When it comes to holiday shopping, it pays to track what retailers do, not what they say. For all the hype, Black Friday isn’t the day to find the best deals, according to new data from Adobe Systems Inc., which has collected information on one trillion visits to 4,500 retailing websites since 2008. (The Wall Street Journal)

How much sleep did you get last night? If the answer is "not enough" you’re hardly alone. According to Gallup’s estimates, almost half the people you’ll run into today are suffering from some level of sleep deprivation. We often dismiss a little morning fatigue as an inconvenience, but here’s the reality. Missing sleep worsens your mood, weakens your memory, and harms your decision-making all day long. (Harvard Business Review)

If you are shopping for business schools, you will not find the best deal at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, or at any of the top tier MBA programs in the country, for that matter. Elite business schools are so expensive that it tends to takes their graduates longer, on average, to profit from their degrees than do those who choose less-selective, more affordable programs, according to Bloomberg Businessweek data. (Businessweek)

Large and in Charge: From IT services and staffing firms to construction and real estate, these black entrepreneurs are witnessing hockey-stick growth. Intrigued? So were we. See which companies are leading the pack among Inc. 5000 companies. (Inc.)

At a turbulent time in business, more U.S. companies pick and promote executives who thrive amid ambiguity, coaches and recruiters say. These leaders don’t flinch at uncertainty, surprises, conflicting directions, multiple demands – or knotty problems with no clear answers. Shades of gray pervade today’s workplace, thanks to flattening management structures and volatile business conditions. (The Wall Street Journal)

The business of film faces a dearth of management talent. "We’re starting to see the warning signs of a skills shortage in this country," Ivan says. He reckons that in 18 months this shortage will begin to bite. To combat the potential crisis, Pinewood has teamed up with the Open University, a distance learning specialist, to produce an online course on the commercial side in the film industry. (Business Because)

It can be hard to recover from a less-than-stellar performance review, especially one that you didn’t see coming. You might feel angry, embarrassed, and confused. How do you regain your professional confidence? And how do you make the best use of the critical feedback? (Harvard Business Review)

Millennials, a generation born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, populate most MBA cohorts, which have an average age of 27-30, although there are exceptions. This generation is placing more value in entrepreneurship, fulfillment and careers which have a social impact. The implications for banks are that the brightest graduates see them as less attractive than smaller, more innovative organizations. (Business Because)

As part of the reporting on this month's magazine profile of Tristan Walker, Fast Company brought together a roundtable discussion of other African-American tech leaders. The conversation spanned everything from hiring practices of top firms to entrepreneurial funding. (Fast Company)

Already battered by a debt crisis in 2011 and fears of further stagnation, Europe's governments and investors will be nervously awaiting growth figures due Friday to see whether the euro zone is once again on the edge of recession. (CNBC)

MIT Professional Education worked with South Africa’s Regenesys Business School this summer to provide training to budding transportation and logistics managers from previously disadvantaged communities in South Africa. Thirty participants, along with two executives from Regenesys – Hazel Bagley, strategic business development manager and William Vivian, a founding director of the school – came to MIT’s campus in Cambridge in June to take the Mastering Innovation, and Design-Thinking Operations program designed for the group. (MIT)

Success is often about making the right choices, but what if choice were taken out of your hands? Every year, an estimated 640,000 bright American high school kids are excluded from high-level classes due to tracking that steers low-income and non-white students toward less rigorous coursework. This common practice dictates their college and career choices – and their earning potential – for decades to come. (Fast Company)

There is a new top dog in American business education: Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The Durham (N.C.)-based school has claimed the No. 1 spot in Bloomberg Businessweek‘s 14th biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, part of a shakeup that dethroned University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and also knocked elite rival Harvard Business School out of the top five for the first time in the history of the ranking. (Businessweek)

KeyBank and The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business have announced the 11th Annual Minority MBA Student Case Competition, February 27-March 1, 2015 in Cleveland, OH. Team registration is open now through December 19.

