McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) said Chief Operating Officer Don Thompson will take over as chief executive officer, becoming the first black CEO of the world’s largest restaurant chain, after Jim Skinner retires this year. (Bloomberg)
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The price of gasoline keeps rising for Americans, but it's not because of rising demand from consumers. Since the first Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, the U.S. has struggled to quench a growing appetite for oil and gasoline. Now, that trend is changing. (NPR)
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Brandon Wells got the new iPad last Friday, started wirelessly streaming March Madness games the next day and by Saturday night was out of gas. Two hours of college basketball – which he viewed mounted to his car dashboard and live at tournament games – had burned through his monthly wireless data allotment of two gigabytes. (Wall Street Journal)
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Remember the days when looking for a new job involved the Sunday newspaper classified section and a black magic marker? Thanks to technology, looking for a job today seems to require an advanced degree in data analysis. There are millions of positions posted online across an ever-changing landscape of job boards, company websites, social networks, apps, and more. (Harvard Business Review)
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Getting ahead in your career is not just about being successful; it's about being noticed. So how do you stand out to be hired by potential employers? How do you stand out for a promotion to a superior? How do you stand out as loyal to the people you are leading? It's simple: do the things that others aren't willing to do. (CNN)
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Moving from a big company to a startup is a big transition. Here's why an entrepreneur might – or might not – be interested in you. (Inc.)
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Martin Davidson's new book "The End of Diversity As We Know It" is billed as a how-to manual for business and nonprofits interested in shifting the way people think about diversity, he said. In his research, Davidson found that despite all of the efforts for increasing diversity in the workplace, real change was not happening.
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Why aren’t there more female CEOs, particularly at Fortune 500 companies? Here are some tips for achievement-seeking women who kill their careers with kindness, second-guessing, rule-following, and more. (Portfolio)
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littering sapphire necklaces, designer suits against perfumed skin, the taste of freshly popped Champagne and the roar of a speeding Porsche: the five senses in Nigeria, brought to you by luxury brands now trying to tap directly into the country's market. (Huffington Post)
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The Republic of Ireland fell back into recession in the last three months of 2011, official figures have shown. Its economy shrank by 0.2% from October to December, following a contraction of 1.1% in the third quarter. (BBC)
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A growing number of colleges are taking extreme measures to attract more students by cutting tuition or speeding up the rate at which they graduate. While some private colleges are introducing double-digit percentage cuts in tuition or freezing prices altogether, other schools are offering three-year degree programs or four-year graduation guarantees. (CNN/Money)
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When it comes to business programs, both administrators and prospective students have a shopping list of high expectations that involve quality, cost, accreditations, and return on investment. Seldom do we hear about the question of size. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Keith R. Wyche is President of CUB Foods, a $3 billion retail grocery chain, part of the $40 billion SUPERVALU family of grocery store banners. In this role, he directs the activities of over 8,000 associates in driving sales and satisfying customers through continued marketing, merchandising and operational excellence. (Savoy)
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Pinterest, for the uninitiated, is a deceptively simple-sounding, insanely addictive social media site that lets users collect and share images on digital pinboards. Most social-networking sites have first become popular among tech's early adopters along the country's coasts. But Pinterest found its most passionate users among the Midwestern scrapbooking set -- a mostly female group -- who have turned to it to plan weddings, save recipes, and post ideas for kitchen renovations. (Fortune)
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More passengers are downloading books, sending Tweets and updating their Facebook pages in the middle of a flight – even as they complain about steep prices. (Wall Street Journal)
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Walmart seems to stock nearly every product known to humans, but there's always room for more. Online contest Get on the Shelf asks Walmart customers to pitch and post product ideas; online voting will crown the next great product to possibly hit Walmart shelves. But as evidenced by these proposals, greatness is questionable. (Fast Company)
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If you ask the Postmaster General about junk mail, he’ll likely correct you. "If you work in the postal service, it’s jobs mail," he says. That’s why the postal service is pushing an online program to get more, um, jobs mail into your mailboxes. (Time)
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In the search for the villain behind the global financial crisis, some have pointed to inequality as a culprit. In his 2010 book "Fault Lines", Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago argued that inequality was a cause of the crisis, and that the American government served as a willing accomplice. (The Economist)
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Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face unique hurdles in an already tough job market. Many have suffered physical and mental injuries. Others have a hard time getting employers to see the value of their wartime experience. (CNN/Money)
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As they ruminate at the pump, Americans may have finally figured out the new global deal on gasoline: there's no magic bullet to bring prices down as long as the United States remains hooked on oil. (U.S. News and World Report)
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At too many companies, critics say, the 401(k) plan is in so-so shape. Can savvy employees patch the holes and improve their odds of a secure retirement? (Smart Money)
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One reason Americans carry about $800 billion in credit card debt is that we goof up when we try to pay it off. On average, households with credit cards owe a total of more than $15,000 on five cards, including retail cards. Those accounts have various interest rates and balances. The best strategy for paying down the debt is to make the minimum payment on all the cards except the one that charges the highest interest rate; on that account, you should pay as much as you can afford. (Kiplinger's)
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After reading about Tesla Motors’ new electric sedan three years ago, Rob Stelling drove 100 miles to the carmaker’s showroom in Menlo Park, Calif., and put down $40,000 in cash to make an early reservation for the Model S. (New York Times)
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Kraft’s decision to name its snacks division "Mondelez International" left the media with two key questions. The first question: How is it pronounced? Does one say MOHN-dah-lezz? Mohn- DAH-lezz? Mohn-dah-LEEZ? (The correct answer is the latter.) The second question: What does it mean? (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Obama’s reelection chances depend heavily on how many Americans are drawing paychecks this fall. But they’ll also be determined by how people assess the man who has overseen the economy these last three years. Did his actions hasten the recovery, or prolong the slump? His aides argue that things could have been worse; but could they have been appreciably better? And what exactly guides Obama’s decisions? (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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President Obama is set to stop in Cushing, Okla., on Thursday to announce a fast-track approval process for a portion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline – although it's not the part for which he's taken political heat for blocking. The portion likely to start construction soon runs from Cushing, a key repository of U.S. oil, to the Gulf Coast. (CNN/Money)
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Leadership is about things like taking a long-term perspective, vision, setting a strategy; and, yes, management is about operations, details, implementation, and the little things required to keep a team or an organization moving forward. Or, as guru Warren Bennis famously put it, "Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing." (Fast Company)
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I'm a big fan of mentoring in business, and have been on both the contributing and receiving end of the process. These days, I seem to often hear from entrepreneurs who are struggling to find a mentor, or complaining about their lack of effectiveness. Like any other relationship, it takes work on both sides to make mentoring work. (Fortune)
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Airlines started charging fees for checked bags a few years ago. Now passengers are testing the limits of what they can carry onto planes. Some flight attendants say it's getting out of hand. But airlines are trying to address the problem with bigger overhead bins. (NPR)
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