Last October Kraft Foods split into two companies; Kraft Foods Group (KRFT) which is the mature North American Grocery business and Mondelez International (MDLZ) which represents a global snack food powerhouse with strong prospects for growth.

Business" style="padding: 1px; color: #000; background: #ddd;" class="alignright size-full wp-image-667" type="channel" active="false" key="business" natural_id="channel_1">Business leaders make thousands of decisions each year, and sometimes, a single decision can have a powerful far reaching impact. In the book, The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, Verne Harnish explores those “black swan” decisions that brought great success at companies like Zappos, Intel, Tata, Toyota and many others. Below is Harnish’s personal list of the greatest business decisions of all time.

Any company that wishes, for whatever twisted reason, to create a 401(k) for its employees that is both monstrously incomprehensible and costly, should study Sodexo’s retirement savings plan. I’ve looked at thousands of 401(k)s in my professional career, but this one just doesn’t add up.

Some people have nightmares about being chased by runaway trains, vicious animals or bad guys. Mine is daytime nightmare: Being chased by molten lava.

(Kitco News) - Comex gold futures prices ended the U.S. day session solidly lower in a volatile trading session Wednesday. Gold was first supported and then pressured by the latest news to come from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Comex June gold last traded down $17.40 at $1,360.30 an ounce. Spot gold was last quoted down $14.30 at $1,362.25.  July Comex silver last traded down $0.075 at $22.38 an ounce.

Founder Matthew Murphy is the brains behind Dubbler (Image credit: Appsurdity) You know where to go to spruce up your phone photos so you can share them with friends--Instagram. And for short edited videos, Twitter's Vine platform can help you channel your inner Jack Dorsey with six-second edited clips. But when you want to impose your voice or a happy birthday song on your friends, social media doesn't have as clear of an answer for where you should go. That’s where audio-sharing app Dubbler thinks it can become the next big media-sharing app—by betting people like the sounds of their own voices even more when they can share them filtered to sound like a robot or a cat.

When I was a kid, I was enamored with the idea that I was going to get a jet pack. I thought that when I was old enough to go to work, I’d just tie on the ol’ pack and blast myself over the highways and byways, landing deftly on the roof of my office.

Efforts to crack down on patent trolling are escalating.  Just a couple of years ago, Congress passed a major amendment of the Patent Act (the America Invents Act) with the hope that it would curb some abusive patent assertions.   Some members of Congress aren't satisfied with the results of that amendment, so three different bills (the SHIELD Act, the Patent Quality Improvement Act and the End Anonymous Patents Act) have been introduced that would further restrict patent trolling.  While most folks are focusing on the Congressional debates, Vermont quietly enacted a first-in-the-nation law to combat patent trolling (it's awaiting the governor's signature, expected imminently).  It's not clear whether Vermont has the legal authority to regulate patent activities, but even if not, its efforts foreshadow a coming legislative crackdown on patent trolls.

The Hamptons are awash with ritzy addresses, but perhaps no street boasts more billionaires than Southampton’s Meadow Lane. The 5-mile-long road sports a private helipad that can rush residents to Manhattan in 20 minutes, but conveniences like that cost serious cash: The median sale price for a home here last year was $18 million, according to PropertyShark. Too rich for your blood? Forty bucks will buy you a parking spot—at least for the day—and access to the beach is free.

T he most unromantic dinner for two in the history of epic eating recently went down outside Seattle. The participants: me and Nathan Myhrvold, the legendary technologist who, armed with the tens of millions he earned helping Bill Gates popularize software at Microsoft, has reinvented himself as the world's most renowned food scientist. The setting: his sprawling laboratory, where he deconstructs the process of cooking. Giant lathes and centrifuges surround our metallic table, and the hum of machinery fills the air. The only hint of nature--a wildflower centerpiece--sits inside a test tube.

Thanks to Jack Bogle, most of us understand the impact of fees on long-term investment returns. He was the one who pushed the notion that while 1% does not sound like a lot, when returns revert to the mean, about 8%, 1% is 12.5% of the total return.

