1. It was 1992, a dark time for Honda Motor Company. Its founder, Soichiro Honda, had recently died. Rumours were circulating that the company - maker of the best engineered Japanese cars - was about to br absorbed by its dreaded rival. Bills were piling up from the financial follies of the 1980s. The company had no new models and the Japanese economy was heading downhill. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, Honda's new boss, did something astonishing, painful, symbolic and central to the strategy that has brought Honda back to life. What was this surprising and significant act?
2. When he joined Honda in 1963, he wangled his way into the research department, so he could work on racing motorbikes and engines for racing cars. As a young board member, he was threatened with the sack for spending his time tinkering in the workshops and skipping board meetings. One of Honda's most original racing car designs was sketched on his doodle pad during a tedious board meeting. Who?
3. Charles Plank and Edward Rosinski together hold 159 US patents and have been inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame. One of their key discoveries was that a synthetic catalyst could make this product yield far more of the end product than ever before. Which product, which end product?
4. Identify the person who said this: "I have had a partner - Charlie Munger  - for a lot of years. You have to calibrate with Charlie, though, because Charlie says everything I do is dumb. If he says it's really dumb, I know it is, but if he just says it's dumb, I take that as an affirmative vote."
5. The year was 1950. She had brought a big bag filled with merchandise, and she set it up and was in business at Neiman Marcus. Stopping everyone who came in the door, she said, "Try this. I', ___________, and these are the most wonderful beauty products in the world." Who? 
Estée Lauder, who founded the Estée Lauder Co. Today (1998), it controls over 45% of the cosmetics market in US department stores - three times the volume of its closest competitor,
6. He is a self-made multi-billionaire CEO. He is obsessive about mopping up water puddles in the men's restroom, colleagues say. He has a slew of pets, including three dogs and six birds. His company features one of the loopiest corporate cultures, where "having fun" is an official goal. He has pinned up jumbo sized pictures of grinning employees all over the hallway at the company's corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, California. Who, and which company?
7. This famous person's political involvement came with its share of controversy. Most notably, in 1975 he spent six days giving lectures on public policy in Chile and had one brief meeting with the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet. The result was a storm of protest. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize the next year, public objections came from all directions, including previous prize winners Linus Pauling and David Baltimore. Who?
8. A by-product of World War II was the discovery of this soap like product by a famous consumer goods company. The product, made from a soap like molecule without the potentially irritating alkaline element, is a ph-neutral, mild cleansing product. This product was first introduced in the US in 1957. How do we know this product?
9. In 1979, which famous software that sold millions of copies for the next five years, did a company named MicroPro introduce?
10. Three major companies dominate the dehydrated soups/sauces market in Europe. Two of them are Unilever (with its Bachelors and Blue Bond brands), and CPC (with its Knorr brand). Which is the third?
11. "This is a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed by change. It is about the ways in which we adapt - or fail to adapt - to the future". These are the opening lines for the introduction of which famous book?
12. In Wall Street slang, what are Bo Dereks and James Bonds?
13. IBM first coined this term in 1964 to describe a brand of typewriters. The MTST (Magnetic Tape "Selectric" Typewriter) boasted about this because it used magnetic tapes to store pages of  text. What are we talking about?
14. One Dr. John H. Dressauer, the research director of his company, convinced his company to buy Carlson's patent rights. Which company did Dr.Dressauer belong to?
15. On October 22, 1938, Carlson and Kornei succeeded in producing the first-ever copy of this. For the experiment, Carlson inked the date and the word "Astoria" on a glass slide. Then, using his pocket handkerchief, he rubbed a sulphur-coated metal plate to give it a static charge. He attached the inked glass slide to the metal plate and exposed them under a flood lamp. When he dusted the plate with powder the inked inscription appeared. What first is being described here?
16. About fifty years after John Loud's patent of 1888, an improved version was invented in Hungary by Ladislas and his brother, Georg. What invention?
