully electric heavy goods vehicles in its fleet.

☆ Amazon stock falls nearly 20% on light holiday quarter sales forecast
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Amazon (AMZN) stock fell nearly 20% in after-hours trading Thursday after the company forecast its holiday quarter sales would be lighter than analysts had expected. The weaker forecast comes as rising inflation and looming recession fears weigh on consumer purchasing decisions. Amazon reported revenue of $127.1 billion for its third-quarter, a 15% increase from the prior year but just missing Wall Street estimates. The company reported its Amazon Web Services segment sales increased 27% year-over-year to $20.5 billion – representing a slower pace of growth for a closely-watched business unit than Wall Street had expected. Amazon initially saw its business boom during the pandemic, as more consumers relied on online shopping.

☆ ‘Game of Thrones’ ended with a thud. But ‘House of the Dragon’ has caught fire
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-09 | by ( Frank Pallotta | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN Business —HBO has created a kingdom of hits, with none as popular as “Game of Thrones.” But “Game of Thrones” ended with a thud in 2019 when critics and fans were unhappy with the fantasy epic’s ho-hum conclusion (Bran Stark on the Iron Throne? Create more “Game of Thrones,” of course. Enter “House of the Dragon,” a prequel that takes place almost 200 years before the events of its predecessor and focuses on the Targaryen family. To put that number into context, season seven of “Game of Thrones” averaged 32.7 million viewers per episode, and season 8, its final season, averaged 46 million viewers. (It doesn’t hurt that “Game of Thrones” is pretty much like watching sports, albeit with more dragons.)

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