Executives at American Express are accompanied by "minders" during interviews with the press. What is this, North Korea?

The cost of maintaining a new car fleet is rising. But because customers are balking at paying higher prices for their rentals, the companies are gradually breaking out expenses from the rental base price.

The car rental industry is not keen to discuss this subject. But the process, known as "unbundling," was confirmed in an unusual interview with one of the foremost experts in the car rental industry, David Kilduff, the head of car rental procurement for American Express Business Travel. I was allowed to speak with him only on the condition that a member of the company's public relations staff be present. Mr. Kilduff jokingly referred to him as "the guy in Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom,' up in the tree, waiting to take a shot."

I asked Mr. Kilduff if these unbundlings were, in effect, stealth rate increases. And just as he began to agree with me, his handler interrupted him. "You really can't say that," the publicist snapped, cutting Mr. Kilduff short.

Rental Car Customers Chafe at Tougher Rules

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is nominated for best documentary feature. The film is based on the book, The Smartest Guys in the Room.

You can listen to audio recordings of conversations between traders.

The film concludes with a note that the trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling begins in January 2006. Now is the time ...

For continuing coverage from the Washington Post, check out Special Report: Enron Trial

Ebert's review:

There is a general impression that Enron was a good corporation that went bad. The movie argues that it was a con game almost from the start.

The most shocking material in the film involves the fact that Enron cynically and knowingly created the phony California energy crisis. There was never a shortage of power in California. Using tape recordings of Enron traders on the phone with California power plants, the film chillingly overhears them asking plant managers to "get a little creative" in shutting down plants for "repairs." Between 30 percent and 50 percent of California's energy industry was shut down by Enron a great deal of the time, and up to 76 percent at one point, as the company drove the price of electricity higher by nine times.

Peter F. Drucker, 95, who was often called the world's most influential business guru and whose thinking transformed corporate management in the latter half of the 20th century, died Nov. 11 at his home in Claremont, Calif.

A very sad day indeed.

Management Visionary Peter Drucker Dies

One target of the effort are "swing voters," or consumers who have not soured on Wal-Mart. The new approach appears to reflect a fear that Wal-Mart's critics are alienating the very consumers it needs to keep growing, especially middle-income Americans motivated not just by price, but by image.

They should have hired the General Memetics Corporation.

A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room

Classic! (Classically Canadian, that is!)

Also: don't miss the excellent comics on this site, which are very Barbara Kruger-meets-Jack Handey.

Looking for work is an exercise in selling yourself. You write cover letter after cover letter, listing the parts of you that you respect the least, listing the selling points that make you valuable in a buyer's market. You leave out the little details that you tell yourself in the morning to make things okay. You don't mention the way your heart flutters when you meet your lover's eyes across the table, the way your feet felt like lead at your aunt's funeral. You write cover letter after cover letter, listing the same store bought traits in the same wording, day after day, hoping to find another job.

And then maybe one day you just snap a little. You sit down to write a cover letter, and something entirely new comes out.

And you send it anyway.

Each one is different in its own way. And we love them all.

Overqualified

What will be left for the Western companies is the "ideation," the original concept and design of a flagship product (which is a big deal), and then the sales and marketing.

"I'm more of an idea rat."

(Incidentally, the noteworthy MemeStream is the number one response to a Google search for idea hawk.)

Even more interesting is how Indian firms are taking the skills they learned from outsourcing and using them to develop low-cost products for the low-wage Indian market.

India is putting high technology to work for the domestic market in the way that China has long put mass production technology to work for the export market.

Bangalore: Hot and Hotter

À la carte charges are the way business is done on eBay, but not on the commons of Craigslist.

What part of "free" is difficult to understand?

Data collected by Nielsen/NetRatings show that eBay's page views in April 2005 grew by less than half a percentage point, compared with the previous April. At Craigslist, page views grew 130 percent in the same period. According to the company's data, its traffic is now about a fifth of eBay's. And the operational efficiencies are astounding: Craigslist has 18 employees; eBay has 8,800.

What eBay Could Learn From Craigslist

It is known, somewhat deceptively, as a cooperative advertising agreement. In plain terms, it means that many of the books on display at the front of a store or placed face out at the end of an aisle are there because the publisher paid for them to be there, not necessarily because anyone at the bookstore thought the book was noteworthy or interesting.

Pay-for-display programs are nothing new in the retail world, but the practice seems less savory in bookselling, where bookstore owners and managers were once assumed to serve as an editorial presence, recommending and featuring books they liked.

Co-op advertising has acquired a reputation as a kind of dirty little secret of the publishing business.

In many Barnes & Noble superstores, about 70 percent of the books on front-of-store tables are there because co-op money secures their spot.

While publishers disagree about the merits of paying for display, one thing about the arrangements is clear: they further concentrate money and attention on the books that need it least.

The phenomenon has been called the reverse Robin Hood effect.

The bookselling business has fallen prey to the blockbuster, too.

Cash Up Front

The critical question is not, "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

Here's a recent interview with John Hagel and John Seely Brown.

How can their companies develop a sustainable competitive edge that can keep them ahead of the competition?

While traditionally strategic advantage was based on geographic distance or core competencies, which were typically defined as static, increasingly the only sustainable edge has to do with the capacity to accelerate capability building. Companies must be able to build distinctive capabilities more rapidly than anyone else. What we focus on are management techniques that are emerging to help build that kind of dynamic strategic advantage.

It's a set of tools that can facilitate people at the edge being able to perform serious new work, because in this rapidly changing world, you need a constantly evergreen set of capabilities. Your sustainability depends on your ability to develop these capabilities before anybody else.

Can Your Firm Develop a Sustainable Edge?