The Vatican vacancy, which was filled yesterday, was created because Pope Benedict broke with the tradition of centuries and said, simply, "I can't do this job any more." While his surrender of power was based on physical limitations, its implicit message to other CEOs, who cannot perform their jobs for...

Two stories stunned our weekend reading and generated acres of press attention. Although they were completely unrelated thematically, to me they are completely related conceptually.
Because they have a lot to say about the way we make judgments, take risks in real time, and approach decision-making under stress.

End-of-year predictions are a win/win for wannabe clairvoyants and reporters. The former have the chance to preen as experts -- and of course, there will never, ever be any accountability as they're proved wrong. As for the latter, they get ready-made stories at a time of year when they'd rather...

Here's a message to just about every private equity shop out there -- from the biggest on down. It's time to get your heads out of Excel and listen up. There's a really simple way for you to make the billions in all your funds work smarter, harder and faster.

Gill Linton has a foot -- likely wearing a 1980s pair of Thierry Mugler shoes -- in two worlds. Her mission is to bring the chaotic, local and impractical world of shopping for vintage clothing into the world of the web, ecommerce and original content. Gill's startup -- named Byronesque,...

It was dark and getting cold, and the stores were cold and dark and they were empty like the streets. There were no flashlights available no matter what you were willing to pay, even if you were willing to trade an interview at Dalton, and those who had them held...

Despite the praise being heaped on the president for not sleepwalking through the debate last night, one thing was -- yet again -- conspicuously absent: A single reference to his stimulus program, the most significant economic legislation of the last 50 years.

President Obama's refusal to use his stimulus program...

There were two figures who stood, invisibly but powerfully, behind Michelle Obama as she gave her speech last night. Two women, generations apart, speaking through a third.

The first was Eleanor Roosevelt, who invented the concept of the modern first lady, and who in fact operated at a level of...

Facebook's stock -- the largest IPO in history, and without doubt the most hyped and histrionically heralded -- is now half the size of its debut. Just about everyone has an opinion about what happened and what's next, and we've heard them all.

Well, almost all. We haven't heard what...

The media is abuzz, if not ablaze, with coverage of Apple's victory over Samsung. The reports analyze the extent of Apple's triumph, its economic implications, and what consumers might expect as a result. I can't think of the last time a patent case colonized multi-column headlines in the NYT and...

The face of entrepreneurship in America isn't just apps and digital start-ups. As Jake Steinfeld, reports in Take A Shot it can also be about starting a professional sports league from scratch. In this case, an outdoor lacrosse team, of all things. Jake, one of the few people in the...

The lead story in today's New York Times is the announcement that Foxconn, which manfactures voluptuous objects of techno-worship such as the iPhone, will soon be making radical changes in their employment policies.

As you've no doubt read, after a sweeping investigation by the Fair Labor Association --...

Just as the marketing of Christmas begins around Columbus Day, each year the Super Bowl commercial frenzy muscles onto the scene earlier and earlier, and extends beyond the final scrimmage. In fact, a Super Bowl commercial is no longer a mere message, it is a complex and prismatic marketing campaign...

As Romney's lead in Florida solidifies, and an unfocused Gingrich rages in all directions -- he's his own attack dog -- I want to come right out and say it. Romney's Brokaw commercial is one of the most devastatingly effective negative spots I've seen in years. I believe it will...

Despite the very public nature of Christopher Hitchens' battle with esophageal cancer -- amplified by his atheism and the media's ghoulish obsession with whether his mortal illness would elicit any crowd-pleasing, pre-deathbed conversions -- the amount of attention paid to the death of a "man of ideas" was extraordinary. Public...

Those looking for a unified metaphor to explain the sheer nuttiness of the Republican primary season need look no further than the return of Donald Trump -- and his distinctive hair infrastructure project.

For a time there, Trump had been off the radar. He had receded after resurrecting the hoary...

As the United Nations sits on the verge of an historical vote on the issue of Palestinian statehood, we can't forget this:

Israel started with one of the world's great brands. Since then, it's been on a reputation trajectory that would make a great Harvard Business Review case titled...

Tuesday -- the first day back at work after Labor Day -- is the symbolic start of the Serious Season.

Can there be a more emotional, more potent moment for a speech about jobs?

He could have started it off by saying:

"Today is the first day after Labor Day.

Today is C-Day. It's the grand launch of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an entity that was created nearly two years ago as part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, as regulatory fervor was surging in the post-meltdown, populist ether.

Unbridled banking testosterone was the enemy, with convenient expostulations from both...

Carl Bernstein describes the current uprising against Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation in terms he's intimately familiar with: Watergate. Give a child a hammer and every target looks like Nixon.

I think a more apt analogy would be the dazzling cycle of sea-change events that started in Tunisia...