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The Internet has utterly transformed the way that companies buy and sell.

Over the past 20 years we've seen the Internet move from dial-up connections and brochure-ware to broadband and social networking. Since that transformation is now largely complete, this is a good time to examine how it's changed the way companies buy and sell.

The below is condensed from a special report I authored with Howard Stevens, CEO of Chally Worldwide. That report, along with several others, is currently available for free on the Chally website (HERE).

Historically, buyers relied on vendors to provide product information and expertise, usually in the form of product/benefit presentation that provided information the buyer needed in order to make an intelligent decision.

That is no longer the case. Using the Web, buyers can get all the product information they want (and more). As a result, buyers do not want sellers to waste their time providing information that's easily available elsewhere.

The Web has also changed how buyers evaluate pricing. In the past, the simple mechanics of gathering data on competitive products (and comparing relative prices) was a formidable job, requiring many man-hours of effort.

Today, however, buyers can instantaneously compare products online, making it easy and inexpensive for customers to search for the lowest prices for many of goods and services that they might require.

The ability to quickly find alternative products tends to drive prices downward because, all other things being equal, the customer will almost always purchase the lower-priced product since it no longer costs much to research those alternatives.

In addition, even though the Web allows buyers to discover alternatives, many find themselves overwhelmed by what psychologists call "the tyranny of choice," where too many alternatives create buyer anxiety, making a purchase less likely.

Many buyers--especially busy ones--sense that learning enough about product category to make an intelligent decision is less cost effective than simply calling an expert (i.e., a salesperson) and just having that salesperson "take care of it."

In this case, the seller, in essence, acts as the "manager" of that segment of the customer's business, ensuring that the product or solution works well in the customer's environment and creates the measurable results that the buyer seeks.

As a result, many customers now look to their vendors to "own" the aspects of their own business that the customers would prefer not to "own" themselves. Customers are thus demanding more from sellers than when selling was mostly delivering information.

Not too long ago, many business pundits believed that the Internet would make sales reps obsolete because customers would be able to make decisions, order products, check delivery status, and so forth, entirely without the seller's assistance.

In some markets, this has happened. The airline industry, for example, has become almost entirely driven by price, with consumers and business people alike able to choose the lowest cost flight on a variety of websites, without using a travel agent.

However, while travel agents are no longer responsible for selling the millions of domestic airline tickets, travel agents still exist, but they provide more complex services (like luxury travel) that assume that airline tickets are commodities.

In other words, one market becomes "fictionless" and the sales role declines, it typically creates another, higher-level market that requires the customer to seek the expertise of a salesperson in order to navigate the complexities.

The same thing happened in the computer industry. Most computer hardware are now commodity products and are bought directly across the Web without the presence of a salesperson.

At the same time, what companies actually DO with these cheap and easily-purchased computers has become far more complicated, demand greater levels of expertise from the sellers of software and services.

In the past, selling was seen largely as an "art" consisting primarily of interpersonal skills, often rooted in social psychology such as rapport building along with procedural knowledge, such as how to configure a deal or write up an order.

Today, selling to businesses requires business acumen and in-depth industry experience, so that the seller can take responsibility for key functions inside a customer's account. Selling often requires the ability to build an ironclad case for ROI.

This is not to say that traditional sales skills are entirely useless. However, if buyers are to welcome sellers into their business as consultants and trusted advisers, the seller must be able to command the same credibility as an manager within the buyer's firm.

The web also demands that sellers have a higher level of technological skill as well. Blogs, web conferencing, and social networking are now common as sales tools, and many sellers harness the wealth of Web-based data to focus their selling efforts.

The new technology, along with the new demands that buyers are putting on sellers, has made the sales archetype of "the maverick who closes the big deal" increasingly quaint and even obsolete.

Instead, buyers now expect sellers to become engaged and enmeshed with the buyer's own business, an expectation that demands higher levels of industry knowledge, technical knowledge and general business expertise.

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Want to succeed as a female founder? Quit talking about being a female founder.

As the lone female founder of a bustling incubator, I'm approached by women who feel dispirited, restless, confused, and insecure about their ability to jump off the cliff into the start-up unknown.

I listen. I empathize. I offer anecdotes for breaking out of their fear. In good ex-therapist fashion, I encourage them to take a risk.

While I understand the need to discuss their self-doubt and analyze the dearth of women starting high-growth companies, I am growing weary of these conversations. They have an echo chamber quality that, I fear, is doing little to actually solve the problem or help women move forward.

Instead of talking, let's start acting.

Here's the profile of a female entrepreneur that I want to work with:

• She's never attended a women's symposium.
• She doesn't do panels as the "token female," not because she's against this well-meaning exploitation, but because she's just too damn busy.
• She's hustling, recruiting people, building things, creating a movement.
• Her urgency is palpable. She takes little thrill in small talk, walks fast, and thinks big.

I had a meeting this week with one of our female founders. She is the type of female entrepreneur that I just described. She isn't interested in talking about being a "female founder" because it isn't important to her. She's building a business and a team. She's landing multi-million dollar contracts. She's focused on her family and her kids. She has clear goals and is uncompromising in seeing them met. And she's equally passionate about bringing other good people along with her. As decisive as she is collaborative, she is creating huge momentum around herself and her start-up.

I listened to an interview recently with Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. If she were an entrepreneur, she'd be a badass. And one I'd want to hang out with.

Talking about failure and resilience, she said, "If you live in the sting, you will undoubtedly fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say, "No, I'm just not going to let this get me down."

You're the only woman in your tech incubator? Capitalize on your uniqueness.

You have an amazing idea that's difficult to execute? Ask for help.

You feel isolated on a team of men? Find other ways to get support, then keep moving.

Don't live in the sting. Excuses only amplify the problems. There's a big difference between naming and blaming. It's OK to name the inequities that exist in the start-up community, but don't blame anything on them.

Instead, change the course by leading the charge.

Get crystal clear on your assets and strengths. Get exceptionally good at execution. Recruit others to your cause. Empower them to fill in the gaps where you are weak. Work harder than anyone else. Last I looked, whether you're a man or a woman, this is the recipe for success.

One of my mentors and role models, Pamela Dubin Beaty, recently said, "After billions of dollars to fund women's advancement and achievement in public policy and education, we in the West live in an unprecedented era that offers women the greatest opportunities in the history of our world. Want to succeed? Embrace technology, entrepreneurship, and the start-up culture. All three reward excellence. Create your niche and lead from there."

Want to lead? Then do it.

Some customers have legitimate complaints. Others are just itching for a fight--or a refund. How to respond.

For many small businesses, a solid online reputation provides a gateway for virtual word-of-mouth referrals. Unfortunately, a negative review--especially one that is articulate and engaging--on Yelp!, TripAdvisor or Amazon, can have an outsized impact on a small company.

I found one of the best public responses to an irate customer complaint from Savusavu, Fiji. The respondent was Tige Young, CEO and owner of the Tui Tai Expeditions, cited by National Geographic as "one of the best adventure travel companies on earth."

With an excellent online reputation, it would be understandable if Tige chose to disregard the occasional negative review. However, rather than ignore discontented customers, Tige does a masterful job of crafting rebuttals that are informative, appropriately deferential and amusing.

