Andy Esparza knows what success sounds like. It's not the "ka-ching!" of a cash register or the "brrrring!" of a customer phone call, but the "clang! clang! clang!" of a...

Before Paris Hilton was photographed gabbing on her new Pebl at Sundance this year, before a batch of Pebls was in the works for Oscar nominees, before the TV ad debuted...

The first kiosk looked like a grade-school project or a prank. It didn't have a screen. Didn't even plug in. Patients stared at a piece of paper and...

This could get ugly. It's 10 a.m. and Lewis Black needs coffee. He pops his head in the kitchen of the West Bank Cafe, a fixture on Manhattan's West...

There's a calculus to knitting. An untamed batch of wool gets twisted and fed into a spinning wheel, a wooden contraption about as high-tech as an...

“I'm not sure this is legal." Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at ...

The shoes were black, hard, and tight, and Travis Knight squeezed into them as if this were day one of military school. He was wearing a suit,...

Late last year, Ian Moray stumbled across a cotton-candy-pink Web site called Whateverlife.com. As manager of media development at the online...

It was early in 2006, and Matt Carey, the new CTO of ...

“Come play!” Shana Fisher emails this challenge from her eighth-floor perch at IAC headquarters, a sleek, white Frank Gehry jewel on...

[Background: Entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures; co-founder, president and CEO of Danger Inc., where he helped develop the Sidekick; helped create WebTV and the Motorola Envoy, one...

[Background: Formerly executive chef at Café de la Presse at the Trident Hotel in San Francisco, California; tasting judge at the American Culinary Institute; attended Johnson & Wales...

[Background: Formerly VP of user experience and design at Yahoo; interaction designer at Netscape Communications.] LISTEN TO USERS EARLY AND OFTEN "My...

[Background: Twenty-five years in software development; CTO of Telesym, a mobile VOIP company; VP of AOL/Mobile Services; senior VP of Tegic, which developed T9 text-input technology.]...

1. INNOVATION, NOT INSTANT PERFECTION. "There are two different types of programmers. Some like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the...

[Background: Worked as a researcher at IBM and a senior computer scientist at Adobe Systems; holds nine patents; earned a PhD in applied mathematics at Cornell University.]...

It's too good to be true. That's what Andy Rubin was thinking back in 2005. He'd worked for more than a decade at various tech outfits, including a...

[Background: Cofounder and CEO Keyhole, a global 3-D mapping company acquired by Google in 2004; cofounded Big Network, a casual gaming company; helped develop Meridian 59, one of the first...

[Background: Started at Google in 1999 as a software engineer; earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Stanford, specializing in artificial intelligence.] WHAT’S...

[Background: Formerly a senior vice president at Charles Schwab; worked at Price Waterhouse and the RAND Corp.; ran a small consulting company in Southwest Asia; taught at...

Google's green energy czar provides some insight into the search company's unexpected move into renewable energy. [Background: Previously CTO of Akamai Technologies; senior consulting...

[BACKGROUND: Started at Google in 2000 and was instrumental in building its ad business; worked at Starwave, where he developed its ad program, and later at ABC/ESPN Internet Ventures; started...

[Background: Previously worked in the White House as a research assistant for the senior economic adviser to the president; graduated from Stanford, where she studied symbolic systems and...

[Background: Formerly a lead product manager at Trilogy.] THE FIRST DAY, THE FIRST WEEK "What do you normally do when you start a new job? You waste...

[Background: Worked as a software design engineering lead at Microsoft on Flight Simulator; graduated from Caltech with a computer-science degree at age 18.] WHAT OTHER...

[Background: An endocrinologist with a masters in public health from the University of Michigan and an MD from Wayne Medical School; worked on the World Health Organization's...

[Background: Former dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information; author of two major economics textbooks and Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy; has taught at MIT,...

PERKS FOR GOOGLERS BY GOOGLERS "The majority of initiatives come from our Google population. We provide an atmosphere that says, 'We're not going to do this for you....

The engineering director of Google explains how the company maintains its creative culture and innovative operations. [Background: Founder of two companies, Verity and Eloquent; CTO of...

In the March issue of Fast Company--careful, it's hot off the press--we unveil the new and improved Fast 50, aka the Fast Company 50. This year's list is our first-ever ...

In the March issue of Fast Company--careful, it's hot off the press--we unveil the new and improved Fast 50, aka the Fast Company 50. This...