Wal-Mart rules the Fortune 500 for the second year in a row – and the eighth time this decade – beating Exxon Mobil decisively in the battle to be crowned America's largest company. (Fortune)
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As part of a contest, MBA students were asked to suggest game-changing management ideas. The winners might just change the way companies operate. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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These Fortune 100 employers have at least 350 openings each, totaling more than 96,000 jobs. Want to work there? We asked company representatives what they're looking for – and secrets to getting hired. (CNN/Money)
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The job market seems to be picking up, but the positions still go to those who hustle. (Kiplingers)
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Given all of the work that’s been piled on employees at leanly staffed companies during the weak economy, it’s understandable that some workers want to scale back. (MarketWatch)
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A program in Washington, D.C. is bribing people to move from the suburbs to downtown. Is it money wisely spent? (Fast Company)
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What will it take for men to get it? In the last five years, women and minorities actually lost ground in U.S. corporate boardroom representation, despite solid evidence that greater women's representation in corporate leadership correlates directly with improved business performance. (Harvard Business Review)
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A novelist once wrote that: "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements." Nigeria’s ideals vary from place to place: the north is mostly Muslim, the south is mostly Christian or animist. Young and old, rural and urban, Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba: each group sees the world differently. So Nigerian advertisers must be both deft and sensitive. (The Economist)
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It's a commonly held belief that one of the biggest challenges faced by the world's poorest populations is hunger. But according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Abhijit Banerjee, the economics of poverty are often much more nuanced. (NPR)
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London Business School this month will unveil a new center to study innovation. It is a prospect about which the school's dean, Andrew Likierman, is particularly keen. "Innovation, as far as we're concerned, is one of the key drivers of everything that goes on in business," Sir Andrew said. "I wouldn't have the nerve to get up in front of a group of sophisticated people and say something that didn't relate to the world that actually is." (Wall Street Journal)
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Seeking an edge in the job market, Chinese women are flocking to U.S. B-schools – enough to boost female enrollment overall. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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According to IHS-owned market research firm iSuppli, revenues from major mobile app stores will grow 77.7% to $3.8 billion this year. iSuppli estimates that major app markets like those offered by Apple, Google, Nokia and RIM sold $2.1 billion worth of apps in 2010 and just $830.6 million in 2009. (BGR)
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SAP AG, which last July introduced its first Web-based software after more than two years of delays, says a recent outage in Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing services makes it harder for the industry to convince clients. (Bloomberg)
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What accounts for entrepreneurial talent in parents and some of their children--chromosomes or care and feeding? Both? That question may never be resolved with certainty. But in kicking off father-child conversations in eight families, we learned a great deal about characteristics shared among generations. (Forbes)
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A growing number of specialized, market-specific business accelerators are helping entrepreneurs around the country get their businesses off the ground. (Entrepreneur)
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Thanks to falling home prices and rising rents, would-be home buyers have the upper hand this house-hunting season. In nearly 4 out of 5 major U.S. cities, it's now cheaper to buy a home than to rent. That's up from 72 percent of cities last quarter, based on the Rent vs. Buy Index released by online real estate resource Trulia. (U.S. News and World Report)
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If you're a bank customer, you could soon be facing higher ATM fees, a $50 spending limit on your debit card, or a 30% late payment penalty on your credit card. And those debit rewards you've been enjoying? Say goodbye to those. (CNN/Money)
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Google. Green technology. Grunge. Generation X has long been celebrated for taking plenty of risks in business and the arts. But when it comes to investing, the so-called slacker generation has become downright timid – and in big danger of falling further behind on its retirement savings. (SmartMoney)
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When Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook on the United States' long-term credit rating from stable to negative, it was seen as a warning to lawmakers unable to agree on a long-term plan for cutting the deficit. (The Street)
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They may be Masters of the Universe now, leaders of Fortune 100 companies, commanding tens of thousands of employees and pulling down multi-million-dollar pay packages every year. But when these Fortune chief executives were mere MBA students, they felt as overwhelmed, as intimidated, as dumb, and, in some cases, as completely broke as many of today’s MBA candidates. (Poets and Quants)
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How much is great customer service worth? About 13 percent, according to a recent survey from American Express. That survey found that about 70 percent of Americans said they would pay 13 percent more for a product or service if it came with superior customer service. (bNet)
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New Jersey is granting Panasonic a $102.4 million tax credit to move its North American headquarters – nine miles. The incentives, announced on Apr. 20, will help defray the cost of leasing a new high-rise office tower to be built in Newark to replace Panasonic's digs in Secaucus, which the Japanese electronics maker has outgrown. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Tax income has been outpacing forecasts – good news as Sacramento struggles with a $15-billion budget deficit. GOP leaders are already using it as fodder against Gov. Brown's proposed tax increases. (Los Angeles Times)
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Tireless curiosity beats a high IQ every time, and learning to ask the right questions is crucial, according to a pair of new books. (Fortune)
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Entrenched boundaries can limit an organization's success; enlightened leaders see them not just as problems to solve but also as potential opportunities. (MIT/Sloan Management Review)
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Last year Vijay Govindarajan, of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, along with Christian Sarkar, a marketing expert, issued a challenge in a Harvard Business Review blog: why not apply the world’s best business thinking to housing the poor? (The Economist)
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