Bipolar reviewers

The reality of customer reviews is that, in most cases, the people who take the time to share their thoughts online either had a euphoric experience or were extremely dissatisfied. Thus, online customer reviews tend to be either highly positive or grossly negative. This is certainly true for Tui Tai Expeditions. Of its 51 reviews on TripAdvisor, 40 are extremely positive, giving the company five stars. Only three customers voice negative opinions.

I was particularly impressed with Tige's response to this irate customer's review, posted on TripAdvisor under the heading "Very Disappointing." In it, the customer complains about, among other things, the food and the variety of activities available on the trip. Tige politely addresses the customer's concerns, while firmly supporting the veracity of his company's value proposition. Here's how he does it.

Tip #1: Authentic, not corporate.

When you read Tige's comments, you can picture him having a calm, polite conversation with the "very disappointed" honeymooners who wrote the negative review. His reply is not perfect, but neither are real people's conversations.

Start-ups should similarly communicate in an intimate and friendly tone, and avoid the off-putting formality of a corporate spokesperson. Of course, the relative degree of formality should be consistent with your company's marketing voice. However, when dealing with angry customers, overt formality can be misinterpreted as bureaucratic insensitivity.

Tip #2: Pander, don't preach

When addressing complaints via social media, your intended audience is not the person who feels they were wronged. Rather, you should indirectly speak to the potential future customers who will consider the negative review, and your response, when assessing the purchase of your start-up's product or service.

Tip #3: Counter, don't call out

When a customer says something untrue about your business, it is more effective to show an inconsistency between his or her complaint and his or her action,s rather than calling out the customer as a liar. In Tige's case, he notes that the disappointed honeymooners were offered "the choice to disembark and move to any number of nearby resorts, OR to stay onboard for 2 additional days. The reviewer chose to stay onboard for 2 additional days. That did not strike us as an indication of dissatisfaction."

Tip #4: Deferential, not defensive

No matter how rude or unsavory the negative comments, always treat your customers (even pissed-off former customers) with deference and respect. Even when there is little chance of winning back their business, keep in mind that your conversation is being held in the public square and will be accessible online for many years to come.

Tip #5: Break it down. Never rant.

Tige addresses each aspect of the customer's complaint in a compartmentalized manner, just as a skilled lawyer refutes a hostile witness' adverse testimony. Rather than force the reader to dig through a dense rebuttal, he clearly outlines his counterarguments by using headings to denote his response to each topic raised by the dissatisfied customers.

Tip #6: Humorous, not humoring

Realizing that his primary audience is his future customers, Tige uses humor to undercut some of the more ludicrous aspects of the reviewer's diatribe. For instance, when responding to a complaint about the weather, Tige notes, "That trip was indeed affected by heavy rain. Still, passengers were able to complete nearly every activity scheduled. Better weather certainly makes it a better experience, and try though we may, we haven't found a way to control the weather : )." Yes, Tige included a smiley face in his response.

Tip #7: Take ownership, not umbrage

Although Tige cannot control the weather, he willingly claims ownership of the aspects of the honeymooners' trip that he could influence, writing, "As an owner, Service is one of those areas we can control (unlike the weather), and it's the area I care about most." He then defends the quality of the service provided by stating the results of a contemporaneous survey, taken on board at the end of the voyage.

Tip#8: Facts, not flatulation

Whenever possible, counter a negative reviewer's comments with concrete facts. In Tige's case, he shares the collective numerical scores of the passengers who accompanied the honeymooners on their disappointing voyage. For instance, the honeymooners noted that the food did not meet their expectations, yet Tige notes that the cuisine was given a "9 out of 10″ by all of the passengers, including the disenchanted honeymooners.

Channeling Tige

The next time a disgruntled customer writes a negative online comment about your start-up, resist the natural temptation to write a hurried, angry reply. Instead, pour yourself a large glass of pineapple juice (rum optional) and take a deep breath of an imaginary tropical breeze. If you then pretend you are sitting on the Tui Tai, calmly chatting with the disappointed customer, while surrounded by a multitude of your future customers, you will no doubt craft responses that are as effective and engaging as Mr. Tige Young's.

Looking for a space ripe for innovation? The launch of Google Glass might be worth your attention.

Google Glass--a computer you wear on your face that looks a bit like eyeglasses--is about to spawn an ecosystem that could create new business opportunities.

Juniper analyst Nitin Bhas estimates the global market for wearable technology such as glasses, scanners and tracking devices will expand from 15 million units in 2013 to nearly 70 million in 2017 -- fast growth but a mere 7 percent of the billion smartphones now in use.

By 2014, Juniper reckons the value of those wearable technologies could nearly double from $800 million to $1.5 billion.

If you’re an entrepreneur looking for the next big thing, Glass could be it. But when it comes to grabbing that opportunity, you need to pick the one that stimulates your passion and that demands the skills at which you excel.

Glass lets users take “pictures or record video without using their hands, send the images to friends or post them online, see walking directions, search the Web by voice command and view language translations,” according to The New York Times.

Glass accesses the Internet through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth linked to the wireless service on a user’s cellphone. And users activate Glass by speaking, touching the frame, or moving their heads, according to the Times.

Glass could be the basis of killer apps for different people. But in order to turn those apps into reality, someone needs to add to what Google is offering. First, take a look at five possible killer apps.

Entrepreneur. I’m CEO of an enterprise software company attending an investment conference. I’d use Glass to scan the room and ask Google to show me which people are venture capitalists who’ve invested in companies in my space. Before introducing myself, I’d ask Google to show me their LinkedIn profiles.

Professor. I’m a professor about to start the first meeting of a class of 40 executives. Wearing Glass, I would look at each person in the room, ask Glass to take their photos, tell Google to display information about their companies and their LinkedIn profiles. Then I’d link all of it to my grading sheet.

Surgeon. I’m a heart surgeon at a teaching hospital. I’d tell Glass to take a video of a particularly difficult aorta surgery, annotate it with graphics and verbal commentary, and post the result on the students’ social media sites to review before the next class session.

Secret Service. I’m a secret service agent protecting the president during his visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall. I’d use Glass to can the crowd and ask Google to search the faces to find the people with records in global terrorist and criminal databases. I’d tell Google to display those records and I’d take action.

Stranded in the woods. While cross-country skiing deep in the woods, I fall and break my leg. I try to ski back, but can’t. I’d tell Glass to video my location, record a voice message for help, call 911, and send the video and voice message to my social networks.

1. Stylish Glass

One of the most obvious barriers to people actually wearing and using Glass is that they don’t want to look like geeks. This means that if you’re good at designing and retailing fashion products, you have a business opportunity.

How so? If you can design fashionable frames - and accessories that go with them like cases and cleaning products--you have a chance to help Google to make Glass the kind of product that non-geeks will proudly wear.

2. Facial recognition

Speaking of geeks, if you know how to build facial recognition software, you have a short at helping Google make many of the killer apps

To be sure, Google already offers a service called “Find My Face that scans users' and their friends' photos for recognizable faces, and suggests nametags for the faces by matching them with users' profile photos and other tagged photos on the social network,” according to CNNMoneyTech.

This technology could go part of the way to helping implement the secret service or entrepreneur apps I mentioned. But if you have what it takes, Google would need to add the ability to scan a face through Glass, compare the scan to a database of faces, make the best match, and return to your Glass the terrorist database or LinkedIn profile that match that person.

3. Glass Supply

Someone is going to profit from Glass by making and shipping its different hardware components to Google.

