When the directors of Uber ousted its CEO and cofounder, Travis Kalanick, in June 2017, the move was paradoxically both long overdue and somewhat unexpected. For months Kalanick and the company had suffered a string of scandals, any one of which might have undone a typical chief executive. A female engineer had posted a long public account of rampant sexual harassment and the company’s “bro culture,” to which Uber’s HR department had turned a blind eye.
n 2006, Raj Shah was an F16 pilot in the U.S. Air Force, flying combat missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was the war’s worst year, and Shah had a problem. The display screen in his cockpit had no moving map. The GPS showed him ground coördinates, but there was no overlaid image—no moving dot or icon—that showed where he was in relation to those coördinates. “There were times,” he recalls, “when I didn’t know whether I was over Iraq or Iran.” During home leave, he bought an iPAQ, one of the early pocket PCs, and loaded it with a standard, cheap aviation-map program.
Aug 18 China's state council has approved a 200 billion yuan ($30.19 billion) venture capital fund to invest in innovative technology and industrial upgrading projects, the country's state assets regulator said on Thursday.
China has been encouraging its industrial firms to rise up the value chain through technical innovation and tougher efficiency standards, with the aim of creating globally competitive conglomerates. It has vowed to be more selective in the way it disburses funds, and aims to cut off credit for non-competitive firms that are unable to upgrade.
