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Issue 68

March 2003

How To Lead A Rich Life

  • (Revised and Updated for a Poor Economy)Can money buy happiness? (You'd be surprised!) What is the measure of true wealth? (Hint: Don't look at your brokerage statement.) Why do so many people with high incomes have such limited assets? (Check out your garage...and your pool...and those vacation bills.) A values-driven guide to mastering the Money Issue.

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Features

  • The Hard Life and Restless Mind of America's Education Billionaire

    John Sperling was born dirt-poor, fell in with Communists, and became a union organizer who led a strike that ended in disaster. Today, he runs the world's largest for-profit university -- and a company whose shares are defying gravity on Wall Street. So why do so many smart people say such terrible things about him? And why does he relish their attacks?

  • Bank of (Middle) America

    Kerry Killinger and his colleagues at Washington Mutual Inc. don't model themselves after Citigroup or Bank of America. Instead, they look for inspiration to Wal-Mart, Target, and Southwest Airlines -- giant companies that somehow manage to keep costs low and service high and meet the needs of the middle class. The strategy is minting money -- and WaMu's share price is up more than 150% during the past three years.

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  • Motorola Bets on Its Chips

    A radical new business model overturns all the old rules. Now, will it work?

  • Which Price is Right?

    It is an urgent question: How can we increase profits if we can't raise prices? The answer demands revolutionary thinking -- new insights about strategy and human behavior, turbocharged with software, mathematics, and rapid-fire experimentation. Is your company ready to master the new era of pricing? Are you prepared to pay the price of failure?

  • Would You Like a Mortgage With Your Mocha?

    Who says banking has to be dull? Not the executives at ING Direct, who are banking on powerful technology and clever marketing to make a radical change in an industry that needs it. The result: In less than three years, they've attracted more than a million customers and $10 billion in assets. And they serve a pretty mean cappuccino.

  • Making Unseen America Visible

    Bread and roses transforms ordinary working americans into artists with cameras.

  • Index to Advertisers

    Interact with the companies whose products and services are advertised in Fast Company.

  • It's Written on the Tablets!

    It's practically an eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt have a Tablet PC. But which one?

  • In The Hot Seat

    Who: Tom CampbellTitle: Dean, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley Where: Berkeley, CaliforniaChallenge: Bring his school into the top five.

  • People of Plenty

    The American dream says that anyone can be rich. But the real question is, Are you keeping up with the Joneses?

  • Fill 'er Up With Hydrogen

    The California Fuel-Cell Partnership looks to go without gas.

  • Where Are The Jobs?

    Want to know where the jobs are? Go to where the résumés are: the small-town home of Monster, "the world's largest formal medium for businesses and individuals to connect," as founder and chairman Jeff Taylor would have it. Beyond being a job-finding service, the company also nurtures an analytical side within the enormous renovated mill that serves as its office. Monster Data Intelligence, or MDI, was created in 2001 to collect and analyze every click of the site's 1.5 million daily job seekers and 15 million unique monthly visitors. So where are the jobs?

  • Speedometer

    Going fast. Going slow. Going nowhere.

Columns

  • Who Is the Unlikely Winner of the Wi-Fi Revolution?

    The quickest way to business success is to identify an underserved constituency or market and provide it with products that are satisfying, convenient, or necessary. BlackBerry was Research In Motion Ltd.'s solution for people who felt that they needed constant access to their email. Voice mail was Octel's response to telephone tag. Starbucks answered the question, "Where can I get a good cup of coffee?"

  • The Five Most Powerful Ways to Annoy Others

    I never got to touch it, but I once saw Michael Korda's "power phone." It looked like a dainty little instrument perched all by its lonesome on a bare modern desk. What made it powerful, Korda insisted in his classic 1980s-era best-seller Power!: How to Get It, How to Use It (Random House, 1975) -- the book that codified the symbols of power for the next two decades -- is that while typical executives had a dozen buzzing lines, he had only one. It rarely rang, because only the chosen could get through. It was a symbol, which is the most powerful accoutrement of all.

  • What Does It Take to Make a Great Movie?

    Anne Kreamer meets Harvey Weinstein, cochairman of Miramax Films.

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From the Editor

  • The Money Issue

    Welcome to our first-ever (and first annual) Money Issue. Don't worry, we haven't been possessed by the spirit of Malcolm Forbes. What you won't find in this issue are the utterly predictable (and totally unreliable) gimmicks that most business magazines trot out whenever they address money and investing: "The 25 hottest mutual funds for 2003!" "The 10 best stocks right now!" "How to retire before you turn 40!" If achieving success and financial security were that easy, many of us wouldn't be feeling so insecure these days.