Throughout the late 1990s, Enron was almost universally considered one of the country's most innovative
companies -- a new-economy maverick that forsook musty, old industries with their cumbersome hard assets in
favor of the freewheeling world of e-commerce. The company continued to build power plants and operate gas
lines, but it became better known for its unique trading businesses. Besides buying and selling gas and electricity
futures, it created whole new markets for such oddball "commodities" as broadcast time for advertisers, weather
futures, and Internet bandwidth.