You might design, make and ship Glass’s processor or memory, the visual display located above the eye so that a Glass user can interact with the virtual world while still living in the real one. You could make and ship Glass’s camera, microphone, speaker, data communications radios, gyroscopes, accelerometer, and/or compass.

If Glass becomes popular, the companies that supply Google--particularly with components that are hard to make--could prosper.

4. Content Curation

Glass would make it so easy for people to make videos of their interactions with people and computers that an entire industry could emerge to help people organize, store and retrieve all of their recordings.

You could start a business to help Glass users decide which videos to pitch and which ones to save. Or you could become a Glass video editor--helping to pick out the best video clips from an event such as wedding or a business conference and weave those pieces into a compelling narrative.

Ever since Apple lost its innovation mojo, it’s been hard to find new opportunities to profit from Silicon Valley’s ground-breaking new ideas. But Glass could spawn plenty of them - and these four may be a place to start.

Search is key to online marketing, but it can't do everything for you. The fact is, most clicks from search go to a just a handful of websites.

To say that search is important in online marketing is about the same as proclaiming the importance of breathing to continued life: It's a must. But making it work is tough because not all sites search equally.

If you want to make search work for your business, you need to understand the search landscape: what sites get the attention, how users search, and where they go after they click. Not only does that help you better understand how to promote your own site, but it aids in deciding where to place ads. There's some interesting information out from Experian Marketing Services. More than ever, the 80/20 rule seems to rule search.

For example, last quarter, close to 21 percent of all search clicks are captured by only five websites:

• Facebook--8.48 percent
• YouTube--5.55 percent
• Yahoo--2.63 percent
• Wikipedia--2.01 percent
• Amazon--1.40 percent

And it only takes about 500 websites to capture roughly half of all search clicks, as the Experian graph below shows.

Things aren't that different in the world of paid search, where companies advertise to appear in search results. The top five websites in this area are Amazon, eBay, eHow, BestBuy, and Yahoo Shopping. The top 10 sites grab 16 percent of the paid search clicks, while the top 500 get 56 percent.

That tells you a few things. First, if you figure that organic search will allow you to become the Next Big Thing, you should do a little more figuring. Early on, you are unlikely to develop enough traffic to become one of the top 10,000 sites that, collectively, get three-quarters of the clicks. It doesn't mean your mousetrap can't be successful, but don't expect the world to beat a course to your door. Most people still won't know that you exist.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter got ahead because of innovative services, clever non-traditional marketing, and money to back them. Think through the marketing and PR efforts you will need to succeed.

As for search advertising, close to 65 percent of the clicks go to only 1,000 sites, according to Experian. That leaves something like a gazillion sites to split the rest. Again, use search advertising as part of your marketing, but don't expect it to be the only tool in your kit.

A report by Ooyala reveals how people are consuming online video.

A recent and extensive report by video start-up Ooyala broke down online video viewing habits in 2012.

The report, which measured the anonymous viewing habits of almost 200 million unique viewers in 130 countries, found that last year was particularly transformative; the pace of mobile and tablet video watching skyrocketed, live online video became the norm, and long form video made a comeback (an indication that not all of us are spending our time online watching cat videos). What’s more: the report is a good indication of what the future of online video will look like.

Here are three take-aways on the present (and future) of how we watch video.

Mobile and tablet usage have the spotlight.

The average number of hours of online video watched per tablet increased 110 percent in 2012. And the average amount of time spent watching online video via mobile device increased as well, growing by 87 percent over the course of the last year. Measured together, the median number of hours spent watching online video per device increased by 100 percent during 2012.

Live video is becoming the norm.

Ooyala measured viewer engagement for live video versus video on demand (VOD), with pretty astounding results -- according to the report, on desktops, viewers watched live video 18 times longer than VOD content in Q4 of last year. On mobile, viewers watched live video four times longer then VOD content, and on tablets, live video was viewed five times as long as VOD.

People are spending more time watching long videos.

Long videos (i.e. videos with a running time over 10 minutes) accounted for 57 percent of total time spent watching videos on personal computers last quarter, and nearly 25 percent of total desktop viewing time was spent on videos with a running time over 60 minutes. On tablets, the percentage was even higher, with 32 percent of the total time viewing time spent on content running over an hour in length.

You don't build a brand like FUBU by begging for favors. Daymond John explains how he found partners who believed in him.

In 1992, Daymond John started selling homemade hats and shirts on the street. Within a few years, he had turned FUBU into a popular clothing line. For John, it all came down to supply and demand. (And being friends with a few rappers didn't hurt, either.)

I started FUBU selling hats and screenprinted T-shirts, but the ones that really got us noticed were our embroidered shirts. I had 10 of them. Not 10 styles of shirts. Just 10 shirts. For the first few years, I put those 10 shirts on rappers to wear in their videos. I'd put one on LL Cool J, take it back, and put it on Method Man and take it back. Because of those videos, people saw the product everywhere, but they couldn't get it. It built up huge demand.

At the time, I really wanted to be in Macy's. That was my Holy Grail. But the big department stores we approached said, "We don't know. We think those clothes are going to attract the wrong type of people into our stores who will steal clothes or get in shootouts."

So, instead, we focused on the mom-and-pop shops--the small chain stores in the middle of the hood. These were the type of places where you go in and the owner says, "This is a great brand! These guys are on fire! You need to wear this!" Those were people we could build an intimate relationship with.

Within a few years, the department stores came around. They found out those mom-and-pop stores were making a lot of money from our products. The first department store we landed was Macy's. The best part was, they supported us. We didn't have to walk around hat in hand. This was something they wanted to do. It's always better to do business with people who respect you. When you go around begging for favors, it doesn't get you far.

Day job while launching FUBU: Waiter at Red Lobster
Start-up capital: $100,000 from a home mortgage
FUBU's peak annual revenue: $350 million

In tech start-ups especially, there's the idea that if you can't go big, you can just go home. This tragic story shows just how dangerous that ethos can be.

Earlier this month entrepreneur Jody Sherman (no relation) killed himself on his birthday. The company he co-founded, Ecomom, sold healthy alternatives to conventional products for families. Apparently things were amiss at the company, as Alexia Tsotis reported in TechCrunch:

If this week's reports are correct, and we've heard they are, Ecomom will be shutting down soon due to mismanagement of funds and some sort of purchasing decision the site somehow couldn't recover from.

The combination of depression, business problems, and expectations--he wanted Ecomom to be "as big as Zappos"--were lethal.

Depression needs professional help. So does mismanagement, although of a different type. But the wild expectations that can exist in the start-up world are something else. Some in the tech community, like Jason Calacanis, have begun to question how the business culture may contribute to personal problems:

I'm not an expert on suicide, but I am an expert on being a founder. Many of the founders I know have been desperate, depressed and overwhelmed in their careers. For everyone that shared this with me, I'm certain 10 more didn't.

The Painful Truth

Virtually every entrepreneur in some sense wants to be a hero, overcoming impossible odds to ride into the circle of victory. And there is nothing wrong with that. The danger lurks when you accept someone else's definition of victory and you don't want to disappoint. As Ecomom investor Paige Craig told Tsotis, she would ask Sherman how things were going and he would reply, "Killing it." They would get into deeper conversations, but not enough to arrive at the "painfully 'truthful' part."

