If you’re trying to build a great customer experience and sustain the quality of the customer service you provide as well, you need to watch out for “hedonic adaptation,” the psychological phenomenon that makes what’s bad seem less bad over time, and what’s good seem less so as well. This deadening…

The spectacular rise in small-cap shares since the election of Donald Trump shows that investors sometimes care more about sales and market-share growth than they do earnings. Albert Grosman and Brian Lund, portfolio managers of the ClearBridge Small Cap Fund, shared with us three of their favorite…

Lynda.com users are getting a free lesson in account security this morning. All 9.5 million of the site's users have been notified of a database breach. Image: Lynda.com To this point, Lynda.com has only seen evidence that a relatively small percentage of its users' accounts have been compromised .…

French far-right Front National (FN) party president, member of European Parliament and candidate for France’s 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen (on right, without beard) smiles as she poses for pictures with ”Santa Claus” during a visit of a Christmas market in Paris on December 8, 2016.…

Japan's solid-fuel rocket Epsilon blasted off on September 14, 2013 on its maiden voyage carrying a telescope for remote observation of planets in a launch coordinated from a laptop computer-based command centre. Epsilon is scheduled for a follow up launch at the end of 2016. AFP PHOTO / JIJI PRESS…

2016 has been another huge year for hacks and data dumps. Not all the data that's ended up in the wrong hands required any actual hacking, however. Sometimes it just leaked out. Image: Buffalo Take the recent discovery of personal data on 320 Ameriprise clients . Chris Vickery, lead researcher for…

There’s widespread panic afloat about how to successfully sell to millennials. This makes sense, because the majority of sales training and sales documentation in circulation is painfully dated, and guaranteed to get you off on the wrong foot with almost any millennial customer you’ll encounter. So…

Reddit The charity of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates extends to a cardboard box of goodies to a Reddit user who was stiffed by Scrooge last year. In a post on Reddit Gifts , user Aerrix says she knew it was really Gates participating in the eight-years-and-running tradition because he included a…

Although podcasts have still not quite crossed the culture chasm, the quantity and particularly the quality of content continues to increase dramatically. Healthcare entrepreneurs and others who have discovered this medium can accesses what at times feels like an embarrassment of riches – a diverse…

By Fatemeh Khatibloo For over a year now, Forrester has been working on a completely new way to understand consumers' complex feelings about privacy and personal data. We wanted to introduce a new way for companies to assess their own customers' privacy sensitivities in order to best understand how…

Uber would like everyone, especially the California DMV, to know that its self-driving cars are not really self-driving. The cars are not self-driving individually or collectively, and in fact, they’re just like regular cars, Anthony Levandowski, vice president of the advanced technologies group at…

Health Care What Will Wellness Look Like in 2017? As the new year approaches, many experts have noticed trends in workplace wellness they expect to make an impression in 2017. December 16, 2016 by

Long story short, Angelo Alleca started a series of investment funds, and allegedly used the money from the newer funds to cover investment losses in the older funds, while concealing all losses from investors. The fraud culminated in a promissory note scheme, whereby investors bought promissory…

By the Numbers By The Numbers: Holiday Perks at Work Is your boss a Santa or a Grinch? See how your company compares to others when it comes to holiday perks. December 15, 2016 by

Last night, the Borough of Carteret in New Jersey filed a class action complaint on behalf of itself and others against FieldTurf USA and its parent, Tarkett. According to the suit, "Plaintiff purchased six defective Synthetic Grass Fields, defined below, from FieldTurf between late 2006 and 2010,…

Facebook Inc. said it will begin flagging fake stories, combating a problem over which the company drew fierce criticism in the run-up to presidential election and in the weeks since. Critics say purposefully false stories that were shared on Facebook and elsewhere skewed American voters’ views and…

Genesis Mining CEO and Co-Founder Marco Streng (Photo courtesy of Genesis Mining) Since being introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, Bitcoin has swiftly evolved to transform the way we imagine global currency in a digital world. Developed by programmers and released as open-source software in 2009,…

Getty Images Verizon should get a bargain price for Yahoo after yet another huge data breach was announced. Yahoo Inc. investors were already nervous that a recent data breach would cut the price Verizon Communications Inc. was willing to pay for the internet company. Now, they should be terrified.…

The IRS’s push to obtain vast amounts of data on digital currency transactions is finally receiving some push-back. In fact, a Coinbase, Inc. customer has filed a motion in federal court seeking to intervene in the federal case. The motion hopes to block the IRS from enforcing its recent John Doe…

