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ICEs occupation in Minnesota has lasted weeks, and until a couple of days ago, the states major corporations, quick to issue statements in wake of George Floyds shooting in 2020, had been largely silent. When Fast Company reached out to several heavy hitters in mid-January, including Target and Best Buy, there was no response. Finally, on Sunday, 60 of the states major business leaders put out a response calling for “de-escalation.” But the statement has been criticized on social media and beyond, with some calling it spineless. It came over two weeks since federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizen Renee Good, and a day after federal agents also fatally shot U.S. citizen Alex Pretti. For weeks, the Twin Cities have been awash in chaos and fear as ICE raids streets, shops, and schools, profoundly disrupting daily life, as well as economic activity. Roughly 80% of immigrant-owned businesses along main streets have closed, while restaurants and health care centers in some of the surrounding suburbs have had to cut hours because employees are afraid to come to work. Last Friday, there was an economic blackout as hundreds of businesses closed and over 75,000 protesters marched. Given the loss of life and constant turmoil, it’s puzzling why Minnesotas business leaders were quiet for so long. For insight, Fast Company talked to Bill George, lecturer at Harvard Business School and former CEO of Medtronic, one of the worlds biggest medical tech companies, whose operations are based in Minneapolis. This interview was conducted over two days and has been edited for length and clarity. Fast Company: What do you think of the statement that businesses finally released? Well, I think the statement itself is very significant. If you worked in a large company, you can’t believe how difficult it is to get not just one but 60 CEOs from a wide range of businesses to [do the same thing]. These people are very cautious about signing on anyone else’s statements. There are those that thought it didn’t go far enough. But as Marshall McLuhan once said “the medium is the message.” I dont see CEOs or companies that were left off. So I think having all of them sign on may have taken a while, but it’s significant. And I’d go further. Let me just say: I hope this will be the tipping point, and the businesses are sending a powerful signal to the White House that they are being harmed by this. No doubt it’s causing a loss of productivity and lots of issues. I hope this will be the turning point that will cause the White House to move on. We did hear a huge outpouring of support after George Floyds death. What was different this time around? They want to stay out of the news, and many of them feel they can work behind the scenes to get what they want. You see some of the deals that have been cut with Nvidia and Intel and Apple and others. But I think most companies don’t have that kind of access. Its a different time than it was with George Floyd. And I think there is a very strong point of view that we should work behind the scenes and not do anything to provoke anyone in the governmentnot just the president, but any of the members of [Trumps] administrative team. The companies have to let ICE do their job, whether they like it or notbut I think that their employees need to know they have their support. The public letter from the business leaders has gotten criticism on social media for not going far enough. Well, the governor and the attorney general, who I’ve spoken with, are being investigated. So I don’t think any of these CEOs want to get between their interests and ICE or the federal government. These CEOs are not very political. None of them are extreme left or extreme right. You might say that they’re slightly to the right center, but they’re quite independent in how they vote. Their primary concern is to run their business and stay out of politics. How did Alex Prettis death trigger the timing of the statement? This didn’t just get thrown together. These things don’t happen easily, sure; particularly when a lot of other companies are involved. Its hard enough to get a statement out of one company, much less 60. But I think these things are all having an impact: the protests in Minneapolis, [Prettis] death, the concern to people’s business, the fact that Minnesota companies are highly dependent upon being able to recruit people from all around the United States and all around the world. What if the statement is not enough to get the administration to move on? I’m not sure. I think it’s continuing discussions behind the scenes. And what kind of leverage do the companies have behind the scenes? I don’t think a lot. These are not companies that are making big promises that you’ve seen very publicly for the last year that I’m aware of, but people care about these businesses. The president himself is a businessman, and will recognize that. One other thought is: what is the goal here? We have very few illegal immigrants in Minnesota. I can assure you, the companies on that list do not hire illegal immigrants. They hire immigrants. For example, at the Mayo Clinic, several of the physicians, including a CEO, were born outside the U.S. Thats great. Its great for the Mayo Clinic. Its great for Minnesota. If you were really looking for illegal immigrants, why wouldn’t you go to Florida, Arizona, or Texas? What do the companies want? They want to restore calm, and I’m sure they would like to see this all get settled. They’re hoping to get a peaceful situation and not provoke greater confrontation. They certainly don’t want to have the United States military sent in. They certainly don’t want to see martial law declared for Minnesota. Whats the long-term impact of this corporate silence going to be on employees? Employees are going to feel very disappointed, and they may feel a lack of loyalty to the company. As a CEO, you have to keep innovation going. And to do that, youve got to attract people from all over the country and all over the world to come to Minnesota. From a longer term perspective, this could scare off people from coming. As a CEO, Id want to make sure people know we’ve got their backs, and we will provide the support they need.