Killing it is never a realistic answer or goal. It's not something you want, because it assumes a total mastery of all aspects of the business and a lack of problems. There are always problems. Even wild sales success brings pressures in customer service, fulfillment, supply chain, and cash flow, just to name a few operational hurdles that growing businesses must handle.

Start With What's Possible

As the old saying goes, if you aim for the moon, you might hit the rooftop. But it's time to get out of the false expectation that everyone will actually hit the moon. And as an entrepreneur, you can't wait for everyone else to come to that conclusion.

If you've been caught up in the killing it mania, it's time to step back. What you really want is for your business to succeed. Forget the all-or-nothing mentality that might goad you into going above and beyond what you thought was possible, but that can also sink you into enormous mistakes, false turns, and unwarranted despair.

Look to build a real business, not the game-changing-mind-blowing-industry-shattering icon that people tell you you're supposed to want. If you really want to change the world with a business, that's great. Take it a step at a time and make the company work so, eventually, you can reach your bigger goals. It's a lot easier and more certain to reach the rooftops with a ladder than a single leap.

Your company culture isn't as friendly and supportive as you want it to be. What can you do about it? Seth Godin has an unorthodox idea.

As if you needed any more evidence that bullying behavior is corrosive to your culture, here on Inc. last week we reported the results of two studied that found being a jerk is actually contagious, spreading from the original bully to his or her unfortunate victims and then outward to infect the office culture in general.

For business leaders, this science tracing how bad behavior spreads through a group may be interesting, but the more pressing question about bullying for bosses probably is: How do you put the genie back in the bottle?

If your company has somehow become infected with nastiness and your culture (and team productivity) is suffering, is there any way to battle the malaise and re-instill a sense of safety and support among team members?

A fascinating recent blog post by best-selling author Seth Godin offers a suggestion. For inspiration, Godin looks to perhaps the world's most bully-intensive environment--yes, you guessed it, high school—to explore the roots of nasty behavior and what interventions are effective to stop it.

He starts out with a clever definition of what bullying actually is: "Bullying is what happens when an individual with power exercises that power against people who don't fit in. By threatening to expose or harm or degrade the outlier, the bully reinforces the status quo in a way that increases his power." And goes on to suggest that to combat jerk behavior at its root, organizations, whether they be schools or small business, need to explicitly celebrate the weird:

Bullying persists when bureaucracies and hierarchies permit it to continue. It's easier to keep order in an environment where bullying can thrive (and vice versa), because the very things that permit a few to control the rest also permit bullies to do their work. The bully uses the organization's desire for conformity to his own ends.

At the fabulous lab school in Manhattan, they're making huge progress at undoing this problem. A recent assembly (organized and run by students and volunteers) was created around weirdness, fear and most of all, "owning it."… When there isn't a race to fit in the most, bullying those that don't fit in loses much of its power.

This is incredibly brave and risky for those in charge. It involves trusting people to become something wonderful, as opposed to insisting that they fit in at all costs.

"We're all a lot weirder than we'd like the world to know," he concludes. Bullying, in other words, thrives in environments that value conformity and implicitly demand group members hide their true selves to make life easier for the higher ups. That sounds like high school, but remove the raging hormones and ill-advised fashion experiments, and it also sounds like plenty of businesses.

Could encouraging a little more weirdness make your business a friendlier and more productive place to work?

One of the hardest and most important things a leader does is bringing a team of highly intelligent and highly opinionated people to consensus.

There's probably no such thing as an established definition of the word leadership, but I'll tell you what it means to me: The ability to get people moving in a single direction. Perhaps the most critical test of leadership ability in a business environment is in driving consensus.

When you've got a management team made up of highly intelligent, highly opinionated people, let me tell you, building consensus can be remarkably challenging, to say the least. Especially when it's a critical decision on a controversial topic. Even more so when it means things may have to change. Nobody likes to change.

Having done this sort of thing I don't know how many times, here's a seven-step process that seems to work remarkably well.

1. Know who you're dealing with.

You may think that everyone's on the same team so their goals are aligned. It would be nice if that was true, but it almost never is. Sure, they may say they're aligned, but everyone has their own agenda. It's not as nefarious as it sounds. After all, it's natural to want to protect your domain.

Since you may be a consultant and the group may not report to you, get to know them individually and try to identify their interests in the matter at hand. Ideally, you want to know exactly what you're up against right out of the gate.

2. Lay it all out.

You might think that staying in control is critical to the process. Indeed, that's true, but the way to achieve that isn't by being authoritative. Pulling rank is a last resort because it can really piss people off, turn them against you, and create passive aggressive behavior that can derail the process.

Instead, make the team feel like it's their process by sharing with them exactly what you plan to do, solicit feedback, and explain why it all makes sense to do it this way. That's your first test. If you can't get them to agree on the process, you're going to have one hell of a time getting them to agree on a decision.

3. Get to the bottom of it.

One way or another, you have to get the complete, unadulterated truth about the situation at hand before you get too far down the path. That usually means meeting with folks one-on-one in confidence as opposed to grilling people in front of their peers. You'd be amazed what people will tell you one-on-one if you ask the right questions and appear genuinely interested in their story.

Once you have a pretty clear picture of what's going on, you should be able to at least reach your own conclusion about how you'd like to see things go down. It's a lot easier to engineer a process to bring folks to consensus if you know the conclusion you're trying to get them to reach. It's not essential, but very, very helpful.

4. Bring out the outliers.

It's a good idea to let the outliers--the highly opinionated folks on either side of the equation--have their say before you get too far down the path of making your arguments. The reason is twofold.

If you draw them out early, you and everyone else can start to get comfortable with who feels or believes what. That, and letting people have a voice, relieves tension and contention, as well. Once the hot stuff is out on the table, everyone will breath a sigh of relief.

Also, if you suspect there will be some tough nuts to crack, then you might consider doing some behind the scenes work. That means getting a few allies on board so, when the time comes to debate, the outlier stands out. It's a lot harder to hold your ground when everyone else is saying the same thing. Peer pressure can be a powerful motivator, even for executives.

5. Make it logical.

There are two types of arguments that work in driving consensus. I like to use both in sort of a one-two punch method. The first is a logical or quantitative argument that will appeal to so-called left-brain people. Make sure you've done your homework, your research, whatever, and give it to them straight. It's hard to refute hard data.

Keep one thing in mind. If you're going to be selective about what you present and how you present it, be aware that you might be called on it. There had better be a very good reason why you're presenting A and omitting B. Remember, this is the argument that's supposed to appeal to the logical folks. So it damn well better be logical.

6. Make it personal.

Of course, the second type of argument is an emotional or qualitative one. But the method I use to accomplish that is not so obvious. If at all possible, I like to use specific anecdotes or words directly out of the mouths of credible individuals to really get my point across and hit people right between the eyes. The key, of course, is to choose the juiciest and most hard-hitting stories or quotes.

For example, if you're taking a management team through a strategic planning process and there's a specific direction you'd like the company to take, this would be the time to quote some key analysts, pundits, employees, and customers, as appropriate. Even if the sources are anonymous, when people hear what folks they perceive to be experts or key stakeholders have to say, that has a powerful effect that can sway viewpoints.

7. Close the deal.

Obviously there's going to be debate throughout the process but most of it should have worked itself out by the time you've finished your quantitative and qualitative analysis. By then, heads should be nodding more or less in the same direction.

