Wearing faded gray jeans, a gray striped shirt and black sneakers, Tony Hsieh hardly looks the part of a $1 billion company's CEO.

In Canada, a group of Nike employees meets once a week in the same place at the same time for a creative brainstorming session. But there's an element that keeps the sessions from going stale. The meetings are on a Toronto subway car.

Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke learned a lesson from Media Relations 101 the hard way when they introduced a plan of action to stem the financial crises and did not suggest a catchy name for it.

Brothers Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman followed different paths in life, but they decided to collaborate on a book when they realized that Ori, with his MBA, and Rom, with a Ph.D.

In his book "OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder," Lucas Conley asserts that branding has gotten out of hand. At it's worst it is deceptive, he writes, and it diverts companies away from real product improvement to focus on superficial details.

The Chinese don't do things halfway, as anyone who's visited Beijing in the run-up to the Olympics can attest.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans began doing all of the things they had always wanted to do, including, apparently, a whole lot of shopping.

The customer is king, an old service mantra says. But today a few industry leaders argue the employee, not the customer, is most important.

While most companies agree on the importance of a loyal customer base, it remains an elusive goal. Many companies that track customer satisfaction quickly become frustrated and sometimes abandon loyalty efforts, according to Dr.

User communities, usually associated with technology products, help customers connect with each other and the brand. User communities are not just for computer products, however. An exceptional example of developing and sustaining an active, dynamic user community is Harley-Davidson Motorcycles.