Word: acumen
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...artists less than 20% of the sales they generate, and that has to feed multiple band members. Meanwhile, as CD sales decline (in early 2007, they were down 20% from early 2006 in the U.S. alone), the concert business is booming. In July, Prince, long underestimated for his business acumen, decided to turn his most valuable asset-a buzzed-about record-into a loss leader, flooding the U.K. with 3 million free copies of his Planet Earth CD through the Mail on Sunday newspaper. He was ridiculed for going down market, until he announced 21 London concert dates-and sold...
...some corners of the Muslim world, and sparked renewed debate about the theological and philosophical roots of the so-called "clash of civilizations" percolating across the globe. Flinging the mild-mannered Benedict into the fire of breaking-news notoriety - with both his keen intelligence and striking lack of political acumen on fine display - the controversial lecture is the singular watershed of his papacy. Indeed, Vatican watchers now commonly divide Benedict's reign into "before and after" Regensberg...
...ideas and his business acumen - he made money on hotels and casinos as well as his TV production company - made him immensely rich, a mogul who kept the common touch. His name became synonymous in later years with the kind of fluffy, disposable entertainment that epitomized lowest-common-denominator television in the years when the channels were few and the audience huge. One reason for that huge audience, however, was people who had a real instinct for and rapport with the medium. People like the dear boy himself...
...cactus in front of his Desert Hills Motel, and in Amarillo, Texas, Dipak and Sangita Patel decorated their Route 66 properties with rose gardens. The so-called Patel-motel phenomenon began in the 1970s when immigrants from Gujarat, India--where Patel is a common surname--started applying their business acumen to the U.S. motel market...
...answer: political acumen and the inability of his detractors to come up with someone among themselves to take his place. Unlike his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was more of an intellectual, Maliki has turned out to be a street-smart politician. He ingratiated himself with the Kurdish bloc when he stood up to aggressive Turkish rhetoric about the Kurdish border in May. He's managed to hold onto the support of the Shi'ite coalition by gingerly two-stepping around the abolition of militias - authorizing coalition and Iraqi troops to fight them in some cities, leaving them largely untouched...