At that point, make sure you close the deal by declaring a Plan of Record or POR. Make sure everyone knows it's their plan, not yours. Document it. End of story.

Trying to build a new relationship? You'll never manage it by staring at a screen. Here's what you need to do instead.

We’ve stopped seeing each other. You and me. All of us.

Our eyes may indeed be windows to our soul, but with our necks craned downward and our eyes focused on tiny handheld screens, who can tell? We hardly make an effort to look at the person we’re talking to anymore. Younger people, in general, find it challenging to maintain eye contact with adults. Video conferencing complicates things further. When is the last time you consciously looked into someone’s eyes and had a meaningful conversation?

When nearly every personal and business interaction uses a screen as an intermediary, it’s difficult to develop and maintain meaningful relationships with employees, customers and partners. But such relationships are the cornerstone of building a long-term business. So put down that smart phone, walk away from the computer, and think about these five things:

Speak with Your Eyes

We communicate so much with a simple look. Are you genuinely interested and receptive to ideas or do your eyes dart away while someone is talking? A challenging stare can thwart collaboration before a word is spoken. Even if your eyes are relaxed and attentive, your eyebrows may convey concern, surprise and other emotions. Relax your face when you’re meeting with someone and use your eyes to meet theirs for five seconds at a time, while making note of their overall body language.

Listen to Their Eyes

Without looking directly into someone’s eyes, you’ll miss millions of visual clues as to what’s going on inside their head. Can you see fear? A spark of excitement? A glazed look of boredom? Are the other person’s arms crossed or relaxed at their side? You can’t read body language if your eyes are looking past them, down at papers or at your phone. Carefully pay attention to the other person’s eyes, and you’ll learn more than you ever could from lifeless words on a screen.

Look for the “Tell”

In poker, it’s called the “tell”: the habitual signal your opponent makes that betrays whether he or she is holding a full house or a hand full of nothing. Someone is telling you something. She can’t make eye contact with you. Why? Perhaps she’s afraid to deliver bad news or wants to be somewhere else. If a customer or employee is staring at the ceiling or evading your eyes for no apparent reason at all, you need to figure out what’s really going on.

Be Shifty-Eyed

If you’re making a presentation to a group you need to look at everyone in the room. The guy over there in blue jeans? He might be the CEO. Ignoring eye contact with all the women? You’ve just alienated both the CMO and CFO. Take your time. Be deliberate. Connect while you speak by scanning and making brief eye contact with everyone in the room. That’s a great way to change your message into a truly powerful connection.

But Don’t Be Creepy

Eye contact is something most people struggle with, yet it’s a critical component of communication. Relax. Blink normally. Don’t squint or stare. Above all, eye contact should not be awkward or creepy. The goal is not to drill into the other person’s soul with an unbroken gaze for extended periods of time. Just work on being fully present when meeting with someone -- and pay attention to your eyeballs.

Entrepreneurs aren't like other people you've negotiated with. A field guide to a unique personality.

Entrepreneurs are great rationalizers. Sometimes a modest delusion or a great rationalization is the only way an entrepreneur will make it through the early days of his or her company. That's because in start-ups, ignorance and lack of experience can sometimes be a competitive advantage - not knowing what you can or can’t do opens up a far larger world of possibilities than settling for what’s clearly doable.

But in the context of negotiations, this tendency to rationalize plays out in very specific and somewhat peculiar ways.

• An entrepreneur will often accept terms and conditions that are unrealistic just to get the deal done. Because entrepreneurs are eternal optimists, they don’t feel obliged to evaluate “either/or” equations. They think that they can eventually have it all, or at least recoup what they are giving up in the short term. When this doesn’t happen, you have one very unhappy camper.
  
  Investors need to be careful that they never accept a commitment in words rather than in spirit. This is the same situation that all employers have when an employee asks for a raise and is turned down. You have to be sure that the employee didn’t quit without leaving.

• Entrepreneurs hate to lose control of any situation. But the give-and-take that makes for successful negotiations is a back-and-forth process of concessions. This process can be viewed constructively or bitterly, depending on the entrepreneur. When a negotiation is too aggressive (even when the entrepreneur “agrees”), resentment is often the result. It’s always better for the parties to feel that both sides have left something on the table.
• Finally, entrepreneurs are quick to feel victimized and taken advantage of. They fear getting screwed in a deal much more than any concern they may have about the business failing. Anger and paranoia are major emotional drivers, and they’re part of the personality of every successful entrepreneur. Investors need to make sure that ever-present underlying anger isn’t directed toward them.

One of the saddest things about even successful entrepreneurs is that even when the deal has gone well, they still feel “cheated” because they are convinced that they gave up too much at the start. For better or worse, good mental health has never been a prerequisite for entrepreneurial success.

Humor is tricky: Just look at the criticism of Oscar host Seth MacFarlane or Geico's latest ad. Here's how to make 'em laugh without the controversy.

Humor can be a tricky business. Get it right and you surprise and delight you audience; cross the thin line between what's appropriate and what's not, and who knows how many people you might offend.

Consider the backlash against Oscar host Seth MacFarlane and his off-color jokes Sunday night. Or Geico’s latest spokes-animal, Maxwell the pig, which came under fire after a recent commercial featured him missing some obvious come-ons from a human woman. The Christian group One Million Moms believe the ad belies the car insurance company's lax attitude toward bestiality.

There may not be a formula for a perfect joke, but research from the Harvard Business School suggests that there may be a formula for creating funny--and effective--commercials.

In the upcoming research paper, Why, When and How Much to Entertain Consumers in Advertisements? A Web-based Facial Tracking Study, professor Thales Teixeira and his colleagues suggest audiences want to be entertained--but not too much. Here are three tips for creating the perfect commercial from their recent findings.

Don’t be annoying.

The purpose of advertisements is, well, to advertise. But viewers grow bored with overt product placement and constant brand reminders. People seem to have an unconscious aversion to being persuaded, so when they see a logo, they resist, explains Teixeira in a summary of his findings.

When strategizing successful brand placement, he writes, “A good question to ask when conceiving an ad is: If I removed the brand image, would the content still be intrinsically interesting?”

If the answer is yes, Teixeira says, viewers are more likely to continue watching.

Don’t bet everything on the twist.

According to Teixeira, in the past, advertisers have been able to rely on a clever twist or surprise at the end of a commercial to clinch an audience’s interest and make their brand memorable. This is no longer the case, he warns in a video interview.

In the era of video streaming, when consumers have any number of ways to avoid or tune-out commercials, advertisers can’t beat around the bush, he says.

Instead, advertisements must hook an audience from the get-go. One of the easiest ways to do this, Teixeira says, is by inducing feelings of joy or humor from the very start. He cites Bud Light’s "Swear Jar" ad as an example of humor being put to good use.

In the commercial, office workers intentionally integrate swear words into their daily conversations in an attempt to fill up the office swear jar and, presumably, buy a case of Bud Light. Teixeira explains that this commercial is surprising from the get-go--as viewers do not typically expect office workers to swear flagrantly--and also disarming because the product placement is neither overt nor overwhelming, allowing viewers to get lost in the simple humor of the situation.

Entertain them--but not too much.

Not surprisingly, Teixeira found that a viewer’s level of entertainment increases her likelihood to watch an ad. However, after a certain level of entertainment, viewers lost sight of the brand or product being advertised.

