World’s Strangest

The secret to unlocking happiness and productivity at work, according to Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, is surprisingly simple. It’s not the big wins, it’s the small ones. And oh, yeah, you’ve got [...]

Finding great local restaurants can be a challenge. There seem to be a dozen mediocre, even bad restaurants, for every good one. That’s why chains have gotten so popular in the last few decades. They may not be as good as some independent local places, but you can rely on them to carry the same [...]

What do we need to do to grow the US economy again? Fire the MBAs, and let engineers run the show. That’s what Bob Lutz, the former Vice Chairman of General Motors, suggested. He noted that American companies started to lose its way when the MBAs took over from the engineers: The auto industry is actually a [...]

In a classic episode of The Office, Jan tasks Pam with documenting in detail what, exactly, Michael does with his time at work. Pam begins compiling a time-use diary. Michael, oblivious to the assignment, casually resists Pam’s subtle suggestions to perform his typical duties, and the time log ultimately includes such inane activities as Michael [...]

Besides pestering you with thankless tasks, what exactly do CEOs do all day? Thanks to a new Harvard Business School study, now we know: Researchers asked the chief executives of 94 Italian firms to have their assistants record their activities for a week. You may take this with a grain of salt. Is the boss’s assistant [...]

A new website called Rent the Runway is betting that it can do for haute couture what Netflix did for movies: “It was so easy. You just wear it and drop it back in the mail to them,” Ms. Harris said. “I don’t spend $2,000 on a dress regularly, so it’s nice to be able to [...]