Many of us aspire to be a senior executive (and many of you already are). Sometimes you might wonder why you're not getting picked for the role.

You're a solid performer, your work is great, and you've exceeded every goal yet still you don't make it to the big leagues. Can't figure out why? You might be exhibiting silly little behaviors that are easy to fix but no one has ever pointed out. In short, you sometimes come across as a clown. Now, I know I've previously said it's okay to occasionally be a clown in the social networking arena but this post covers the flip side of that coin.

The discipline of marketing hasn't kept up with the rapid changes facing 21st-century businesses. New scholarship doesn't have enough management relevance, and practicing marketers are too often forsaking rigor. Here are seven strategies that can make marketing both relevant and rigorous in today's world.

Employees are valuable. So are referrals. That was the thought behind Meebo's decision to offer a $5,000 reward to anyone who referred qualified potential employees to the company that launched in 2005. The only stipulation? People would only get paid if the candidates got hired.

Dave Stewart is best known as a Grammy-winning musician and producer — he was Annie Lennox’s bandmate in the Eurythmics and has collaborated with the likes of Bob Dylan and Bono. But when companies like British Telecom and the ad agency Interbrand started inviting him to speak, a hidden talent came to light: Stewart is a polymath who can connect the dots between disparate subjects, generating brave new ideas. The business world was hungry for his way of thinking, and soon he took on roles as U.S. creative director of the global ad shop the Law Firm and “change agent” for Nokia. His company Weapons of Mass Entertainment, an “ideas factory” based in Los Angeles, works with partners including HBO and Virgin Comics on projects in film, television, publishing, theater, and interactive gaming.

Last fall, some General Motors Co. directors were surprised when they learned that the car maker had lost more than $1 billion betting on Korean currency earlier in 2009, just before the company slid into bankruptcy-court protection.

The story of entrepreneurship in the twentieth century was about individuals who got access to sophisticated capital in a few advanced markets and created massive economies of scale. That’s how AT&T, Home Depot, and Microsoft swiftly made their way onto the Fortune 500. But in the twenty-first century, a very different story is unfolding.

MBA applications always go up during a bad economy. That is because business school generally attracts people who are lost, and more people who feel more lost when the bad job market is lousy.

A little-known investment model that sees business angels fund entrepreneurs who haven't got a business – or even an idea – is winning the attention of MBA graduates looking for a fast-track to company ownership.

When CEO Mark Hurd resigned from Hewlett-Packard last week in light of ethics violations, many people expressed surprise. Mr. Hurd, after all, was known as an unusually effective and straight-laced executive.

Last week, The New York Times' David Leonhardt claimed that women who didn't have children and never took time off had careers that "resembled" those of men. The next day, The Atlantic's Daniel Indiviglio argued "women without children are holding their own against men."

Industrial companies put a lot of effort into “asset integrity” — which really just means protecting critical plants and machinery from damage and wear and tear. At companies like BP, it’s clearly more of an aspiration than a reality, but anyone trained in a manufacturing environment learns that asset integrity is a top priority. But what about service industries — companies where the only assets are the brains of the people who work there? Shouldn’t they worry about asset integrity, too? Astonishingly, most of them don’t. Instead, financial services, consulting, the law and even the medical profession perpetuate working hours where all-nighters are heroic, driving with jet lag is the norm and anyone who actually has lunch risks becoming lunch.

It's a tough job market out there: people are staying put in jobs they don't like, or are stuck in the unemployment line. If you're one of these highly skilled, educated employees that can't get a solid footing in their field, have you ever thought of consulting? The Department of Labor estimates a staggering 82% growth in consulting services across a variety of career fields by 2018. Here's where you can find the top consulting jobs.

Although women now attend college at a higher rate than men, and have for the most part closed the gap in achieving advanced and professional degrees, women are not occupying the real power positions in corporations, academia, or the professions in anywhere near the same proportions as men. Catalyst, among many other organizations, bemoans this reality. The fact of the underrepresentation of women at the top begs the question of why. One part of the answer is women's reluctance to embrace power.

