Value Blog

However what is more surprising, perhaps, than a gunmaker experiencing such heated demand for weaponry (are we preparing for a wild west breakdown of civil law?) is the fact that a $950 million company that's been in business for over 60 years, that knows its product and its customer base as well as any company can, and that reports no breakdown whatever in its production capability, could be caught off guard in such dramatic fashion and see orders go unfilled.

After receiving over a million orders in the first quarter, Ruger CEO Mike Fifer said:

The continued proliferation of globalization and the Internet have produced a world economy that is more competitive now than it's ever been before. Because these trends are bound to continue, companies are desperately hunting for ways to differentiate their products and services from the pack. And the best way to do that is through their brand.

EIGHT years ago Facebook launched as an online social network connecting a small college community from a dorm room at Harvard University. Today the company has 845m active users across the globe and a wealth of data. One aspect of these data, which Facebook has shared with The Economist, shows a rough correlation between current global Facebook friendships and the old boundaries of once-mighty European empires.

The future of urban farming is under construction in Sweden as agricultural design firm Plantagon works to bring a 12-year-old vision to life: The city of Linköping will soon be home to a 17-story "vertical greenhouse."