So You Gave Your Customers' Data to the Government...

Rang, Recorded, Delivered, I'm Yours


When the news broke about the U.S. government's PRISM program, which collects data from phone companies like Verizon and online sites like Facebook, the reactions and reporting mostly focused on the NSA's broad ability to know exactly what many Americans (as well as foreigners) are doing, one keystroke or call at a time. For telecom companies like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, complying with government requests for information isn't uncommon: In 2011, Verizon received about 260,000 requests for customer data; AT&T got 49,700 (965 of which it rejected). Essentially, "complying with requests for such data has been part of doing business for much of the past decade," though Verizon in particular notes that it takes pains to ensure customers' privacy. And Denny Strigl, Verizon's former president, says that the company is "between a rock and a hard place here. If people are going to make an issue of this, the issue is with the government — not with the corporate citizen who complies with the law." Tech companies, meanwhile, are denying any knowledge of PRISM. While public anger does seem to be aimed mainly at the government right now, that can change on a dime, and companies may well suffer from customers’ wrath. On a lighter note, something else any good businessperson should know: Never, ever use the type of graphics the U.S. government did in a slideshow about the program.

"This Isn't Harvard Grad Stuff"

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World Bloomberg Businessweek

Circuit City fell first. Best Buy and JCPenney are struggling. Then there's Costco, the membership warehouse that's doing incredibly well and paying its employees a living wage (not to mention providing health care and retirement benefits). In this in-depth profile featuring the company's new CEO, Craig Jelinek, Brad Stone explores the history of Costco's way of doing business and the challenges the company faces going forward (let's hope Amazon can't figure out how to deliver groceries in bulk over the internet). Two things stand out about Costco’s corporate culture: First, people stay at for decades, and the company doesn't hire business school grads into its upper echelons. This means senior executives frequently talk about succession planning, something that's often lacking at other companies. The other? There's no PR department, an omission that echoes the company's insistence on simplicity. "This isn't Harvard grad stuff," Jelinek explains. "We sell quality stuff at the best possible price. If you treat consumers with respect and treat employees with respect, good things are going to happen to you." Touché? Or naïve?

Who's That Crossing My Bridge?

Trying to Stem the Rising Tide of Patent Lawsuits Planet Money

So who are these patent trolls anyway? The U.S. government says it's cracking down on purveyors of patent-infringement lawsuits that are only about squeezing money out of companies. In a close look at the problem, NPR follows the case of a technology innovator who took out patents on his and others’ ideas in the 1990s — ideas that never turned into products or companies but that have become a source of revenue through patent suits. Lots of companies that are targeted by this kind of lawsuit end up settling, because defending a patent case requires explaining technology to a jury. Just try that sometime. The patent-suit business can be very lucrative, at the targets' expense — one company was so severely hurt by a settlement that it had to lay off employees. —Andy O'Connell

Good Business Sense

Three Reasons Why I'm Voting for Gay Marriage Financial Times

Former BP chief executive John Browne resigned from his position in 2007 after he lied to a judge about a former boyfriend. Now he would like you to know why he's supporting an upcoming gay marriage vote in the UK. One: History shows that marriage is an evolving institution, so it’s not true that gay marriage represents a disruption of something eternal. Two: It makes business sense: "People are happier and more productive and make more money for their company when they feel they are included and can be themselves." Three: If Browne had seen other gay men in stable, legally recognized relationships when he was growing up, it would have been easier for him to come out. According to Quartz, his piece is "the first such forceful defense of gay rights by a major figure in the global oil industry, in which a homophobic environment persists."

Grin and Actually Mean It

Maximizing Happy Kellogg Insight

"How happy were you today?" This is one of the questions Kellogg School of Management professor Kelly Goldsmith asked in a series of studies that measured whether happiness is actually attainable – and, she found, this might very well be the wrong question to pose. While people who monitored themselves using this question as a baseline reported small increases in happiness, it was another question – "Did you do your best to be happy today?" — that helped people make real progress in feeling happier. Why? The latter question reminds us that we want to be happy, and because it implies we have the power to increase the feeling, it can lead to actual changes in behavior.

BONUS BITS:

Once You Start Me Up I'll Sometimes Stop

The Selling of Instagram (Vanity Fair)
The Misevaluation of Farmville (New Yorker)
The Echo Chamber of Silicon Valley (New York Times)