The only exchange-traded fund dedicated to drones fell on Wednesday, despite the industry reaching a potentially pivotal milestone, with Amazon.com Inc. announcing the first successful completion of a package delivery via the technology. The PureFunds Drone Economy Strategy ETF IFLY, -0.59% fell…

Image credit: Jay McGregor “The front page of the internet” is being gamed by vested interests. This is a story about how easy - and cheap - it is to buy your way onto the world’s most popular and influential forum. In 2013 two Redditors, David Fredrick and Aidan King, who’d never met before,…

When Mary and Ernie Molina lost their jobs about five years ago, they worried about feeding their family of six, which includes kids who suffer from serious food allergies. That’s when Mary began creating all-natural granola bars in her kitchen. Today she sells Lola Granola bars in 2,000 stores…

Palantir Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Alex Karp plans to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s meeting with tech executives on Wednesday in New York, a Palantir spokeswoman said Tuesday. Karp’s appearance is notable because billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who helped orchestrate the meeting as…

Apple CEO Tim Cook has fought government access to iPhones, but he can't do much when the feds force users to hand over passcodes and fingerprints. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) There's mounting evidence showing the government is winning in its fight to force citizens to hand over smartphone…

Health Care Second Time’s a Charm When It Comes to Medical Opinions As health care costs rise, employers urge second opinions to offset potential expensive medical procedures. December 13, 2016 by

AT&T, Time-Warner, Merger, $85 Billion, Comcast, TCI, Direct TV, corporate mergers AT&T’s ongoing campaign to buy itself back into prominence comes at some expense - $85 billion to be exact. That's th e price tag for acquiring Time-Warner and directly competing with companies such as Netflix and…

Elkana Timothy Yoe, general manager of Rodalink Indonesia (Rodalink Indonesia) So you’ve created an awesome in-store experience. Great! Now what? Time to create an equally impressive online experience. How do you start? Indonesia, one of Asia’s biggest bike assemblers, shares how his company…

The Practical Employer Common Sense (Sort of) Prevails in Ohio Over Gun-Owner Discrimination Law If a state is going to permit employees to store handguns in their cars on your property, what is a business to do to protect employees, customers, vendors and others? December 12, 2016 by

Own a Netgear router? Make sure you check the model number on it, because a flaw has been discovered that makes a trio of Netgear routers trivially easy for hackers to exploit. All it takes is a visit to a craftily-coded website. Image: Netgear The three routers -- the R8000, R7000, and R6400 --…

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - DECEMBER 11: Pedro Veniss of Brazil on Quabri de l'Isle rides for the victory during the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping at Palexpo on December 11, 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo by Alex Caparros/Getty Images) Success for startups and the venture community is all about…

Alphabet Inc.’s Google completed a deal with Cuba to place computer servers on the island to speed Google services there, a pact that officials hurried to complete before President Barack Obama leaves office next month. Alphabet GOOG, +0.00% GOOGL, -0.19% Chairman Eric Schmidt signed an agreement in…

Shutterstock If you're serious about growing your company, reaching your audience, and measuring long-term results from your marketing, content is something you've got to embrace. Seeing any kind of success from your efforts means committing to content and consistently creating and distributing it…

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk plans to be in attendance at President-elect Donald Trump’s meeting of tech-industry executives this Wednesday in New York, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk is the chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA, -0.06% and rocket…

Following is the complete text of a statement from top members of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Charles Schumer and Jack Reed. McCain is the committee’s chairman. The statement is unedited by MarketWatch. U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate…

At Whit's End, Leadership Development Millennials Dig Diversity Say what you want to about millennials, but this cohort is pro-inclusion, seeks out and insists on diversity in the workplace, and they’re not afraid to talk about it if things aren’t right. December 11, 2016 by

You should never bet against Amazon, unless you’re a masochist, which I am not. So, I’m going to predict that the newly-announced Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores will be wildly successful when they are rolled out, beginning with the first store in Seattle in early 2017. I also expect that…

(Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg) Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them? 1 – Microsoft and LinkedIn are officially married. The tech giant completed its roughly $26 billion acquisition of the social media…

Jacque Applegate used to receive about 200 Christmas cards at her office, and she’d tack them up as a display. These days, the count is more like 50. The volume of holiday cards received from friends and family isn’t the same either, said Applegate, a real-estate agent and associate broker in…

Agile marketers use data to develop insights and make decisions. Consequently, they’re far more nimble, which lets them maximize opportunities in a rapidly changing marketplace; for agile marketers, data is a strategic asset. In this article—the second in a six-part series on agile marketing—the…