Features

• Brand Matters

  The man behind the Gap's move to the Web.

• The Agenda for the 1990s

  Harvard business school professor Michael E. Porter has made his career studying competitive advantage - how to create it, how to sustain it - starting with individual companies, then vaulting to entire nations.

• Backslash 002 - New Uses for Old Technology

  The manila folder.

• The Manager as Mystic

  For the most important management book for the 1990s, try fiction from the 1940s: Hermann Hesse's Nobel Prize-winning novel, The Glass Bead Game.

• Awaiting the Prodigal Economy

  If we take our cues from hemlines and Porsche sales, the economy may indeed be on the upswing. So why don't we feel better?

• Letter from the Editors - You're in Net Company

  A supplement for the new world of digital business.

• Tommy Boy Can CD Future

  Rap`s smartest label shows how brute force yields diminishing returns in the face of a better idea.

• Chat Room - New Headspace

  Jeffrey Rayport on marketspace on the Net.

• Think Global, Campaign Local

  Last summer's convulsions over money and political reform in Japan tore apart the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and brought down the government.

• Smart Strategies: Putting Ideas To Work

  "There have been several great eras in strategy," says one consultant. "This is not one of them." Still, there are signs of a renewed appetite for new thoughts. To get a sense of the enduring power of a big idea, we look at five companies that are putting smart strategies into action.

• Chat Room - Time Zero's Big Idea

  Mark Teflian has always worked at high velocity. In 1975, during summer break after his freshman year in college, he was hired by United Airlines to do some part-time contract work. He never went back to school. Instead, he became a vital player at Covia Partnership, which operated Apollo, UAL's computerized reservation system, as well as UAL's internal data and voice networks. When Covia was spun out of UAL, Teflian served for five years as the new company's chief information officer.

• The Career Builder

  An interactive self-assessment program installed by Barclays Bank in the United Kingdom offers a guide to the new world.

• First Site - It's a Free-Market(s) Economy

  A look at three new free markets on the Web: the anti-auction market, the de-commodity market, and the fantasy market

• Barbara Kux

  Don't think of Barbara Kux as one of the rising stars in European business - although, at 39, and a high-ranking line manager at Nestlé, she certainly is that.

• Four Rules for Great Experiences

  Advice on how to deliver compelling online experiences.

• Keiko Satoh

  TED likes to think of itself as an Idea Summit, a gathering that one reporter/participant calls 'smart, overstimulated, and uncoordinated; the nutty professor in its own world of ideas.'

• Are You on Craig's List?

  Craig Newmark has organized a community whose members include some of the Web's most influential people. Here is his manual for (virtual) community organizers.

• Fast Company Flicks

  Imagine a 73-minute-long stand-up comedy shtick on the subject of diversity, delivered by Truman Capote on speed, and you've got Morris Massey's 'Flashpoint.'

• Nathan.Com

  How to build a successful personal Web site.

• 5.Hiring with a Power Tool

  Life themes can be a power tool for hiring. But like all power tools, the owner's manual comes with recommendations and warnings.

• Book Report - Survival of the Digital-est

  When it comes to the emergence of dynamic markets on the Web, survival doesn't necessarily go to the fittest.

• Fruit Stand Lending

  Who's that man walking through the street markets of Ecuador, trying to make $50 loans? It's Michael Chu, a former executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co., the world's most powerful leveraged buyout operator.

• The Brand Called URL

  At the heart of the Web are two important lessons about your career: You are your most important product, and everything about you gets more valuable when you use technology to leverage it.

• 2.The Theory Behind Life Themes

  For Gallup, hiring is all about talent. Specifically, it's about finding the best talent you can to fill the openings you've got.

• Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

  Letter from the Editors

• The Hybridization of Everything

  In the old economy, the organizing principle was specialization. Discrete departments. Separate functions. Independent projects. In the New Economy, it's hybridization. Inter-departmental meetings. Cross-functional teams. Integrated systems.

• Book Report - Time Keeps Getting Faster

  An inside look at James Gleick's insightful new book.

• Gunther Pauli Cleans Up

  He built the world's first biodegradable factory. Now, armed with laptops and attitude, Gunter Pauli and his green team plan to outmaneuver Procter Gamble and the detergent giants.

• Deciding to Go Digital

  Rick Schnall's glimpse of the future was enough to pull three companies together -- and out of the past.

• Business As War

  Business in the New Economy is a civilized version of war. Companies, not countries, are battlefield rivals.

• The Customer Experience

  Forget faster or cheaper. The Web challenges you to rethink the most basic relationship in business: the one between you and your customers.

• 50 Reasons Why We Cannot Change
  We've never done it before. Nobody else has ever done it. It has never been tried before. We tried it before. Another company/person tried it before. We've been doing it this way for 25 years. It won't work in a small company. It won't work in a large company. It won't work in our company. Why change -- it's working OK. The boss will never buy it. It needs further investigation. Our competitors are not doing it. It's too much trouble to
• The B in Business Stands for Bluff

  How to explain poker's revival as America's most popular sport? Could be because it's the ultimate forum for liars. And that, says world poker champ Phil Hellmuth Jr., is good business.

• 3.The Art and Science of Evaluation

  At the heart of any hiring process are interviews with and evaluations of job applicants.

• The Experienced Customer

  When it comes to e-commerce, Kelly Mooney knows the customer experience better than anyone. She knows what clicks and what bombs, who offers good service and who offers lip service. Just think of her as the experienced customer.

• 4.Stryker Makes It Work

  If the idea of life themes and telephone job interviewing still seems a bit strange, or if you're looking for more evidence that this is a tool that delivers, consider the experience of the surgical group of the Stryker Corporation.

• To: My Editor | Subject: This #$%! Email

  Keeping up with your email in the air isn't always the smoothest of flights.

• First.Site - Time for Zero Time

  "Zero Time is about the ability to react instantaneously, to provide value for every customer at every opportunity. Without the Internet, you can't be Zero Time -- period."

• Backslash: New Uses for Old Technology

  The pencil.

• 1.How to Hire by wire

  For five years, as I researched how certain companies provide consistently great service, I heard the same refrain: 'Our people are our most important asset.' Trouble was, I heard that just as often from companies with terrible service.

• The Form 1040

  The tax return may be the ultimate icon of the nexus of man and state--but how much do we really know about it?

• Real-Time Zero Time

  Some phrases have a way of insinuating themselves into the lexicon of the new economy. (Consider, for instance, "fast company.") A quick search of the Web -- it took us, well, zero time -- turned up the following list of products and services that feature "time zero" or "zero time" in their name.

  Polaroid Time-Zero Film (www.teamphoto.com/polatimezero.htm) Polaroid offers Time-Zero Film.

  Among the film's attributes: "Medium speed, medium contrast, integral film for high definition instant color prints."

  Time Zero Corp. (www.timezero.com)

• A Spy In the House of Work 0

  Report #1: Neo-leisure, the dirty little secret behind the 65 hour workweek.

• Digital Decisions

  Landmark Graphics CEO Bob Peebler and his colleagues use cutting-edge technology to help executives in one of the world's most basic industries make smarter decisions.

• Import Jeans, Export Values

  It's one of those 'interesting-in-theory-but-impossible-in-practice' aspects of globalization: If you do business in 50 countries, whose ethical standards do you follow?

• Into Thin Air

  Maybe offshoring is good for the economy in the long run. Maybe it will boost productivity and save companies. But it's causing real pain to real people. And they never thought it would happen to them.