The $12 smartphone

Even as 5G mobile networks begin to expand in India, about half of the country’s 1.4bn people remain disconnected from the internet. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is betting a new web-enabled mobile phone that costs about $12 can change that and win yet more customers for his dominant wireless network provider. The device, launched in July by Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm, resembles the simple, durable Nokia phones from decades past. While the device isn’t 5G-capable, it offers 4G speeds, meaning it can stream music and video via pre-installed apps from Reliance Jio’s services. The phone can also be used to make digital payments, a practice that has boomed in India in recent years. Many Indians who are online access the Internet via smartphones. But a smartphone in India typically costs more than $250, far out of reach for millions of people who make just a few dollars a day.

(Adapted from “Billionaire Bets That A $12 Mobile Phone Can Get More Of The World’s Most Populous Country Online,” by Newley Purnell, published on October 12, 2023, by The Wall Street Journal)

Network to be noticed

Gaining allies throughout your organisation and connecting with people who have decision-making power will often help you get ahead. To start, map out your stakeholders: your manager and their boss, as well as the peers and the team members you work with most. Make sure you’re clear on what each of these people needs to know, how often you should update them, and how you should do it. When describing who you are and what you do, you should be able to explain your role and how your tasks, projects, or assignments are contributing to the goals of your team or larger organisation.

Remember that the value you deliver goes beyond your output and the hours you put in. Most managers are less interested in how much you have crossed off your to-do list and much more interested in the impact of those efforts.

(Adapted from “Why You Shouldn’t Treat Work Like School,” by Niven Postma, published by HBR Ascend)

Guns and games

US gun maker Remington signed a deal to put one of its rifles in the popular videogame franchise Call of Duty as part of a marketing plan to reach young customers, according to internal emails and company records. Digital replicas of real guns have appeared in numerous video games, and executives from both industries have acknowledged they signed partnerships for that purpose. The documents, from the late 2000s and early 2010s, show Remington and Freedom Group officials pursued deals to place their guns in shooter video games as part of a marketing push for new audiences because they were concerned their customer base was ageing. Executives at the gun giant, which was owned by private-equity company Cerberus and filed for bankruptcy in 2020, believed such deals would “help create brand preference among the next generation” and allow the company to “win our fair share of these young consumers,” according to an undated Freedom Group memo titled “Gaming Strategy.”

(Adapted from “The Secret Deal That Put A Real Rifle Into ‘Call of Duty’,” by Zusha Elinson and Cameron McWhirter, published on October 16, 2023 by the Wall Street Journal)

A hybrid future

Since the end of the pandemic, the workforce has watched and wondered: will we return to the office and work as we did in 2019, or will the great global remote work experiment stick? It’s no longer a question worth debating. The future of the office has arrived… and it’s hybrid. For many remote-capable employees, the transition to hybrid isn’t new. Many settled into their new work location in mid-2022, and most currently report they plan to work there long-term. Moreover, leaders of large companies agree hybrid work is here to stay in their organisations. Eight in 10 Chief Human Resource Officers from Fortune 500 companies surveyed by Gallup report that they have no plans to decrease remote work flexibility in the next 12 months, confirming the sentiment that hybrid work is the new normal.

(Adapted from “The Future Of The Office Has Arrived: It’s Hybrid,” by Ben Wigert, Jim Harter and Sangeeta Agrawal, published on October 9, 2023, by Gallup)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 23th, 2023