17. How do we better know the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company?
18. The first great success for this invention came on an October morning in 1945 when a crowd of over 5000 people jammed the entrance of New York's Gimbels Department Store. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting the first sale of these in the United States. On the first day of sales, Gimbels sold out its entire lot of 10000 - at $12.50 each. What product are we talking about?
19. When World War I ended, so did the cotton shortage, and Kimberly-Clark began looking for news ways to sell Cellucotton. What product did this finally result in?
20. In the 1860s a gold miner named Alkali Ike had the habit of stuffing the Levis pants pockets with ore samples - so much so that the pockets would frequently rip open. Ike was constantly taking his Levis to his tailor, Jake Davis, to have them resewn. What invention did Jake Davis eventually come up with to solve the problem?
21. Washington Wentworth Sheffield was a dentist in New London, Connecticut in the mid-1800s, who developed a tooth-cleaning powder that was quite popular with his patients. His son Lucius, also a dentist, helped him modify the formula to make Dr. Sheffield's Creme Dentifrice. What first did Dr. Sheffield's Creme Dentifrice establish?
22. Wade Morrison, a young man who worked in a drugstore in Virginia, headed west for Texas after his romance with a local girl was thwarted by the girl's father. Morrison wound up running the Old Corner Drug Store in Texas, but he still spoke of his lost romance. Charles Alderton, the pharmacist at the store, would mix all kinds of flavours together in making a special drink for his patrons. The drink came to be named after the girl's father, in hopes that it would help Morrison's romance. What was the father's name?
23. He has been a professor of Electrical Engg and Computer Science at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology for 35 years. His products have been used in GM Cars, Zenith and Phillips TV divisions, NASA space shuttles, the Queen Elizabeth liner, and Broadway theatres. His father fled from Calcutta where he was wanted by the British police for revolutionary activities. Who?
24. Born in 1837, descendent of Welsh ancestors who came to Massachussetts in 1636, he began his career in 1856. He disliked and disagreed frequently with Theodore Roosevelt, and when the president was off on a safari in Africa, he is alledged to have said ‘I hope the first lion that he meets does its duty’. He was once asked for money by a friend in need. He took the friend for a walk all around New York and after an hour, told him ‘Now that you have been seen with me, you will have no problems getting a loan’. A churchman called him ‘Pierpontifex Maximus’. The Wall Street Journal called him ‘the undisputed leader who has stood between the business of this country and disaster’. Who?
25. In 1923, he left Kansas and boarded a train to California with $40 in his pocket. When a fellow passenger asked him about his intentions, he said ‘I’m going to direct great Hollywood motion pictures’. After seeing ‘The Jazz Singer’ he wrote to his brother: "I think this is, Old Man,  Opportunity rapping at our door. Slap a big mortgage on everything we’ve got and let us go after this thing in the right manner." In 1938, he received honorory degrees from both Harvard and Yale universities, and also accepted an award from the League of Nations. He started the ‘Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow’ center in USA. Who?
26. He called his wife ‘The Believer’ because she encouraged him at a time when everyone else called him crazy. John Kenneth Galbraith said this of him :"If there is any certainty as to what a businessman is, he is assuredly the things ________ is not." Thomas Alva Edison once told him ‘Young man, you have the right idea. Keep at it’. He got his greatest inspiration while watching Chicago meat-packers cut beef that moved past them on an overhead trolley. Who?
27. He has launched a university at Elk Grove Village, Illinois. President Nixon once met him and asked "What is it now, eight or nine billion?" To which he replied, "Mr.President, it is 12 billion." When his company’s market value surpassed U.S.Steel’s, Senator Lloyd Bentson complained ‘Something is wrong with our economy when the stock market is long on _____ and short on steel’ At the age of 72, he acquired the San Diego Padres baseball team. Till the age of 52 he was a peddler of milk-shake machines. Who?