You don’t need interview advice, right? After all, you’ve got stellar credentials and years — maybe even decades — of work experience. To be completely honest, you’re actually overqualified for the job. In fact, you shouldn’t even have to interview.

Too often the strategy creation process produces options that aren't any more interesting or creative than the current strategy. If you find yourself agonizing over which of your carefully crafted strategic options is the right one, chances are you are taking the strategic planning process too seriously. Give up being right and sensible. Instead, tell a story about the future. Make it aspirational and envision your organization in a happy and successful place. Have everyone participating in the process tell their own story, and together you'll have created a list of options. Then start the real work of strategy creation: ask yourselves, for these stories to come true, what would have to happen?

Running a company is often lonely and isolating. And for entrepreneurs, isolation can be a huge impairment to growth. You spend so much time hunkering down and focusing on day to day management that you narrow your perspective and cut yourself off from potentially game-changing ideas. That’s why it’s so important to get out of your cave. Debra Ruh, the CEO of TecAccess in Rockville, MD, did exactly that last month in Shanghai, China. Dell, in partnership with Intel and Bloomberg LINK, invited her and 74 other women business owners worldwide to be part of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network. The group attended the World Expo in Shanghai, and Ruh says the trip “changed my life.” By networking with other women business owners, she learned what she needed to do to take her company to the next level.

It’s a challenge of modern life: email, Twitter feeds, instant messaging, text messages, and other snippets of information are coming at us so fast that it’s hard not to feel under digital attack. Sure, some of it’s important — and that’s precisely the problem. Turn it all off and you might as well quit the workforce. But read it all and your mind becomes so drained that it’s a challenge to get anything else done.

It looks like last year's predictions of a meltdown in the job market for new MBA degree holders may have been as panic stricken and inaccurate as many of the other forecasts we heard in 2009. As Pamela Mittman, who heads up career services at NYU Stern business school, reports, "We've been cautiously optimistic throughout the past year, and we're now seeing that optimism justified in a renewed commitment by recruiters in pipelining talent in the wake of the financial crisis. We've seen job postings for immediate hires up 40% on 2009 and vacancies in some sectors such as venture capital, private equity and consumer products up by as much as 70%."

When Scott Snyder decided to get an M.B.A., he didn't consider U.S. business schools. The former project manager at a defense company in Santa Barbara, Calif., wanted a career change—and he wanted to build it abroad.

My Stanford colleague Bob Sutton has a new book coming out on how to be a good boss and what behaviors make a bad boss. Like the best of the leadership literature, it is both research-based and sensible. It also sheds some light on why it’s so hard to follow the best practices for good managers and move up the ladder at the same time.

Wedding bells fill the Northern Hemisphere air for this season's happy couples. Among the newlyweds armed with pre-nuptial agreements are numerous companies starting strategic alliances, joint ventures, and focused collaboratives.

John McCaffrey* is a great guy. The CEO of a professional services firm, he's been successful by any measure. He's financially secure. He's happily married with several children. He's active in his religious community. He's smart, well read, reasonable, and likable. He's the kind of guy you'd enjoy talking with at a dinner party.

Pretty much anywhere you go on earth, golf is the lubricant of commerce. Here’s what you need to know to tee up and schmooze on an international scale.

For the past 9 years, I have spent the majority of my time as a SEO. Whether it is helping other companies or building out my own sites, at one point in time I ranked for some of the most lucrative keywords on Google.

If your hair stylist gave you $10 every time you sent one of your friends her way, you might be more tempted to tell all of your buddies what a fabulous stylist she was--or you might even try to make new friends to refer.

There are no magic bullets when it comes to job interview questions, but the way you structure your queries is important: It's the interviewer's job to create a framework for the discussion and prevent it from running off the rails. Every company's needs are different, but a good basic strategy is to ground the interview in questions about past job performance. Then throw in some situational questions to evaluate practical decision making, and learn a little bit about how the job fits in with a candidate's biography.