Cutting-edge companies like Apple are successful because they are guided by an “innovate or die” attitude. However, on Tuesday Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, forced Apple toward another mantra, “innovate and justify.”

Sports media giant ESPN has become something of a monopoly in terms of American sports broadcasting. The $40 billion network seems to gobble up every piece of televised sports property it can get its hands on, leaving CBS, NBC and Fox to fight over the scraps. Though obviously costly, the rampant rights buying has always made it appear that cost was no issue for the Disney-owned network. News of company layoffs this week suggests that is hardly the case.

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Dylan Matthews has an opus of wonkery on government accounting, that delightfully touches on some of the geekier issues like the connection between loan payments and what it means-to-be, a question perhaps more broadly understood as something like, "what is the nature of the immortal soul."

Begun, this next-generation console war has. With yesterday's divisive unveiling of the Xbox One, Microsoft showed a decidedly entertainment-heavy deck, but they still have some key gaming cards up their sleeve? This week the Tangled Cables cast is joined by special guest Chris Arbogast, Director of Marketing at Nyko Technologies, to analyze the information we do know, and put a few of the rumors to rest.

As most readers are now aware, technology giant Apple Inc. has in the past few days been the recipient of juvenile attacks from U.S. Senators on both sides of the political aisle. Its alleged misdeed was the legal shielding of overseas earnings from corporate taxation stateside.

As Congress continues its investigation into allegations that the Internal Revenue Service improperly targeted certain applications for tax-exempt status based on keywords and politically charged language, a number of IRS and Treasury officials made their way to the Hill today to testify in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), is sometimes referred to as the Oversight Committee and has legislative jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, the government procurement process, federal personnel systems, the Postal Service and other matters. Chairman Issa describes the primary function of the committee as "oversight of virtually everything government does." Pretty broad duties, right? And that is, of course, how the IRS matter ended up here.

What’s in a name? Everything. It is the difference between being known and unknown. It is the difference between having solid goodwill or a less than stellar reputation.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) reported that satisfaction in the wireless phone industry is improving. The index noted that wireless service providers in total landed at 72 (out of 100 point scale), but that it is still below the overall customer satisfaction rating across multiple industries (internet service, television/cable service and others).

Debtor Donald G. Huber (Donald) founded United Western Development, Inc. (UWD) in 1968 to invest in real estate. In 2001, Donald was joined by his son, Kevin D. Huber (Kevin), who thereafter was heavily involved in UWD's business.

Sony (SNE) shares spike following investor enthusiasm over a potential spinoff of the company's entertainment business.

There's a point from yesterday's Senate Subcommittee hearings about Apple and the taxes that they do or don't pay which seems to me to be entirely bizarre. Yet it appears that people are taking it entirely seriously. The point is that the committee (or, as I assume was the case, its driving force Senator Carl Levin) noted the difference between Apple's provisions for taxes it would have to pay and the actual amount of cash that it handed over. What makes it bizarre is that given that the corporate income tax is paid in arrears then of course there will be such discrepancies: they're baked into the very design of the system.

Michael Gartenberg, a longtime industry analyst known for covering digital media technologies and companies including Microsoft and  Apple, has left his post as an analyst at Gartner Inc. to take a job with Apple.

I had the great good fortune of having breakfast this morning with Danny Meyer, longtime friend and client, at Maialino, one of his USHG (Union Square Hospitality Group) restaurants.  It was a wide-ranging conversation, but it kept coming back to two core things: beauty and utility.  We talked about business, relationships, food, training new employees, family and building teams - and in each realm we discussed how the best of these things are both beautiful and useful.

Tomorrow's inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong kicks off three big weeks of international acclaim for the industry, and reminds me of an anecdote about Picasso which, in a way, sums up a significant conundrum for those who make their living in the art world. Seems someone visited his studio, stood in front of a painting for several minutes, and asked Picasso, “What does it represent?” Picasso replied without hesitation, “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

When working in the world of social change, it's easy to get excited about a new campaign when we're inspired by hope or outraged by injustice. But in the scramble to make change happen, we can forget about the tactics and tools that actually help us implement our visions for a better world. Here are three sometimes-overlooked components of digital campaigns that are essential for success.