Category:
E-Commerce
The oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was rumoured to have said that his three rules for how to become rich were: Rise early. Work hard. Strike oil. Its one of those eminently quotable remarks because it captures something we all know to be true, that luck and chance have as much to do with success as anything else. Yet we dont value people for their luck. We dont exalt those who win the lottery or walk away from a roulette table flush with cash. Instead, we praise talent, skill, and dedication. And that creates tension, because although luck plays a big role in outcomes, it is only the effort we put into developing our abilities that we can control. That is the nature of what the French writer Albert Camus called existential rebellion. It is through our own efforts and actions that we find meaning in an indifferent universe, even if the rewards for those efforts have a significant random element. Believing in luck, then, is itself an act of defiance. To work, to strive, to build skill in such a world is not naveté but rebellion. How Einstein became an icon Although we remember him as an icon today, for a long time, Albert Einstein wasnt very popular, or even well liked, in the early twentieth century. He was German in the wake of World War I, Jewish in an age of heightened anti-Semitism, and so seemingly aloof and full of himself that he claimed that only a handful of people on earth could understand his strange theories. That abruptly changed when Einstein first arrived in America on April 3rd, 1921 and a handful of journalists dutifully went to meet him. When they arrived at New York Harbor, they were amazed to find a crowd of thousands waiting for him, screaming with adulation and waving handkerchiefs. Surprised at his popularity, and charmed by his genial, off-kilter personality, the story of Einsteins arrival made the front page in major newspapers. It was all a bit of a mistake. The people in the crowd werent there to see Einstein, but Chaim Weizmann, the popular Zionist leader that Einstein was traveling with to raise funds for Hebrew University (and who the WASPy science reporters didnt recognize). Nevertheless, thats how Einstein gained his iconic status, which would overshadow the other great lights, such as Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, in the golden age of physics. From there, the Matthew effect (or what network scientists call preferential attachment) took over. Because Einstein was now so well-known, newspapers wanted to report about him and ask him about the other scientific breakthroughs of the day. Just as the rich get richer, the popular get more popular. Einstein became more than a scientist, but a cultural touchstone. Yet Einstein didnt study physics for fame. In fact, it was his failure to follow convention that mired his early career in misery, unemployment, and poverty. And, although his groundbreaking work was behind him when he entered New York Harbor, he continued to work on physics until his death in 1955, long after he had become, as Robert J Oppenheimer put it, a landmark, not a beacon. The Wunderkind almost lost to history On a January morning in 1913, the eminent mathematician G.H. Hardy opened his mail to find a letter written in an almost indecipherable scrawl. It began inauspiciously: I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of 20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age. I have had no university education but I have undergone the ordinary school. I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at Mathematics. Inside, he found what looked like mathematical nonsense, using strange notation and purporting theories that scarcely seemed possible. Much of it was incomprehensible, except for one small section that directly refuted a conjecture Hardy himself had made just months earlier. Assuming it was some sort of elaborate prank, he threw the letter in the trash. Throughout the day, however, Hardy found the ideas gnawing at him and he retrieved the letter. That night, he took it over to his longtime collaborator, J.E. Littlewood. By midnight, they realized that they had just stumbled upon one of the greatest mathematical talents the world had ever seen: a destitute young man in India named Srinivasa Ramanujan. Living in extreme poverty and largely self-taught, Ramanujan had come across an advanced text as a teenager, devoured it, and began filling notebooks with theorems and proofs. He showed his work to local mathematicians, but no one quite knew what to make of it. With the help of friends, Ramanujan sent letters to three prominent professors at Cambridge. The first two ignored him. Hardy was the third. It is doubtful that Ramanujan was the first aspiring mathematician to send his work to famous professors. Most, like his first two letters, were lost to history. But Ramanujan gave it a shot, got a little lucky, and were all better off for it. Even now, more than a century later, his notebooks continue to be widely studied by mathematicians looking to glean new insights. Hardy, a genius by any measure, was one of the most important mathematicians of his time. But when asked to name his greatest discovery he replied, without hesitation, Ramanujan. The miracle cure we almost missed In 1891, Dr. William Coley had an unusual idea. Inspired by an obscure case in which a man who had contracted a severe infection was cured of cancer, he deliberately infected a tumor on his patients neck with a heavy dose of bacteria. Miraculously, the tumor vanished, and the patient remained cancer-free even five years later. Looking to repeat his success, he created a special brew of toxins designed to jump-start the immune system. Unfortunately, he was never able to replicate his initial results consistently. His idea was met with skepticism by the medical community ad, when radiation therapy was developed in the early twentieth century, Coleys research was largely forgotten. Dr. William Coley was unlucky. Yet his daughter, Helen Coley Nauts, refused to let the idea die. With a $2,000 grant from Nelson Rockefeller, she founded the Cancer Research Institute in 1953 to study immunological approaches to cancer. While mostly dismissed by the medical community, it did inspire a small cadre of devotees to keep looking, albeit mostly in vain. A little luck came in 1996, when a researcher named Jim Allison, following a hunch, published a landmark paper suggesting that there may be some merit to Coleys idea after all. Using a novel approach, he was able to show amazing results in mice. The tumors just melted away, Jim would later tell me. Excited, he rushed to pharmaceutical companies, hoping to secure funding. Instead, he was turned away. Drugmakers had already