Last week, I was working from the 24th floor of a hotel in Lima, Peru, overlooking an ocean dotted with surfers under skies filled with skydivers, working on a new training program on innovative and strategic thinking for a client, when an email message popped up. A good friend of mine interrupted my flow with an article. At first I thought I'd check out the article later. But since I was in the middle of writing a workbook section on the value of exploring, of taking unplanned "excursions," as the innovation firm Synectics calls them, I thought I should take a peek.

There isn't much good that has come out of the Great Recession to date except the humbling of some big egos on Wall Street. However, there might be one small benefit that I've noticed after doing some coaching with executives pondering next steps in their careers.

Clashing management styles do not always lead to management clashes. Recently, we've noticed a trend with clients asking for help in coaching and consulting around issues of differing styles — issues that we've had to sort out ourselves as we've grown our business.

The perks of being a techie. Business Insider compiled a list of the 25 best tech companies to work for that factors in employee satisfaction with perks, compensation, and work-life balance, among other things. Perhaps unsurprisingly Google comes out on top and Apple's Steve Jobs trounced Microsoft's Steve Ballmer in the CEO approval ratings (98 percent to 52 percent). The list is most useful to an entrepreneur as a window into how employees respond to great culture, but low pay--or pride in the company, but excessive hours. For broader picture of what your employees love about their jobs check out our feature on the top small companies to work for.

Who needs sleep when there are start-ups to launch? Between endless e-mail conversations and talkative co-workers, getting actual work done during the day isn't always an easy proposition. The New York Times has an interesting article about a group of entrepreneurs, freelancers, and software developers who have come up with a nocturnal solution to that problem. Calling themselves the New York Nightowls, this group of roughly 30 techies meets every Tuesday night from 10 p.m. until about 4 a.m. to to work on pet projects and side ventures that they normally don't have the time to focus on during the traditional workday. As one of the group's co-founders explains, "It's six hours of uninterrupted, productive time where you're surrounded by other creative people doing awesome things." The concept of late-night work sessions seems to a perfect fit for New York, it is the city that never sleeps after all, but similar groups have also formed in nearly a dozen cities including San Francisco and Boston.

There are some very important things they don't tell you on career day. Chief among them is that there is a good chance that at some point during your working adult life you will have an abusive boss — the kind who uses his or her authority to torment subordinates. Bullying bosses scream, often with the goal of humiliating. They write up false evaluations to put good workers' jobs at risk. Some are serial bullies, targeting one worker and, when he or she is gone, moving on to their next victim.

Entrepreneurs often leave companies to do their own thing. They flock to Maya Design for the same reason. Maya is a $6.5 million technology design and research consultancy that grows, in CEO Mickey McManus's words, "by cell division." Over the years, the Pittsburgh-based company has spun off four businesses, and it has two more in the works.

Season four of AMC's hit series Mad Men starts Sunday night. But I was reminded of an episode from season two after reviewing fresh research results. In the episode, fast-rising copywriter Peggy Olson confronts senior partner Roger Sterling in the hallway, reminding him that she "landed the Popsicle account on her own." Earlier scenes depict Olson imagining the ad campaign, testing it on colleagues, and successfully pitching it to Popsicle executives. As compensation, Olson asks Sterling for her own office.

There is a lot of debate about the value of an MBA, particularly for entrepreneurs and technology executives. So I looked at some top people in the industry and their educational backgrounds. Below are 17 entrepreneurs and technology executives who have run successful, disruptive businesses. The results are not meant to be conclusive or scientific, but are definitely interesting.

The Internet, e-mail, and ever-advancing PDA features have helped shrink the global business world down to efficient, backlit computer screens. However, fundamental human interactions, personal communications and healthy working relationships are suffering tremendously as a result. Here are five ways to deliberately reach out and revive old school voice-to-voice, handwriting-to-handwriting, and face-to-face interactions in today’s business world.