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The National Black MBA, Philadelphia Chapter, held its Annual Scholarship & Award Reception & Program at Drexel University’s Bossone Auditorium on Thursday. (Photos) (The Philadelphia Tribune)

The National Brotherhood of Skiers was founded in 1972 to diversify what has been called "the whitest and least integrated popular sport in America." On an average day, only two percent of the skiers on American slopes are black. But for one week a year, the NBS’s Black Ski Summit draws thousands of African-American skiers to a single ski town – making it, in some years, the largest ski gathering in America. The narrow goal of the National Brotherhood of Skiers is to place a black skier on the U.S. Olympic Team. (Pacific Standard)

Ana Medina says there’s an unwritten code in Silicon Valley. She was introduced to it after her first Google Inc. developer conference, where a guy in her row asked if she’d scored a free ticket because she’s a girl. Someone posted a photo of her from the event and it drew a raft of comments, about her cleavage. Her instinct was to broadcast her astonishment on Twitter, but friends talked her out of it. (Bloomberg)

What is the problem with the Internet in the United States? On Monday, President Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to set stringent net neutrality rules to ensure the free flow of content on the information superhighway. The regulations, he said, should ensure that "neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online." To do so, he suggested classifying consumer broadband as a public utility – like telephone service or the company that delivers electricity to your home – allowing the F.C.C. to set precise proscriptions covering quality of service. (The New York Times)

The recent successes of Bevel, of goal-crushing Kickstarter projects like the Rockwell and Beluga razors, and of retailers like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club, each of which has annual revenues in the tens of millions of dollars, suggest a new golden age of shaving. But they also raise a couple of questions: Why shaving, and why now? (Fast Company)

It was a brief phone call three years ago that inspired an idea that could forever change the face of retail. Entrepreneur Dipra Ray was chatting to a friend when the conversation drifted to the problems his friend’s fiancée was experiencing while looking for a wedding dress. The bride-to-be was traipsing across the city to different wedding dress specialists, located kilometers apart, knowing that despite her best efforts she may still not find a dress that took her fancy. She also knew that if she shopped online, she would likely receive a dress that did not fit properly. (In the Black)

Louis Beryl remembers how tough it was to get credit when he was in his 20s, even with a solid résumé and a spotless financial history. "If you’re low risk, you deserve a low interest rate," insists the Harvard MBA and former Wall Streeter, now 33. When he became a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2012, he hoped to find a financial technology startup involved in building what he calls "the modern bank for the next generation of consumers." (Entrepreneur)

In a row house in Georgetown, Kevin Plank started a company with about $15,000, some locally purchased fabric, and an ambitious plan to shake up the athletic apparel industry. It took the former University of Maryland football player five years to turn it into a $5 million dollar company. A decade later, Plank had built Under Armour into a billion-dollar sports apparel and equipment corporation. (The Washington Post)

It’s one of the most heated debates in economics: Is there such a thing as the "skills gap"? Yes, the unemployment rate has dropped significantly in recent months, but millions of Americans remain unemployed or have left the labor market altogether, and a startling number of Americans – 1.1 million – have been without work for 27 weeks or more. Given these statistics, it does seem strange that employers consistently claim they can’t find good people these days. (Fortune)

Nearly 7 million Americans are stuck in part-time jobs that they don’t want. The unemployment rate has fallen sharply over the past year, but that improvement is masking a still-bleak picture for millions of workers who say they can’t find full-time jobs. (The Wall Street Journal)

We may invest considerable energy in evaluating and selecting the best medical insurance for our budget and anticipated needs, keeping in mind that insurance is purchased to cover the risks you can’t afford to bear yourself. Considering all of the options and features available in medical insurance contracts, this task is not an easy one. Even if we’ve read the policy, we often don’t really have a clue how our insurance coverage actually works and what is covered until we have a claim. Also, selecting the right insurance isn’t the only financially impactful decision you’ll make regarding your medical care. (The Wall Street Journal)

