FortuneFebruary/March 2023的目錄

THE EMAIL LANDED on Nov. 4. The subject line: Your role at Twitter. “It was my first time getting laid off,” says Grace-Ann Baker, a former director of product management at the social media company. As it turned out, Baker wasn’t alone. New owner Elon Musk would eventually let go of nearly two-thirds of the 7,500 employees he’d inherited at the beleaguered company. And in the coming weeks and months, the trend continued across the broader technology sector. Just as fast as tech companies had hired employees during the pandemic, they now quickly shed them as the economy slowed. At Amazon, more than 18,000 people were laid off; at Google parent Alphabet, 12,000; at Facebook parent Meta, 11,000; and at Microsoft, 10,000. Smaller companies downsized too, with layoffs announced…

FOR GOLFERS ON THE PGA TOUR, MAKING CONSTANT efforts to improve their game is simply the cost of doing business. The same can be said for the teams behind the sport. The PGA TOUR itself has been on a continual journey to further engage fans and stay on top of the leaderboard in the competitive landscape of sports business. The TOUR’s latest digital products are proof of that mission. Its wholly reworked app was offcially introduced at the season’s opening Sentry Tournament of Champions in January 2023, with a website launch shortly after. Both boast more immersive features, deeper data, and richer storytelling for golf enthusiasts. “We wanted enhanced, personalized, and purposeful experiences to bring fans even closer to the TOUR’s star-studded array of players, tournaments, and courses,” says…

CONSTANT DISRUPTION FROM ECONOMIC downturns, supply chain slowdowns, natural disasters, and shifting consumer preferences has come to define a new era of business that requires continual innovation. For global chemical and ingredients distribution company Univar Solutions, this challenge has given way to an incredible opportunity for transformation. “These past several years have tested the grit of chemical and ingredient distributors like never before,” says David Jukes, Univar Solutions president and CEO. “What has separated us from the rest has been our tireless efforts to sharpen our business model and position ourselves for long-term success.” To meet the rapidly changing needs of the market, Univar Solutions has spent the past four years expanding its nearly 100-year-old business. The Downers Grove, Ill.–based company has grown from a traditional bulk chemical distributor…

THE PROTESTS STARTED in the chill of winter and got bigger as the weather got warmer. At one gathering place outside rural Clearbrook, Minn., the demonstrators often outnumbered the town’s 500 or so residents, as activists, farmers, and citizens of nearby Native American reservations turned out to resist a catastrophe in the making. The protesters were there to stop the building of Enbridge Energy Line 3, a 1,000-mile-plus oil pipeline that would connect the Alberta tar sands in Canada to refineries in the U.S. Its foes believed the pipeline, if breached, could foul rivers and aquifers that they counted on for their livelihoods; more broadly, the flow of hydrocarbons it enabled would aggravate the global climate crisis. The protests were mostly peaceful, but as the crowds grew, authorities made…

IN ORDER TO STAY COMPETITIVE AMID DIGITAL transformation, small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are adopting innovative technologies to bring their companies online. As these businesses become increasingly tech-savvy, they are embracing digital payments. Eighty-seven percent of business owners that started a company during the pandemic said that access to electronic payment options was important, according to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council—creating a valuable opportunity for banks that can enable this digital transition. “There’s growing competition for these small business customers,” says Michael Reed, president of payments at Deluxe, a Minneapolisbased fintech company with 4 million active small business customers and more than 4,000 financial institution clients. “But banks still play an important role in this digital ecosystem—companies still need things like accounts and loans. So, banks need to…

IN THE NEAR FUTURE, CLEAN HYRDOGEN, OR HYDROGEN produced with very low or zero carbon emissions, could be one of the most viable replacements for fossil fuels. By 2050, it could cut 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, about 20% of human-generated CO2 emissions. In addition, it could help with net-zero transitions for steel, petrochemical, and fertilizer manufacturing, plus the heavy-duty trucking, aviation, railroad, and shipping industries. However, the expense of producing green hydrogen, more than $5 per kilogram, is hindering widespread adoption. The Wilmington, Del.–based chemistry company Chemours is helping change that. In October 2022, Chemours dedicated $200 million to expand its offering of Nafion™, a membrane material at the center of water electrolyzers. This membrane material enables green hydrogen energy production, energy storage in flow batteries,…

SIX YEARS AGO, in the heat of the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Dallas police chief David Brown made an unprecedented decision. With a man believed to have shot and killed five officers holed up in a parking garage, threatening to continue his rampage, Brown directed his squad to retrieve the department’s Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 bomb disposal robot. He then ordered officers to affix a brick of plastic C-4 to the robot, send it near the suspect, and detonate the explosive. The officers did as told, and the blast killed the 25-year-old assailant, former Army reservist Micah Johnson. The 2016 incident in Dallas was, and remains, the only known case of U.S. local law enforcement using an officer-controlled robot to…

IF THE LONG-THREATENED recession ends up slamming the economy, the stock market likely will be brutalized. But like snowflakes, all stocks are not the same. Some show promise of gaining nicely in fraught times, as the rest of this year is shaping up to be, even if others suffer. On the surface, an argument can be made that 2022’s winners should be 2023’s, as well. Higher-thannormal inflation, persistent Federal Reserve–engineered interest rate hikes, a stubborn pandemic, and international tensions all combined to gut-punch every S&P 500 category last year except for two. Energy (up 64%) and utilities (2%) were the only sectors to show increases. But expecting a reprise is far from assured. The propellants for energy last year, war-induced oil and gas shortages, are waning, and a recession…

At this time of surging energy prices and geopolitical uncertainty, the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is playing a pivotal role in the reshaping of the global economy. Hawazen Nazieh Nassief, one of the country’s leading champions of environmental and social responsibility, is helping to put sustainability at the heart of this new era. “We can use today’s challenges to drive things forward and come out of diffcult situations stronger,” she says. “Sustainable practices are being adopted in Saudi Arabia and in more and more countries. As a global community, we can save the world.” Hawazen is no stranger to challenges. After a long stint in charge of ESG at an oil company in Houston, she is now back in Saudi Arabia working with some of the world’s largest…

THE IDEA OF WOMEN “doing it all” has mostly been debunked, but the vast majority of female executives aren’t exactly shouting from the rooftops the whole truth about how they’re able to succeed personally and professionally. Typically, they have paid help or a stay-at-home partner—or both—assisting behind the scenes to make things run (more) smoothly. In 2023, when it seems everyone is oversharing on social media, why is there still a stigma around working women outsourcing care and household tasks? Two-thirds of U.S. working women who have at least one direct report pay for some type of hired help—from childcare to cleaning services to personal trainers to grocery delivery services like Instacart. That’s according to a poll Fortune conducted in conjunction with The Muse and Fairygodboss of nearly 400…

THE ONE-TWO PUNCH OF THE COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine created significant disruptions in global supply chains. For most businesses, operating in this environment has been challenging, to say the least. But during this rocky period, Veritiv, a B2B custom packaging solutions provider and supply chain expert, hasn’t merely survived—it has thrived. The company has proven its resilience, agility, and ability to innovate in order to help meet customers’ needs. These same qualities helped land the Atlanta-based organization on Fortune’s 2023 World’s Most Admired Companies list. Established in 2014, Veritiv has shown record financial performance over the past two years, resulting in significant share price growth. And while that’s certainly something to celebrate, Veritiv CEO Sal Abbate says he’s proudest of how the company’s dedicated employees…