When Leslie Blodgett became CEO of Bare Escentuals in 1994 -- the company was then a tiny maker of bath and body products -- she saw a huge opportunity selling healthy mineral-based makeup. But she didn't quite realize how many women she could reach until she made a pitch on late-night TV. The company's rapid growth led to a 2006 IPO, followed by the sale of the company this year for $1.7 billion to Shiseido, the Japanese beauty giant. Today, Bare Escentuals, based in San Francisco, has 130 boutiques in the U.S. and one in the U.K., and employs 2,200.

With two older sisters and two younger brothers, I am a true middle child. Like many middle children, my natural tendency is to be a peace maker. I seek compromise and harmony between conflicting demands.

There is a quiet revolution unfolding in your industry — led by some of your smartest competitors. If you are a manager, you may be completely unaware of it because you can't see it in the streets, nor watch it on the news. This new revolution is actually happening inside the heads of the leaders running your rival firms. We call it a mental model revolution. Let us explain....

According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That's right, Iceland. Yes, I know it's cold and dark six months out of the year there. I'm just giving you the data.

Every two years my firm, The RBL Group, partners with Hewitt to conduct a study on the Top Companies for Leaders. It highlights those companies that have gone beyond the basics of grooming strong leaders and have come up with new ways to test their employees in the global marketplace. Quality of leadership within a company helps meet the expectations of investors, customers, and employees, and sets the stage for growth, so developing the next generation of effective leaders is perhaps the most important undertaking of a forward-thinking company.

The Web of regret. Memory in the age of omnipresent Internet is the subject of The New York Times Magazine's cover story this week, which highlights some fascinating (or disturbing, depending on which side of the equation you fall into) statistics. One: 75 percent of recruiters and HR professionals research candidates online - from blogs to Twitter to last night's photos on Facebook. And 70 percent say they've rejected candidates due to findings. The story cites a British gal fired from her office job for posting on Facebook: "I'm so totally bored!"? And remember the 25-year-old teacher denied a degree (and, ostensibly, a job) due to an MySpace photo of her posing as a "drunken pirate?" A federal district judge rejected the teacher's claim that the university had violated her First Amendment rights. The Times's take-away? "It's often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances - no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past."

Some people become leaders no matter what their chosen path because their positive energy is so uplifting. Even in tough times, they always find a way. They seem to live life on their own terms even when having to comply with someone else's requirements. When they walk into a room, they make it come alive. When they send a message, it feels good to receive it. Their energy makes them magnets attracting other people.

Since starting a residential- and commercial-painting business together in 2008, Karen and Don VanGordon have sometimes clashed when the strain of plunging income, long hours and cramped home-office quarters become too much to bear.

"Peter, I'd like you to stay for a minute after class." Calvin teaches my favorite body conditioning class at the gym.

"What'd I do?" I asked him.

"It's what you didn't do."
"What didn't I do?"

"Fail."

With Boomers putting off retirement and Gen Y entering the workforce in droves, it is not uncommon for a team to include multiple generations. This generational diversity can be extremely valuable, but also difficult to manage.

In 2000, Cox Communications' Arizona branch hadn't met a budget for three years, their P&L was in shambles and morale was in the cellar. Today, the branch models organizational effectiveness, and is the U.S.-based company's largest and most successful region. A $1.6 billion operation blanketing the state, it is envy of cable systems industry-wide. What caused this dramatic change in success? All it took was a reevaluation of leadership style, and the profits followed.

SCENARIO - You’ve just made a cold call to a brand-new lead. You have a brief conversation which seems to go smoothly. Then the prospect says: “I’m a little busy right now. Could you please send some information and if I’m interested, I’ll get back to you.”

I started my company just in time for the economy to head off a cliff. Despite the obvious downsides — trouble raising capital and a challenging consumer environment — starting a company in a recession actually has an upside: Failure comes really fast.