When I was a kid, my parents gave me $9 in allowance every week: $3 for savings, $3 for charity, and $3 for whatever my seven-year-old self wanted. Come Saturday, my usual payday, I’d heed the savings and charity guidelines, and then I’d go out and blow the rest on Pokémon cards. Somewhere in the user’s manual I imagine is sent out to every new American parent when a child arrives, it must say that financial prudence can, like any other habit, be learned – truisms like "A penny saved is a penny earned" have shaped the way we think about raising responsible children. (The Atlantic)

My summer short course executive education "students" are terrific. They come from all over the world and radically different industries. They’re entrepreneurs as well as intra-preneurs inside established organizations. They’re motivated, dedicated and demanding – as they should be. They authentically want to be better innovators. I’m grateful for their commitment and how much I learn from them. (Poets and Quants)

And yet, despite the steady spread of the MOOC movement and the growing acceptance among university administrators that quality online education doesn’t have to be an oxymoron, enthusiasm for MOOCs has waned in the past year. (The New Yorker)

Not so long ago, the practice of a store staying closed on Thanksgiving was simply a given: one more holiday in which workers assumed they’d get some time off. Then, amid the corporate tug-of-war over Black Friday crowds, retailers began eyeing the juicy hours of Turkey Day as the best time to kick off their crucial holiday shopping seasons. (Washington Post)

During board meeting breaks, female directors of Avon Products Inc. use a women’s room right next to the boardroom. Directors needing the men’s room must trek to the other side of the senior executive floor at its Manhattan headquarters. Though unintentional, the lavatory layout says plenty about Avon’s board: Women dominate. Led by Chief Executive Sheri McCoy, they occupy seven of the 11 seats. (The Wall Street Journal)

Not long ago, exiting CEOs like Mr. Viehbacher were dispatched gently, with an announcement that the leader would step down to spend time with family or pursue other interests. But as corporate boards strive to appear in control and play defense against activist investors, companies are dropping the niceties. Recent executive dismissals at Yahoo Inc. and Symantec Corp. show some firms aren’t afraid to say that a boss has been fired and even provide details. (The Wall Street Journal)

Next year, House Republicans will try again to transform Medicare and Medicaid, repeal the Affordable Care Act, shrink domestic spending and substantially cut the highest tax rates through the budget process. Then they will leave it to the new Senate Republican majority to decide how far to press the party’s small-government vision, senior House aides said this week. (The New York Times)

Uber is cozying up to Congress. A new report by Hamilton Place Strategies, a policy research firm that has worked with candidates like President George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, takes a close look at the transportation spending habits of congressional employees, and one thing is clear: Congress seems to really like getting its Uber on. (Fast Company)

In 2008, Tracey Lloyd returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. Soon after, she was one of thousands of veterans to accept jobs at Wal-Mart. Entering as manager of a supercenter in Pal Coast, Fla., Lloyd is now a market manager responsible for the retail giant’s expansion into smaller stores. Since Wal-Mart announced its initiative in 2013 to hire 100,000 vets in five years, the company has recruited 68,000 vets like Lloyd to work for them and has promoted more than 5,000. (Fortune)

I saw it bearing down on me like a runaway freight train. The worst thing about it is I could neither stop it nor get out of its way. I was toast and I knew it. All I could do was wait out the inevitable and hope the end would come quickly. (Entrepreneur)

About 25 years ago, when the era of irrational exuberance allowed enough disposable income for irrational anxiety, the concept of "helicopter parenting" arose. A "helicopter parent" micromanages every aspect of his child’s routine and behavior. From educational products for infants to concerned calls to professors in adulthood, helicopter parents ensure their child is on a path to success by paving it for them. (The Atlantic)

Verizon has announced that the day before Thanksgiving will hereby be called "Connection Day." In an effort to make things a bit more palatable for holiday travelers stuck at airports and people stuck with family with nothing to talk about, Verizon is giving away freebies, even to non-subscribers. (Fast Company)