investedand lostbillions on similar ideas. Hundreds of trials had failed. It was depressing, Jim recalled. I knew this discovery could make a difference, but nobody wanted to invest in it. Nonetheless, he persevered. He collected more data, pounded the pavement, and made his case. It took him three years, but eventually he found a small biotech company, Medarex, that agreed to back him and his work. The drug that resulted would open the floodgates and make cancer immunotherapy a viable treatment. Jim would win the Nobel Prize in 2018. Becoming an existential rebel Camus believed our existence was absurd. He compared the human condition to Sisyphus, the mythical Greek king condemned to roll a boulder uphill, only to watch it roll back down again, for eternity. Incredibly, Camus imagines Sisyphus, returning to his labors at the foot of the mountain, as happy, having found meaning in his task. That is the nature of existential rebellion: to create meaning for yourself in a universe that provides none. In two decades researching innovation, transformation, and change, one constant I have found is that you cant control your luck. Anything can happen. Sure things often fail while low-probability events occur all the time. We can easily imagine a world in which Einstein remained a clerk in a patent office, doing physics in his spare time; Ramanujan died an anonymous pauper, his genius never recognized; and William Coleys vision of a revolutionary cancer cure remained a pipe dream. But each persevered against an indifferent universe, and were all better off for it. We cant control our luck, but we can decide for ourselves how we seek meaning. Einstein spent the final decades of his life in Princeton, NJ, working on theories that would never pan out. On his deathbed, Ramanujan defined a new class of mathematical function and the number that bears his name. Dr. Coley, now recognized as the father of cancer immunotherapy, died surrounded by his loving family who were dedicated to his legacy. And, like Sisyphus, we can imagine each of them happy, and maybe hoping for a little luck.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump has strong-armed many of Americas biggest trading partners into pledging trillions of dollars of investment in the United States. But a study out Tuesday raises doubts about whether the money will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did. How realistic are these commitments? write Gregory Auclair and Adnan Mazarei of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank that supports free trade. The short answer is that they are clouded with uncertainty. They looked at more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Trump used the threat of punitive tariffsimport taxesto pry concessions out of those trading partners, including the investment pledges. The White House has published an even higher investment figure – $9.6 trillionthat includes public and private investment commitments from other countries. Trump himself, never one to undersell his achievements, has put the number far higher$17 trillion or $18 trillionthough Auclair and Mazarei note that the basis for his claim is not clear. All the numbers are huge. Total private investment in the United States was most recently running at a $5.4 trillion annual pace. In 2024, the last year for which figures are available, total foreign direct investment in the United States amounted to $151 billion. Direct investment includes money sunk into such things as factories and offices but not financial investments like stocks and bonds. The pledged amounts are large, Auclair and Mazarei write, but their time horizon varies, and the metrics for measuring and thus verifying the pledges are generally unclear. They note, for example, that the European Unions pledge to invest $600 billion in the United States carries no legally binding commitment. The report also finds that some countries would strain to meet their pledges. For the Gulf countries, the commitments are large relative to their financial resources, the researchers write. Saudi Arabia appears capable of meeting its targets, with some difficulty. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar would find it even harder and might have to finance the investments by borrowing. In all three cases, the commitments are nonbinding, and investments from these countries could fall well below headline numbers, they write. Moreover, these agreements have been reached under duress, Mazarei, a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview. Its not necessarily being done willingly. So trading partners could look for ways to escape their commitmentsespecially if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs Trump used to negotiate the one-sided agreements. A ruling is expected as early as February. Other countries may find a way to wiggle out, Mazarei said. Still, the Trump administration can turn to alternative tariffs if the justices rule the current tariffs illegal. President Trump agreed to lower tariffs on countries we have trade deals with in exchange for investment commitments and other concessions,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. The president reserves the right to revisit tariff rates if other countries renege on their commitments, and anyone who doubts President Trumps willingness to put his money where his mouth is should ask Nicolas Maduro and Iran for their thoughts. U.S. troops overthrew and arrested Venezuelan President Maduro early this month, and Trump ordered the United States to join Israel in bombing Iran last year. Auclair and Mazarei agree that the investment Trump lands could end up creating jobs, spurring economic growth, and making supply chains more secure by bringing production to America. Trump, they note, is in some ways taking a similar approach to Biden, using government industrial policy” to encourage more manufacturing in the United States. But Biden tapped taxpayer dollars to finance infrastructure projects and incentives for companies to invest in green technology and semiconductors. Trump is using the tariff threat to get foreign countriesand their companiesto pick up the tab. And he has dropped the push to encourage clean energy, focusing instead on promoting fossil fuels. In their report, the Peterson researchers worry about how the investment decisions would get made and whether they would reflect sound economics. This approach may yield real investments and jobs, they write, but it raises familiar industrial policy concerns: opaque projection selection, weak accountability, and the risk that political criteria crowd out economic efficiency. Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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