This year, perhaps more than ever, kisses may not come cheap. At least not those made of chocolate on Valentine’s Day. The price of cocoa, the main ingredient in most chocolate, soared last year, forcing chocolate producers to raise prices and shrink packages. (The New York Times)

How do you measure a CEO’s impact? An HBR team recently addressed that question by ranking CEOs according to the increases their companies have seen in total shareholder return and market capitalization across their whole tenures. HBR’s resulting list of the 100 Global CEOs who have delivered the best financial results, published in its November 2014 issue, placed Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos squarely at the top. (Harvard Business Review)

Americans aren't exactly rushing to the mall with their savings from low gasoline prices, raising questions about forecasts for a surge in consumer spending this year. Retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.8% in January, mostly because of low pump prices and weaker auto sales, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists projected a 0.4% decline. (USA Today)

Optimism isn’t a pie-in-the-sky ideal, says Mezzapelle. "It’s not closing your eyes and being in the clouds," he says. "People often tell me they’re a realist, but reality alone may prevent you from getting past first base. Combine optimism with acceptance of the life you’ve been dealt, and the sky’s the limit." Like any healthy habit, Wachob says optimism is something you need to practice every day. Here are seven traits optimists share and the habits you can implement to become one, too. (Fast Company)

Mindfulness is close to taking on cult status in the business world. But as with any rapidly growing movement – regardless of its potential benefits – there is good reason here for caution. Championed for many years by pioneering researchers such as Ellen Langer and Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is a mental orientation and set of strategies for focusing one’s mind on here-and-now experiences. (Harvard Business Review)

Between the demands of work, family, and the rest, it is easy to lose sight of your health. You tell yourself that you are young and you can push yourself hard now so that later you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. You tell yourself that your metabolism is great and you won't gain weight ... just yet. You grab the junk food between your meetings and your flights at the airport, because it is convenient and saves you time. You postpone prioritizing yourself over everything and everyone else. But in reality, this mentality will always steer you wrong. (Inc.)

Whatever the reason, many workers are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of workplaces that offer a bit of flexibility as to when and where they work. But such affordances come with strings attached: Employees with this perk often wind up working extra hours at nights or on weekends. Why? Not to make up for lost productivity (studies show that workers are just as diligent if not more so when working from home) but in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to and passion for their jobs. (The Atlantic)

Starbucks has been holding a number of "Open Forums" for its employees, where they are encouraged to talk about their experiences of race. The forums have been held in Seattle, Oakland, California, St. Louis, New York, and Los Angeles; each includes about an hour of open mic time, with Schultz presiding. Like Schultz's other crusades, this one is directly related to his business, even if it's not obvious at first glance. A close look at his efforts, and his business, show why maybe other entrepreneurs should be bolder in this area, too. (Inc.)

Century-old American companies like General Electric and Ford appear ancient when viewed alongside modern upstarts like Google and Facebook. But there are a number of Japanese firms – some of which have been around for more than a millennium – that exist on another scale of time entirely. Japan is home to some of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the world, among them a 1,300-year-old inn and a 900-year-old sake brewer. (The Atlantic)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said a compromise is possible in the stand-off with Greece over its bailout terms. But Mrs Merkel told reporters as she arrived for a conference with other EU leaders that "Europe's credibility depends on us sticking to rules". Greece opposes extending its bailout deal, saying it is damaging their economy. On Wednesday, talks with other eurozone members failed to reach an agreement. (BBC News)

It can start with a visit to a secluded island off Colombia, like the sojourn that more than half of Stanford's incoming MBAs spent last August. Or a weekslong trek in Australia and New Zealand, another in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, a foray to Thailand’s bays, and a stop in Munich for Oktoberfest – excursions taken this academic year by students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Plus countless ski trips – to resorts in Park City, Utah, Aspen, Colorado, and Lake Tahoe – that draw students for a weekend off, or more, from their studies at elite MBA programs across the country. (Bloomberg)

Silicon Valley’s mixture of daring discovery and corporate technology titans is creating a new breed of business schools. The decades-old practice of traditional academics imparting knowledge on middle managers is ripe for innovation with the disruptive capabilities of technology. This tech is fast evolving business models everywhere. Newer enterprises like Uber, Airbnb and Amazon are forcing more established companies across industries to innovate in order to compete and continue to exist. (BusinessBecause)

