An upcoming Sunday New York Times Magazine piece on Toyota may look familiar to Fast Company readers:

The cover piece assesses the rise of Toyota, the most popular car company in the United States. Last year, Toyota's "retail return rate"—the average time its cars spent in lots before being sold—beat those of GM and Ford three-fold. The company's owes its success largely to its core principle of kaizen, or continuous improvement. "The company thinks in years and decades," says one consultant. "They don't think in months or quarters."

Why? Because Fast Company ran a strikingly similar piece in November.

"No Satisfaction — What drives Toyota?"

This is the second time, we're told, that the Times has judiciously lifted a premise from Fast Company in six months. A Jan. 2 front-page piece, "Wal-Mart Puts Some Muscle Behind Power-Sipping Bulbs," followed a September 2006 story on the initiative in Fast Company.

One more, as they might say at the Times, and it's a trend.