Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Step inside any company, no matter the size, stage of development, or level of success, and the culture is either driving the strategy or undermining it.

As customer attitudes change, "giving back" is no longer an option. It's a necessity. Here's how to make it good business, too.

By definition, “craft” is an art or occupation requiring special skill and, if my taste buds have any say in the matter, the craft beer industry exemplifies the word. The Boston Beer Company founder and chairman Jim Koch was a key pioneer of the craft beer movement; in April 1985, he debuted his Samuel Adams Boston Lager in about 25 bars and restaurants in Boston. While it didn't have the trappings of a company that was about to change the industry, Samuel Adams had two key qualities in its favor: a full-flavored quality beer, and an incredible passion.

Photo by Benjamin Lowy What do you get when you cross Walmart with Mother Teresa? Who would be the Square Deal candidate in 2012? And how in the world do you compare--and rank--such dynamic, eclectic businesses as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

How did coffee go from a cheap commodity to a gourmet drink? You have this man (and several other innovators) to thank. If the martini was the fuel of the Mad Men set, then espresso drinks are the life blood of the start-up entrepreneur.

I recently spent the day with author Andrea Kates, who was challenged to connect the relevance of the working philosophy found in her best-selling book, Find Your Next , with real solutions that can help move businesses forward.

Most would say you'd have to be crazy. But this Chinese gadgetmaker proves being crazy can make you $100 million a year

Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day. Starbucks Stores In India By August . Starbucks will open coffee shops in India by August, serving locally sourced coffee through a partnership with Tata Coffee

Believe it or not, at one point we actually fed our pets real food. That was, until people-food companies realized they could maximize their resources by mashing together all of their scrap meat, leftover grains, eggshells, and bones, injecting some vitamins, and cooking it up into “kibble.”

Pete Cashmore is the CEO of Mashable. At 19, he founded the tech blog in Scotland, which has grown into a monster site for social news

Each year provides a clean slate and a chance to grab market share from competitors. Here are three tasks to get you started.

Sci is off to the frozen north to visit people for the holidays. She’ll be back very shortly, but in the meantime, here is a repost, to make us all feel a little warmer

Digital loyalty is a hot topic right now, mainly because store loyalty is a system that's ripe for some technology innovation (all those paper punch-and-stamp cards...so old-fashioned!) and because it can be easier to implement a digital loyalty scheme than launching a full-fledged novel digital payment system--especially for the smaller-sized business, more mom-and-pop than IT geek. It's exactly into this market that Belly is launching today to change everything with a simple iPad. The company's press release notes it "will offer a unique value proposition for small and medium sized businesses by replacing the traditional ‘buy 10 get one free punch cards’ with unique rewards that fit the personality of the business and connect consumers on a much more personalized level." The company was branded as Bellyflop during its pre-startup phase, but today it's rebranding and coming out of private test

On the heels of social newsreader FlipBoard launching an iPhone app, personalized e-magazine Zite today expands from the iPad to the iPhone, too. The move by the nine-month-old startup, which CNN acquired in September for $20 million, demonstrates just how much competition and overlap there is in the highly competitive aggregation space

Hertz puts music at the center of its marketing strategy with a Live Nation partnership that aims to link concert-going and car rentals. Few things go together like music and road trips, so how about a Hertz rental car with those concert tickets? As of January 1, 2012, you’ll be able to book both through Ticketmaster.com as well as LiveNation.com