No matter what you think of Coca-Cola, you have to admit they excel at branding. It’s mind-blowing that a fizzy drink has 5.9 million fans on Facebook – and that’s just their main fan page too – there are many other related pages for specific countries or drink types. This popularity got me thinking about why this brand is still so successful today and has been for over a century. I wanted to work out what they’re doing right and most of all discover how we can learn from their branding genius to improve our own personal branding, no matter how small and humble we may seem compared to this soft drink giant.

It's no secret that women have more trouble than men building for a secure retirement--mainly due to lower lifetime earnings and resulting contributions to Social Security and retirement accounts.

For those who feel trapped by a long, emotional investment in a career they loathe and have never explored a career with equal helpings of passion and prosperity out of a fear of being judged, unsupported or ridiculed, the global economic crisis offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore a radically different approach to the way they earn a living. But, if they don’t use it now, they may never have the willpower to do it again.

Now that the Round of 16 is over and we are down to the final 8 teams that will be playing in the Quarterfinals of the World Cup - most of the marketing that has accompanied the games has been played out and it's a good time to try and look for some lessons from the International phenomenon that is the World Cup. To help, here is my round up of 10 of the most interesting marketing campaigns from this World Cup as well as some marketing lessons that they offer -

We often think of the leader as the person out in front, the visionary whom others are inspired by. Followers are close behind, focused on the goal, listening for direction, taking action, moving forward as the leader moves forward.

The most important advice on managing multi-generational teams in general, and certainly when making changes, is to surface and discuss openly any differences in expectations. As you lead people from different generations, be sensitive to differing expectations and preferences, as well as, of course, to your own biases. Recognize that the same situation can look very different to members of different generations as we look at it through our generational lens. An announced change could be interpreted as by some as an opportunity for new opportunities and to others as a threat to established networks and habits. Your role as the leader is to help the group recognize that it’s normal for different people to react in different ways. Help each person understand that you view their feelings are legitimate.

The most important advice on managing multi-generational teams in general, and certainly when making changes, is to surface and discuss openly any differences in expectations. As you lead people from different generations, be sensitive to differing expectations and preferences, as well as, of course, to your own biases. Recognize that the same situation can look very different to members of different generations as we look at it through our generational lens. An announced change could be interpreted as by some as an opportunity for new opportunities and to others as a threat to established networks and habits. Your role as the leader is to help the group recognize that it’s normal for different people to react in different ways. Help each person understand that you view their feelings are legitimate.

If you’re anything like me, this experience will be familiar to you — you’re at a work function or networking event and you’ve just been introduced to someone who seems really interesting. You think you’re focusing and plan to strike up a conversation, but no sooner do you turn away to shake another hand than you completely blank on the person’s name. D’oh! This wasn’t a big deal when you were just socializing in college, but in business being terrible at names can be a real liability.

The folks at Behance and Cool Hunting asked me to talk at their 99% Conference a couple months ago. The 99% conference is aimed at creative professionals and is focused on Edison's "99% perspiration."

It was another tough year for the 330 or so graduates of the University of California at Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management, who graduated in early June. While business schools across the board struggled to place their students, Rob Weiler, interim director of Anderson's career services center, says his students have faced challenges that are unique to the school, largely because of their desire to work for small companies and proclivity for the West Coast. Mr. Weiler spoke with reporter Diana Middleton about some bright spots and how the school is developing relationships with companies that sometimes hire just one or two M.B.A.s per year.

Recruiting activity is increasing in almost as many MBA programs as it is declining, which is an improvement from last spring, according to a survey released Wednesday by the MBA Career Services Council, a trade group for business school career officials.

Before M.B.A. student Ryan Utsumi received his diploma from the University of California—San Diego this month, he already had a job offer in hand. He was relaxed when he graduated, but the process of landing that job had tested his nerves. Utsumi spent the better part of 2010 searching for work at finance firms and startups. He had little luck, sending numerous applications and getting just a smattering of interviews. He'd heard the job search horror stories from 2009 M.B.A. graduates, Utsumi says, and, like many of his classmates, began to sweat when the calendar turned to March and he was still jobless.

