Felix Gillette, Jennifer Kaplan, and Sam Chambers report in Bloomberg Businessweek on Big Tobacco’s adaptation of the Silicon Valley playbook: sleek design, disruption, open-floor plan “innovation zones” with Eero Saarinen chairs, you name it. Welcome to the world of alternative nicotine platforms.
In between heatsticks, you holster the cyberpipe in a mobile charger, a smooth, palm-size contraption that calls to mind a cigarette pack mated with a smartphone and designed by Apple’s Jony Ive. “I was a smoker before,” Calantzopoulos said as he handled a charger. “I switched to this completely, and I cannot smoke cigarettes anymore.” Somewhere in flavor country the Marlboro Man is turning over in his grave.
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