"The real competition is less between Coke and Pepsi than between Wal-Mart and Kroger, " says Thomas Pirko, president of Bevmark, a consulting firm to the big soft-drink companies.
Stalwarts of the industrial revolution such as Thomas Newcomen, a West Country engineer, rub shoulders with John Locke, a political philosopher, and Edward Coke, a lawyer and jurist who did much to shape the common-law traditions of intellectual property.