Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.

The entertainment business hasn't had a new idea in years.

Big companies often use their leverage to take stakes in would-be suppliers, especially in the technology business.

It's a new business for me to be a filmmaker.

On the New York Stock Exchange, all buy and sell orders are routed through a single 'specialist,' guaranteeing that most small trades can be matched directly. But most larger trades are delivered to the specialist on the floor of the exchange by human brokers, a system that big investors view as increasingly inefficient.

The notion that employees and companies have a social contract with each other that goes beyond a paycheck has largely vanished in United States business.