Spotlight Features

For the last four years I've been teaching an international business course occasionally for a local MBA Program. My students are all working professionals who come to class for discussion and debate, not sermons. Case studies are the perfect teaching tool for this audience; there is plenty of roo...

SBC and AT&T announced plans to merge in February, but some states are hesitating to approve the marriage and some advocates want the relationship to end. This uncertainty is bad for consumers because if technology companies can't control their business plans, freedom and choice will suffer. Ou...

In the research my company does to benchmark the customer experience provided by the top Web sites in various vertical industries, we suggest best practices and ways to find out what works and what does not for a company's online customers. Often, when speaking with prospective customers about syndi...

Millions of entrepreneurs and thousands of account executives from major ad agencies all over the world are losing their sleep these days, most sleepwalking in search of new names with some extra "OO"s to ride along with the success of Google's name. During the day, they daydream about coming as clo...

For too long now we've seen security threats have a negative impact on internal networks, and as a result, a harmful effect on employee and company productivity. And for far too long, enterprises of all sizes have neglected to focus enough resources and energy on securing these valuable internal net...

Starting this month, Ingenio is teaming up with AOL Search to provide businesses nationwide a new marketing strategy that combines the Internet and the telephone. Called Pay Per Call, the strategy offers the power of Internet pay-per-click marketing to small businesses in their own regions. The new ...

I've been looking back this week and recalling almost a decade ago when a little company called Netscape prematurely slapped Microsoft upside the head and by so doing better positioned Microsoft for the future. Granted, I'm sure Microsoft would have loved to avoid the related litigation that contin...

Today is tax day, but those who think this expensive event only comes once a year should examine monthly phone bills and beware of recent actions by greedy bureaucrats. Anyone who's ever taken the time to inspect their landline or wireless phone bill will know that, on top of the price of service, t...

A critical path to growth for any company is the creation of business proposals that ultimately are accepted by prospective customers. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that many proposals are poorly prepared and lose site of both their goal (to secure a sale) and their audience (the prospect...

Consumers around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about the trustworthiness of e-commerce. They may have good reason: Cases of identity theft appear in the daily headlines, and we are only now starting to understand exactly how difficult it can be to restore one's name and credit rating...