“If you want to persuade consumers as do Pepsi, Skittles, and Coke, it’s about getting people to associate your brand with fun,” Teixeira explains, “But you have to show the brand and then entertain. That’s when the conditioning occurs. The other way around--entertain then brand--doesn’t work as well.”

The same can be said of shock-value. While shocking humor can be fun and engaging to an audience, it overlooks one crucial facet of advertising: the likelihood that an audience will share it.

Bud Light’s “Clothing Drive” utilizes the same setting and structure as the “Swear Jar” ad. An office worker offers a Bud Light for every article of clothing donated to a clothing drive, and soon the entire office is prancing around in their birthday suits. “Clothing Drive” and “Swear Jar” garnered similar degrees of viewership, says Teixeira, but viewers did not share the “Clothing Drive” video as frequently.

One possible explanation: The content wasn’t family friendly enough for viewers to share with their networks. Teixeira suggests that advertisers consider not only their immediate audience, but also those that the audience is connected with, like... your mother.

As the media company Upworthy advises writers, "Don't sexualize your headlines in a way your mom wouldn't approve of." The same goes for ad campaigns.

This month, more than 50 teams are set to compete in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a 1,000-mile trek across Alaska.

This month, more than 50 teams are set to compete in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a 1,000-mile trek across Alaska. To gain entry, mushers must participate in three shorter qualifying races, including the Kuskokwim-300, a 300-mile competition that kicked off in southwest Alaska on January 18. Here are four entrepreneurial companies that make the race possible.

Redpaw: Food that makes dogs get up and go.

Sled dogs burn some 10,000 calories a day during races. Ken Anderson, shown here at the start of the Kusko-300, in Bethel, Alaska, feeds his team high-performance dry dog food made by Redpaw of Franklin, Wisconsin. (He carries some food on his sled and resupplies along the way.) Former biochemist Eric Morris started racing sled dogs in the 1990s while working at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Dissatisfied with the dog food available in stores, he created his own blend, which he considered a better balance of fats and protein and an optimal mixture of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. After leaving his job to focus on racing, Morris met other mushers eager to buy his food and founded Redpaw in 1998. Today, the eight-person business, which outsources manufacturing to a privately owned pet food company in Wisconsin, sells its products online and in more than 300 independent pet shops in 35 U.S. states and Canada. "We promote lean muscle mass," Morris says. "If you put your dog on our food, he's going to buff up."

Dogbooties.com: Heavy-duty harnesses that keep dogs on course.

Anderson, who finished 13th in this year's Kusko-300, outfitted the 13 dogs on his team with Saddle Back harnesses made by Dogbooties.com of Duluth, Minnesota. The nylon harnesses, which are hooked to lines attached to Anderson's sled, feature reflective tape and padding for each dog's neck and chest. Louise Russell, a former registered nurse with a passion for sewing, opened a fabric store in Duluth in 1993 and started making rugged dog booties and other equipment for local dog-sled enthusiasts. In 2000, she changed her company's name to Dogbooties.com. Today, the $500,000 business makes a full line of accessories--including booties, coats, and leg wraps--for sled dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, military dogs, and other working canines. The company has eight employees and sells products online and in specialty pet stores in the U.S., Germany, Norway, and Australia.

Trackleaders: And they're off! Tracking teams in real time online.

During the three-day race, the wind chill temperature dipped to 30 degrees below zero as 40-mile-per-hour gusts whipped the trail. Fans could track teams from the warmth of their homes, thanks to Trackleaders of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which used data from GPS units attached to each musher's sled bag to create a real-time map of the race that could be viewed online, along with leaderboards, weather details, and other stats. The GPS units, which emit a signal every 10 minutes, also make mushers easier to find in the event of a wrong turn or accident. Mountain bikers Matthew Lee and Scott Morris co-founded Trackleaders in 2008 after testing the system during the Tour Divide, a 3,000-mile bike race from Canada to Mexico. "I was amazed at how emotionally attached people became to this little dot on the map," Lee says. Morris also founded Topo­Fusion, the Tucson company that makes the GPS mapping software used by Trackleaders. Last year, Trackleaders generated $80,000 in revenue tracking 60 events, including U.S. Army simulation exercises and biking, sailboat, and sled-dog races.

the stake Shop: Marking the trail.

To delineate the Kusko-300 course, which follows an old mail route along the Kuskokwim River, race organizers set up roughly 5,000 wooden stakes supplied by the Stake Shop of Anchorage. The 3-foot-long, 1.5-inch-wide stakes are made from Douglas fir logs shipped from Oregon and Washington and cut to size by the Stake Shop. Jerry Hagel bought the company in 1968. Today, it has four employees and supplies stakes to half a dozen sled-dog races each year, including some 15,000 for the Iditarod. The company also makes stakes for political signs and surveying equipment and does detailed woodcutting work for big-box retail stores and other large-scale construction projects in Alaska.

Telecommuting, handled properly, creates more effective, harder-working, employees. Eventually, Marissa Mayer will figure that out.

The tech world and its websites are abuzz today with the news: Yahoo is banning any form of telecommuting or working from home beginning this June. Even staying home to wait for cable installation is frowned upon as shown in this confidential memo sent by disgruntled employees to AllThingsD.

For a CEO already under the microscope as a rare female leader taking over a troubled Internet giant, announcing to the world that she's banned telecommuting seems a boneheaded move for Marissa Mayer to make. Here's what I'm wondering:

1. Doesn't Mayer know that telecommuting is good for business?

I'm the author of a book about the benefits of telecommuting--but you don't have to take my word for it. The Huffington Post commentary on Yahoo's new rule lists three separate studies showing employees who telecommute do more work than those who don't. One from Stanford, conveniently, was released on the same day Yahoo sent out its memo.

It makes lots of sense if you just think about it for a second: People who telecommute save anywhere from an hour to two hours or more a day not spent traveling to and from their workplaces. Even if they take one extra hour to play with their kids or start a roast for dinner, chances are there will be more time left over for their jobs. Likewise, if they have a bright idea in the middle of the night, or they just want to finish a report before bedtime, they can easily do those things without waiting to get to the office. Also, most people who work at home enjoy doing so and view it as a privelege. That may make them value and appreciate their jobs all the more.

2. What century is she living in?

It used to be a lot harder for people working at home to stay in close communication with co-workers and bosses but then someone went and invented the Internet. And GoToMeeting. And a host of other tools that people who are comfortable with the Internet can use to stay so completely in touch that they might as well be there. You'd think people at Yahoo would be familiar with that newfangled Internet thing and comfortable using it since they're supposed to be, you know, an online company.

Besides, in the current work environment everyone has mobile devices. Everyone is connected by email, text, conference call, video, social network, and so on at all times. Homes seem more like workplaces than ever before and in this world, the line between at-work and not-at-work is becoming nonexistent. Maybe Mayer is unfamiliar with these newfangled mobile devices as well.

3. Does she thinks telecommuting is one-size-fits-all?

As a manager, the very first thing you learn about telecommuting is this: It doesn't work for everyone. Yes, there are horror stories about employees who are supposed to be working at home actually holding down second jobs. There are people who think they can be full-time telecommuters and provide full-time child care at the same time. There are people who do not perform well--and may actually be unhappy--outside the social atmosphere of the office. That's why employees should be given leave to work from home on a case-by-case basis, and it should start out as a temporary trial.

