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Business

The new geography of business

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: US business editor, The Economist, NEW YORK

The pandemic forced firms to experiment furiously in 2020. Now comes the
reckoning

2021 in brief

A new airline planned by David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airways, is due to start
service in March, despite the airline industry facing its worst financial crisis ever. The
airline, called Breeze Airways, is expected to focus initially on underserved airports in
the south-eastern United States

IT WAS INNOVATION at warp speed. The best firms in many industries responded to
the outbreak of covid-19 with impressive agility. Employees adapted to new working
methods such as video-conferencing from the kitchen table. Suddenly unprofitable
business lines were swiftly replaced by once-risky approaches like “click and collect”
shopping. Digitisation went into hyper-drive, sending e-commerce, online