Starbucks Investors Press Coffee Chain for Change on Unequal Family Leave

– The Guardian 

At the annual meeting of Starbucks shareholders, executives were confronted by a barista who demanded more paid family leave for new moms like her. Now, if a group of Starbucks investors has its way, the people asking that question will soon be the shareholders themselves.

 

Starbucks, Google Assailed by Investors Over Gender Policies

– The Business Times

Investors focused on social issues are finding that trickle-down diversity doesn’t work. For years, they surmised that having enough women on boards and in senior management would produce fairer policies. Now investors are changing tactics, saying it’s not enough and that employers also need to implement gender-pay equity and paid-leave policies that attract and retain women.

 

Don’t CEOs Understand That Racial Inequality Is Bad for Business?

– Fortune       

Fortune contends that we are in a new era for corporations in the United States: CEOs are speaking out on race — a topic with a deep history that continues to tear the nation apart.

 

Big Ideas Are Getting Harder – And More Expensive – To Find.

– Stanford News 

Modern-day inventors — even those in the league of Steve Jobs — will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past. That’s because big ideas are getting harder and harder to find, and innovations have become increasingly massive and costly endeavors, according to new research from economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As a result, tremendous continual increases in research and development will be needed to sustain even today’s low rate of economic growth.