Big Ideas

Small business is the economic backbone of America and certainly the path to any economic recovery.

Fast Company staff — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:31:40 -0400

After last Friday's passage of the $700 billion bailout measure, there are still plenty of skeptics who argue there are smarter alternatives. Some critics argue that we are forgetting our country's core business identity: the small business.

The world's financial crisis is the result of greed, and an example of what happens when God, basic rights, and the common good.

Fast Company staff — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:49:29 -0400

Earlier this week, in a speech on religion in a globalized world, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a top Vatican official pegged the root cause of the current financial crisis to be the result of a concentration on short term profit as an end itself: an attitude that “ends up wiping out the profit."

With recent events on Wall Street, the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably.

Fast Company staff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:50:55 -0400

Writes Gray: “The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over.”

“America is still the greatest producer, exporter and importer. Our best days are ahead of us."

Fast Company staff — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:44:05 -0400

Said by John McCain during the September 26th Presidential debate.

Bailout or not, Wall Street will never return to its freewheeling, profit-spinning ways of old.

Fast Company staff — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:33:38 -0400

Yesterday, in defiance of both presidential candidates and Obama, the House rejected the proposed $700 billion bailout by a vote of 228-205. The Dow plummeted 7% by the end of the day while lending rates rose. Apart from objections to the bill itself, worries about re-election are a major reason for the bill’s defeat.

"The idea that the market is always right is a crazy idea. Laissez-faire is over."

Fast Company staff — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:42:02 -0400

At a rally in Toulon on Thursday, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy reassured French citizens that the government would implement reforms to shrink the state sector and ensure that national savings and the economy are stable. He lambasted the current laxity of the world's financial system arguing that an era of unregulated markets was over.

“A certain idea of globalization is dying with the end of a financial capitalism that had imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it,” said Sarkozy.

MySpace’s mammoth new jukebox will recapture the audience the social network lost to Facebook.

Fast Company staff — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:56:21 -0400

Yesterday, MySpace Music, a joint venture between MySpace and the four major music labels, was unveiled. The new venture offers big pluses for users and bands: bands can post entire albums and catalogues to their MySpace pages and users can then stream songs for free or buy off Amazon’s MP3 store, which has a strong presence on the site. Users can also create their own playlists, and post a ten song playlist to their profile pages, setting up a system by which friends can easily sample one another’s music preferences.

G1, the new phone using Google's Android OS, will force Apple to unlock its iPhone within 6 months.

Fast Company staff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 08:53:52 -0400

Google’s new cell phone, a potential competitor to the iPhone, has the tech world all abuzz. While most seem to think the Android doesn’t stand a chance at outshining its Apple made counterpart, one thing that may negatively impact iPhone sales is the Android’s relative openness.

Microsoft has successfully recaptured "I'm a PC" from Apple.

Fast Company staff — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:55:08 -0400

A mere two weeks after launching its Seinfeld ads, Crispin Porter (the ad agency behind Microsoft's $300 million campaign) has booted them in favor of new commercials, created as a direct counterattack to Apple's anti-Microsoft campaign.

The Times calls the new commercials "an audacious embrace of the disdainful label that Apple, Microsoft’s rival, has gleefully — and successfully — affixed onto users of Microsoft products: 'I’m a PC.'"