Likewise, successful telecommuters do need to show up at the office on a regular basis to interact with their colleagues, in addition to remotely attending all meetings. And they need to have clearly delineated responsibilities that can be measured in terms of what they actually get done rather than how many hours they're in the office.

These elements set employees up for a successful telecommuting relationship, and also give managers an empirical way to determine if a telecommuting arrangement isn't working and take appropriate steps to either fix or end it. Within this sort of framework, telecommuting can be a real win-win. But issuing a blanket dictum that no one can telecommute is as nonsensical as issuing one that everyone can. Neither is a good approach to managing a large workforce.

4. Doesn't she care about Yahoo's public image?

The biggest challenge facing tech companies, especially large ones, is finding enough employees with the needed skills. That's forced most high-tech companies to outsource at least some of their programming work to other countries where there are more software engineers available. It's also inspired companies like Google to provide things like free gourmet food.

So why oh why would the CEO of a large tech company want to limit her available talent pool to those who live within a short enough distance from the company's offices to want to make the trip there and back 10 times a week? Why would she announce a blanket no-telecommuting policy and tie the company's hands when trying to recruit sought-after tech talent? To remove the option of working at home as an enticement or a perk during hiring negotiations?

To make Yahoo appear rigid and unreasonable to the entire tech world?

I think with time she will see that the answer to this last question is: she wouldn't. And so I predict that before June is out, the telecommuting ban will either be publicly lifted, or else, it will quietly go unenforced.

Bob Nardelli, the former CEO of Chrysler and Home Depot, explains how to enlist your team to deliver effectively.

As she takes her leave, Karen Mills talks about the past, present, and future of the Small Business Administration.

Departing Small Business Administrator Karen Mills sat down with reporters recently to discuss her record at the agency and her reasons for leaving. In the following edited transcript of her conversation with Inc. staff writer Jeremy Quittner and others, Mills, a former venture capitalist, described the agency she found, the one she left, and the one that is likely to continue on after her. Mills also talked about the profound impact sequestration is likely to have on the SBA and small business owners in the coming months.

Why are you stepping down and what are you going to do next?

This is a good time for a transition. As far as the next steps, I have not yet made any decision. I am thinking about a whole variety of options, and I have pledged to the president to stay until my successor is named and confirmed. I am thinking about a wide array of things. There has been no announcement yet about my successor.

Can you evaluate the SBA's policy response to the economic crisis and what you might have done differently?

Let me take you back to four years ago. It was pretty dismal in terms of the economic environment, and it was really a scary situation for small businesses. The credit markets had frozen, and SBA lending had been cut in half.

It was in a free-fall and we knew we had to do something. The regular banking market was pulling lines of credit for strong companies that were paying their bills, and we knew we had to act immediately. So in the Recovery Act, we were able to eliminate our fees and increase our guarantees to 90 percent.

What was remarkable was the moment that went into effect, it was like the hockey stick that did occur. The lending turned around. The whole agency responded and processed loans and got applications ready. I had thought we would slowly begin to turn things up, but we really dramatically were able to stop the tide. One smart thing we did at the recommendation of my capital access team: we could have taken the money out slowly with some fee reduction, or just eliminate fees right away. We chose to be aggressive in support of small business and that turned out to be the right decision.

What was the disconnect between banks and the SBA during the crisis? Small businesses still say they can't get bank loans.

Our lending did change. We were able to step in and take some of that. We are generally, on a good day, about 10 percent of the market. So what was going on in the rest of the market?

The answer is the rest of the market was still tight. Now it's turning around, but we are still down almost $100 billion in bank lending to small business. We went out to the top 13 banks and got a pledge from them to increase their lending over three years by $20 billion. And those were significant increases for them, and these were some of our biggest lenders, including JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Keybank and a number of others, and we have delivered on that. We are more than 50 percent there after one year of that commitment. We did everything we could within our power and everything we could with the main piece of the market.

You inherited an agency that had become a political football, and had been neglected by the prior administration. What was morale like?

The morale when I came in was not the best. It was because the agency had not been valued. And when I picked up the lid, looked in, and saw the assets there, I was amazed: $90 billion, now $100 billion, in loan guarantees, 900 small business development centers, 12,000 SCORE volunteers and 100 district offices.

We were a small agency with a big mission. What they needed was an administration who valued what they were doing. This president from day one, when he asked me to joining the administration, made it clear that small business was a priority. He made me part of the economic team, and later raised me to the cabinet.

What will the sequester do to the SBA and small business?

The largest impact is that the caps on our loan volume will go down, as is required. We are taking about $1 billion from our cap. But even with the lower cap, we think we will be able to provide the loans and loan subsidies through the end of the year without rationing or slowdown.

We have been planning and managing this for quite a period of time to minimize the impact, and so we know that it will be difficult but we are hopeful we will be able to continue to do the things we are doing now. We will take cuts in our constituencies that are required by law. I have publically said to the whole agency, because we started planning for this many months ago, that we will not have to furlough, and we did early retirement a year ago.

But the real problem is small businesses, particularly those who serve the federal government in contracting. They have already felt the brunt. Starting in December, small business contracting by the Department of Defense went way down and small businesses are not getting these contracts. We have already seen it will have a negative effect on small businesses.

You've thought a great deal about the importance of business clusters and their relation to economic growth. Were you able to apply your thinking at the SBA?

I am quite proud of being ale to start and fund across the Administration 56 clusters. It is fabulous and so exciting. I had worked in Maine for the governor and had [helped create] a cluster of Maine boat builders. I had gotten involved with Brookings and wrote a paper on clusters, recommending a federal government role. At SBA, I got funding for 10 clusters [initially] and worked with a number of other agencies, like the Department of Commerce and the Economic Development Administration, to do [a total of] 56. We have clusters around the country now, and they are networked and being evaluated. This is how we can execute the president's economic strategies, through place-based entrepreneurial business centers.

There's so much cool entrepreneurship going on now, and the SBA is seen as a creaky old agency; can it have a "Wow!" moment?

I think it is having a "wow" moment now. It is has come out of its shell, and emerged not just in the administration, but in this bone structure around the country as the magnet for entrepreneurs. In our district offices, we are the coordinating entity between state export programs and contracting advice and banks. We now have the foundational elements for being "wow" and I think we are "wow", but we need to be more recognized as being that vibrant.

What's the most important thing you learned in your tenure at the SBA?

The biggest thing I learned, and the most wonderful thing, is the great rewards of the public sector. I came from the private sector and this was my first government job. People say you can't get a lot done, and what I found is you can do transformational things even within the constraints that exist, and the rewards personally and professionally far exceeded everything I might have had.

The agency is very well-positioned now, and it is strong internally, and there is an understanding of the interconnection between small business, entrepreneurship and economic competitiveness. That is well-understood and in the forefront.

Most rags-to-riches stories are about the excellent execution of a simple idea. Successful people know this. Everyone else is still catching up.

While Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world, Gary Kildall has the distinction of being "the man who could have been Bill Gates." In the beginning of the PC revolution, Seattle was the land of innovation and Kildall was its king. As the creator of the first computer operating system, he was the one IBM called when they decided to enter the PC market.

Unfortunately, while Kildall missed deadlines because he wanted to debut the most innovative operating code of the time, Bill Gates offered IBM a paltry, second-rate product. Gates got the gig and Kildall got forgotten by history.

