Business and Finance

Not all health clubs are problem-plagued, but don't be surprised if yours is filled with illness-causing bacteria, employs a poorly trained staff and makes it expensive to quit.

His complex in China turns out iPhones and PCs, powering the biggest exporter you've never heard of

The closet has finally outlived its usefulness. So why do gay celebrities insist on staying in? And why do journalists guard the door?

Welcome to the vicious world of corporate name-creation, where $75,000 buys you a suffix and competing shops slur each other over the virtues of Agilent and Avilant.

To understand the corporate culture at Google Inc., take a look at the toilets.

Forget condos and strip malls. Domain names, the real estate of the Web, have been delivering far greater returns. How some of the savviest speculators on the Net are making millions from their URL portfolios.

Comparing two different technology business models.

A candid conversation with the sultan of software about outsmarting his rivals

Playboy, 1994

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself.

The George Foreman Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine is more than just a kitchen gadget--it's a phenomenon. So how did a small company with an oddball appliance team up with the two-time champ to put itself on the map?

by Lewis H. Lapham, editor emeritus of Harpers Magazine, September 2004

The following paper traces the movement of the "Pokemon" phenomenon from its origins in the Japanese market to its introduction into the United States and beyond.

It's tempting to see "Cars," the seventh movie from Pixar Animation Studios, as a parable about the future of Walt Disney Co.

Early in the film, which opened Friday, a cocky race car named Lightning McQueen declares, "I'm a one-man show." But by the time the credits roll, McQueen realizes he's nothing without a great pit crew behind him.

It's a lesson that Ed Catmull, Pixar's co-founder and the new president of Disney Feature Animation, has built his career on.

Taking a peek inside Wal-Mart's internet-dwarfing attack-hardened customer-tracking data bunker.

By Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems

Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world's biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.

Suddenly, John Lasseter is Walt Disney Co.'s $7.4-billion man.

Returning to the company where he worked more than 20 years ago as a low-level artist, computer animation's master storyteller faces a daunting task: how to merge his community of hit-making mavericks at Pixar Animation Studios with a more staid Disney animation group that has struggled for much of the last decade to regain its stride.

The inside story of how Dreamworks beat Pixar to the screen

Jim Davis' cartoon cat is inoffensive, predictable, and marketable -- by intent.