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economic development

The (New) Spirit of Enterprise

The Enterprise Center's mission is to help create successful businesses that will help transform West PhiladelphiaREAD»

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.READ»

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?READ»

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.READ»

Escape From the Chamber of Horrors

Business leaders in Wisconsin sidestep traditional economic development booster clubs.READ»

Free Lunches

When companies offer us, of all people, something for nothing, we wonder: What's the catch -- or, for that matter, the business plan? So we asked actual experts -- Ben McConnell, author of Creating Customer Evangelists (Dearborn, 2002) and Jennifer Rice of Mantra Brand Consulting -- to assess a few high-profile giveaways. How do we know they're working?READ»

Finding the Future Around Us

Reinvention is daunting. Fortunately, new ways of doing business are all around us.READ»

No Choice Without Voice

Why do we demand so much from our toys and TVs, and so little from our banks, insurers, and drug companies?READ»

The Housewife Who Got up off the Couch

Threats, nay-saying, and a firebombing only made Eleanor Josaitis more determined to make the world a better place.READ»

Mariachi in the Morning

Problem: How to connect isolated Mexican farmworkers; Solution: A public radio station in SpanishREAD»

Prophet of Productivity

Cisco CEO John Chambers sure showed the chrome-domes in Davos a thing or two.READ»

Special Holiday Toy Edition... and a Giving Guide

Gizmos for everyone on your list, and three ways to give your philanthropy more punch.READ»

The Good Earth

Paul Dolan is no woolly-headed idealist. The head of Fetzer Vineyards is a fierce competitor who happens to believe that sound environmental and social practices are also good business. It's all part of his "triple bottom line" approach.READ»

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?READ»

Wanted: A Few Good Microbes

Problem: How to reduce usage of chemical pesticides. Solution: Develop natural products based on killer bacteria.READ»

The Wal-Mart of Food Banks

How Michael Mulqueen is using smart logistics to deliver 42 million pounds of food to Chicago's inner-city poor.READ»

Charitable Deductions

Charity Navigator dares to hold the nation's nonprofits accountable for their fund-raising.READ»

Health and the Profit Motive

Victoria Hale creates the country's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company.READ»

What Would It Take to End Homelessness?

Rosanne Haggerty's Common Ground dares to ask a radical social question -- and then to create innovative economic solutions.READ»

Character Test

Terrorism, recession, bankruptcy, scandal. Is this a great country or what?READ»

There's Plenty for Everyone

Extreme JobsREAD»

Terrorism, Trauma, and the Search for Redemption

Silke Maier-Witt, a trauma psychologist in Kosovo, is seeking to heal the wounds that terrorism has inflicted on women from both sides. She's also seeking redemption for her father's dark past in Nazi Germany and her own as a revolutionary gang member.READ»

Elevate Something Ordinary to Something Extraordinary.

Every fall since 1993, Samuel Mockbee and his students have left Auburn and headed west to Hale County, one of the country's poorest regions. Their assignment: to build great houses with low-cost materials.READ»

Shhhh? Not At This Library

The BPL's youth wing has been transformed into a spiffy haven for neighborhood kids.READ»

'It's in the Country's Best Interest for Poor Folks to Be Smart'

The most compelling opportunities for social entrepreneurs are the public schools. Gene Wade has been dreaming about fixing the public schools since he was a kid. Now he's doing it.READ»

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