Surveys of fast-growth businesses show that simple ideas, executed well enough, are at the core of more success stories than the fantasy of some "big idea." However, this myth remains in the era of Instagram.

For my book, Business Brilliant, I examined the difference between myth and reality. Watch this video, based on the chapter, Imitate, Don't Innovate, to discover what's really behind most rags-to-riches stories.

This video was shot at Maison 140 in Beverly Hills.

The new 21.5-inch Apple iMac is almost as thin as an iPhone 5 and it lives up to its promise on speed--but you're going to pay for it.

I'm used to a computer that slows down over time. For the first time in recent memory, I've been testing a computer that actually speeds up.

Over the past week, I've tested the new Apple iMac 21.5-inch, the model with a super-thin .19-inch bezel. To give you an idea of the thickness, the iMac is about the same thickness as the new iPhone 5, although the back of the computer bows out toward the stand. Apple says the design is 40 percent thinner than the previous iMac.

If you're into office aesthetics, the thinner design will mean a series of desk computers scattered around your office will have a fresher, cleaner look. It's a bit like being on the set of a sci-fi movie where everyone has super-thin workstations.

Fusion Drive

My biggest surprise, though, is that the iMac actually seemed to get faster over time. This is a bit subjective--I don't have detailed benchmarks to share, and I'd be surprised if anyone does. My test iMac, priced at $2,149, includes the Fusion Drive, which added an extra $250 to the price. (The entry-level iMac costs $1,299.)

Fusion automatically monitors what you do on the computer. Essentially, the data you use the most is housed on the faster 128GB flash drive; everything else is on a 1TB magnetic drive. As you work, the iMac analyzes your apps and files and moves the ones you use the most over to the faster flash memory automatically.

This is all behind the scenes, so I was not able to see that Photoshop, Word, or my business documents were always held in flash memory. But I noticed a major speed uptick, especially when starting apps. Photoshop opened in less than a second. There's a blink and it's open, which is amazingly helpful for getting work done.

Other Specs

The iMac has several other perks for small offices. I could see the 1920×1080 display from a wide viewing angle, so for workgroups talking about the same brochure or viewing a website under development, the iMac screen is a major aid. Apple says the display reduces reflection by 75 percent compared to earlier models.

The fast processor, running at 3.1GHz on an Intel Core i7, plus 16GB of DDR3 RAM meant the system was up to just about any challenge: I edited a video using Adobe Premier Pro, and had no problems with lag. (The only time the system ran slow: for about the first hour after FedEx left the package on my doorstep in sub-zero temperatures.)

You can cram a 3TB drive in the new iMac. There's a built-in 720 pixel Facetime camera with dual microphones for Skype calls, Bluetooth 4.0 for connecting to mice and keyboards using ultra-low power, and built-in speakers that sound crisp and loud.

Overall, this is the iMac you want for office workers who want a clean work space and plenty of power and storage. The 27-inch model, which starts at $1,799, is also a smart buy for a bit more screen real estate.

Penny pinchers might balk at the pricing, though. For those who can live without the Fusion drive and get by with Windows 8, an HP Pavilion 23-inch costs just $699 with 1TB of storage. The Dell Inspirion 20-inch costs $499. These all-in-ones are not as thin as the iMac and lack some of its best features, such as a high-res screen.

I'm agnostic about Mac versus Windows--both have their advantages. But the iMac's ability to keep running as though it's fresh out of the box, plus the crisp screen, thin design, and speedy processor make this all-in-one a good business buy.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wants to start a revolution for women in the workplace. Inc. editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan explores the implications for women who lead their own companies.

Every few years, a new book ignites debate about structural and social impediments to women achieving professional parity.

This year, Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, due out in March, is that book, but it's also stirring up controversy about privilege. Critics want to know where Sheryl Sandberg, the Harvard-educated, billionaire COO of Facebook, gets off pressing ordinary women with ordinary educations, ordinary bank accounts, and ordinary access to child care to work harder and seize the reins of their careers.

It's worth noting that ordinary women do this every day--by starting their own companies. Entrepreneurship is an interesting lens through which to view one of Sandberg's chief arguments: that women "leave before [they] leave." Sandberg says many women are hesitant to push themselves forward--to pursue higher positions with more work and more responsibility--because they anticipate starting a family (even if they don't yet have spouses) and don't want to doom the possibility of work-life balance. Unfettered by present or future domestic bonds, men rise up the ladder in their places.

Dropping out is not an option.

But holding back isn't really an option for women entrepreneurs. In the early years, particularly, there is simply too much to do and no one to pick up the slack. Check out of your job and you hurt yourself. Check out of your own business and you risk hurting your employees, customers, and people--including family and friends--who gave you money because they believed in you. If women are likely to sabotage themselves, as Sandberg contends, entrepreneurship minimizes their opportunities to do so. Once you embark on that path--you are it, sister, whether you like it or not.

Where entrepreneurial women arguably do sabotage themselves is the decision--when it is a decision--to build smaller companies than men. Even a minnow feels like a big fish in a pond the size of a puddle. The number of women-owned businesses is growing faster than the number of new businesses overall, according to a study by American Express Open, and 30 percent of U.S. businesses are owned by women. But those enterprises account for just 6 percent of the workforce and less than 4 percent of business revenues. A report from the National Women's Business Council shows that only 1.8 percent of women-owned businesses earn $1 million or more, and 68 percent make less than $25,000.

Three reasons women build smaller.

I can think of three explanations for such under-performance. The first is external obstacles. Women in general have less access than men to capital (including venture and private equity investment and government loans), markets, and networks.

The second explanation is personal choice. Keep the company small, some women believe, and work-life balance becomes a dreamable dream. If those women were comparably un-ambitious as employees, it would damage their careers, which is Sandberg's thesis. As entrepreneurs, they may sacrifice revenue. But at least they are in control.

The third explanation is more complicated. Sandberg says that women underestimate their own abilities and don't force their way to the proverbial table. We can probably all agree that it is a bad thing when women allow low confidence and self-esteem to hold them back. But as we know from research, women are also more cautious than men, requiring better odds that the risks they take will pay off. That attitude isn't altogether bad, even though it can inhibit growth: women-owned businesses are more likely to fail to thrive; men-owned businesses are more likely to fail spectacularly.

"Leaning In" for women entrepreneurs.

Sandberg, who dwells in the citadel of aggressive entrepreneurship, would likely urge women to build responsibly but to do so in growth rather than lifestyle companies. Start the next Facebook, not a bed-and-breakfast. Choose a competitive, expansive industry and it will force you to step up your game just as starting your own company forces you to stay in the game. Always be scaling and, ideally, when you do choose to have children, you'll command sufficient resources to make things easier.

But how many of us get to experience "ideally"? When plans for ambitious growth don't pan out they erode a family's finances, not buttress them. On the flip side, women who find themselves at the helm of surging companies may repeatedly put off starting families because their obligations are too great.

The saving grace is entrepreneurs' ability to design most aspects of their businesses. Don't think about keeping the company so small it is easy to step away from. Do think about locating it somewhere that will make family logistics easier, about investing in technology that will minimize the amount of travel necessary, and about hiring people who replicate some of your skills as well as complement them. Create a culture where hard work is rewarded but being a responsible parent is always the right choice. Do that, and both you and your employees will reach heights to make Sheryl Sandberg cheer.