28. He came from a rich family and was sent to Harvard, where he failed to complete his first year. His father helped him go into business but he lost $30000 in the first year. He spent $25000 per week and in 1937, his empire was in debt of $126 million. He was partly instrumental in causing a Spanish - American war, and once unsuccessfully tried to disrupt the premiere of a Hollywood movie based on his story. Who?
29. He set up shop in 1859 as a dry goods trader. The business thrived in 1861 after the outbreak of the US Civil War, when the US Army bought a lot of grain and supplies from him. He was a regular at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland and served as a Sunday School Superintendent. In 1881, he set up a trust of dozens of companies that controlled  80% of a particular industry. Other industries followed suit and this started off the first ‘Anti-Trust regulations’ in the USA. Who?
30. Who said the following things: "If I entered into an agreement with that man, I would be sticking my head in a moose"; "They always bite the hand that lays the golden egg"; "When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you"; "I had a great idea this morning, but I didn’t like it".
31. This institution had its origins in a coffeeshop opened in London in the late seventeenth century. In 1941, when the Bismarck was sunk by British ships, bells pealed all over Great Britain, but the bell at this institution was rung only once because of a certain tradition. Which institution, and what tradition?
32. By 1861, this product, produced in USA enjoyed higher sales abroad than in USA. In Africa, salesmen had to customize the machine because the tribesmen wanted it noisier saying ‘Good iron makes loud noise’. Mahatma Gandhi called it ‘one of the few useful things ever invented’. Name the brand.
33. At a meeting of advertising heads at National Cash Register which was going nowhere, this young Sales Manager jumped to his feet and yelled ‘The trouble with every one of us is that we dont think enough. We dont get paid for working with our feet - we get paid for working with our heads. Any man on the selling force could make two dollars where he now makes one if he would think along the right lines. ‘I Dont Think’ has cost the world millions of dollars’. Who?
34. This product is considered the best of its kind. The first one was completed in September 1968, took four years and $1.5 billion to build, and the effort almost sank the company and threw the city of Seattle into a depression. 7000 men worked to make it. What?34. This product is considered the best of its kind. The first one was completed in September 1968, took four years and $1.5 billion to build, and the effort almost sank the company and threw the city of Seattle into a depression. 7000 men worked to make it. What?
35. Mitchell Kapor, a Bostonian is a teacher of Transcendental Meditation and a Buddhist. In 1988, he started a foundation for electronic free speech. But he is the founder of a well-known company. Which?
36. Which term comes from the following quote by Marshall MacLuhan:       "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a _____"
37. Who is the only entertainer to have won the Oscar, the Tony, the Grammy and the Emmy?
38. Masaaki Imai  once said:"There are 3 religions in Japan: Buddhism, Shintoism and _______". Fill up the blank
39. The MacDonalds clown is called Ronald McDonald all over the world, except in Japan. What is it called in Japan?
40. Microsoft issues a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ to guard against counterfeit software. It has a watermark with the image of a woman. Name the woman.
41. What principle of stock speculation was first propounded by Thomas F. Woodlock?
42. What is common to the following words - creep, rise, gallop, burgeon, increase, climb, soar?
43. What did Jesse Jackson & Henry Kissinger do that Castro and  Gorbachev refused to do?
44. The first Xerox model was called the Xerox 914. The next model to come out was called the Xerox 813. Why?
45. Over 75 % of the world production of this item comes from Madagascar, Comoros and a bunch of other tiny islands off the E African coast. What are we talking about?
46. What concept evolved from a major embarrassment that Frank McNamara faced in a restaurant while entertaining his clients ?
47. What is special about the Rolex at centre court at Wimbledon?
48. Which brand name derives from the Japanese name for the Chinese goddess of Fortune?
49. Connect:  US Presidential Elections 1992, 1996 Indy Car race, World Cup Soccer 1998, and General Motors.
50. The first product made by this company was a car record player. They gave themselves a name similar to the name of the market leader in record players in those days. Name the company.