In August 2013, the business messaging and search tool known as Slack started signing up users for its beta version. 8,000 companies created accounts in the first 24 hours. That was a promising number, but it said more about the general interest in such tools and the reputation of Slack CEO and cofounder Stewart Butterfield – also the co-creator of Flickr – than the service's long term prospects. (Fast Company)

The furor over Sacco’s tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment. Her complete ignorance of her predicament for those 11 hours lent the episode both dramatic irony and a pleasing narrative arc. As Sacco’s flight traversed the length of Africa, a hashtag began to trend worldwide: #HasJustineLandedYet. (The New York Times Magazine)

Until recently, it was hard – or even impossible – to find a black doll in Nigeria. Eight years ago, when he was looking for a birthday present for his niece, Nigerian entrepreneur Taofick Okoyo realized that none of the dolls his niece owned looked like her. He couldn't find an African doll in stores. So Okoyo decided to start his own line. (Fast Company)

Before Daphne Carmeli started Deliv with the intent to build a same-day delivery service that would upend the standards of well-established couriers, before spurring a 900% increase in consumer demand for their purchases to be dispatched to their door in hours, before signing up more than 250 national and regional retailers, including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Foot Locker, Williams-Sonoma, and Banana Republic, and 800 malls across the country, Carmeli was in what she calls "semi-retirement." (Fast Company)

Hiring talented young people for junior and entry-level positions is a top priority for many business owners, but recent data suggests that they're getting harder to find. The reason? Some Millennials are actually becoming less interested in joining the workforce. (Inc.)

The container ships arrive here filled with appliances, toys, apparel, auto parts, computer components and untold other products from Asia, to head out to stores and factories across America. But a simmering labor dispute between the longshoremen’s union and shipowners has brought crippling delays here and to other West Coast seaports. And the slowdown escalated this week as owners said they would suspend the unloading of container and other cargo ships on Thursday, Monday and the weekend because of what they called "a strike with pay." (The New York Times)

The financial crisis was caused in part by widespread fraud, which may seem like an obvious point. But it remains surprisingly controversial. President Obama and other public officials, seeking to explain why so few people have gone to jail, have argued in recent years that much of what happened in the go-go years before the crisis was reprehensible but, alas, legal. You will not be surprised to learn that many financial executives share this view &ndash at least the part about the legality of their actions – and that a fair number of academics have come forward to defend the honor of lenders. (The New York Times)

Sometimes your credit card no longer fits your lifestyle or stacks up against the competition. Should you keep your credit card or cancel it? This question comes up often, especially when the annual fee is due. At that time, cardholders will often want to re-evaluate their use of a credit card, and close an account that they don’t need. (Money)

After a pair of highly successful pilot runs, Harvard Business School is now opening its online program in business basics to students worldwide. The school is also inviting admitted MBA students to enroll in the program as a pre-MBA boot camp experience, particularly for non-traditional admits or those who need more basic quantitative work before showing up on campus. (Fortune)

American Express Co., long the envy of the industry for its wealthy clientele, is fighting to retain its grip on affluent cardholders like Tilson. Rivals including Barclays Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are courting them with enhanced perks, lower fees and more incentives. And as AmEx seeks to diversify by pursuing tech-savvy millennials and underbanked Americans, the risk of eroding its brand—and its biggest source of revenue—is rising. (Bloomberg)

Jon Stewart’s announcement that he will give up his anchor chair on Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" by the end of the year reverberated on Wednesday through the corridors of power in Washington, New York publishing houses and most important, the network’s parent company, Viacom. (The New York Times)

If you don’t have anything nice to say, management has a tip: Try harder. Fearing they’ll crush employees’ confidence and erode performance, employers are asking managers to ease up on harsh feedback. "Accentuate the positive" has become a new mantra at workplaces like VMware Inc., Wayfair Inc., and the Boston Consulting Group Inc., where bosses now dole out frequent praise, urge employees to celebrate small victories and focus performance reviews around a particular worker’s strengths – instead of dwelling on why he flubbed a client presentation. The shift may annoy leaders who rose in a tough-love era in business, but executives say hard-edge tactics simply do more harm than good these days. (The Wall Street Journal)

Ever wonder why the best and brightest aren’t applying to work at your company? An experiment by researchers in Canada and the U.S. suggests that the problem may be as fundamental as the way job postings are written. The vast majority of job ads tell applicants what the company wants, with laundry lists of requirements and qualifications. That approach might make sense to bosses looking to fill a role, but it may alienate the very people the company is trying to attract, researchers found. (The Wall Street Journal)