TORONTO, CANADA: Why does trust among leaders in an organisation matter? Who trusts who in the post-recession workplace? How can mistrust be repaired? What the communicator's role in building organisational trust? These were the tough questions tackled by Professor Veronica Hope Hailey of the Cass Business School, in City University London.
Hope Hailey says the recovery from tough economic times is not going to be the solution to trust problems. Trust problems started long before the recession and will continue long after, although the recession did bring about more challenges in the increased levels of distrust.

A mentor is a great resource for career advice, feedback, and help building your skills and capabilities. However, it's not always possible to find one person who has the time or expertise to help you with all of the above. Try these two approaches to getting the mentoring you need:

Graduation season's here, and life after the diploma doesn't look as daunting as last year for new grads. Things may be looking up as some MBA students figure out how to land a job in a tough economy. Caitlan Carroll reports.

It's tough being the new hire in a workplace that's been hit by layoffs and budget cutbacks in the past few years. Although a number of companies are starting to rebuild their staff, employees are likely to feel insecure about their jobs well into economic recovery, say experts. And new staffers might find existing employees wary of newcomers and resentful of the extra workload they've had to take on during the downturn. That can make it difficult for new employees to fit in and be productive. But if you've landed the job of your dreams at a demoralized workplace, you can find a way to fit in without being brought down yourself.

Sit back for a moment and ponder something unpleasant: How would a large, sustained drop in the stock market affect your personal finances? More specifically, imagine the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting 6500—its March 2009 level—and staying there.

Do entrepreneurs need a college education? Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake may have argued that the best way to become an entrepreneur is to drop out of college, but Read Write Web profiles one college entrepreneur who disagrees. Jay Rodrigues is a 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania junior who secured Series A funding for his college-calendaring system start-up, DormNoise. "Don't drop out of school, because for every Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, there are hundreds of entrepreneurs who drop out and go nowhere," he advises. "At least if you stay in school, you'll have an education." But it isn't easy juggling his roles as CEO and college student--Rodrigues says he works about 16 hours a day. "Be 150 million percent sure this is what you want," he says. For more on successful college entrepreneurs, check out our 2010 list of America's Coolest College Start-ups.

At a time when businesses are vying for bigger chunks of client budgets; maintaining relevance in the market and the ability to add value even in recessive times remains the biggest challenge.

What do chief executive officers really want? The answer bears important consequences for management as well as companies' customers and shareholders. The qualities that a CEO values most in the company team set a standard that affects everything from product development and sales to the long-term success of an enterprise.

How do you respond to negative feedback? A recent Fast Company article highlighted the issues surrounding the sub-brand language BP has developed in response to its enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That article begs the question: How is your personal brand impacted by the words you use to respond to negative feedback?

Today, I spoke to Jill Konrath, who is the bestselling author of Selling to Big Companies, and the author of SNAP SELLING. In this interview, Jill talks about the characteristics of successful sellers, what snap selling is, how to break through the noise and make the sale, and more.

Why it pays to be honest about your company's failures. In their latest ad campaign, Domino's pizza took a big gamble when they publicly admitted something that a lot of people already knew. Namely, that their pizza wasn't very good. In the ads, Domino's execs and chefs describe their pizza crust as "cardboard" and their pizza sauce as "ketchup." After this public confession, however, Domino's got to work revamping their pizza. They tried new ingredients, developed better crusts, and came up with a tastier sauce. Domino's experiment in honesty has paid off in a big way. The Chicago Tribune reports that sales at domestic stores soared 14.3 percent in the first full quarter after the new recipe debuted. One marketing guru explains why sometimes honesty is the best policy. "Times are tough," he says. "Most of us are disappointed with the actions of business and other institutions." Domino's gamble paid off because they could say, "We're one group that knows that." Hopefully BP is paying attention.

As Apple's CEO introduces his new iPhone today, and its market cap passes Microsoft's, the man who infamously fired him, John Sculley, tells The Daily Beast's Thomas E. Weber about his regrets, their rift—and how their partnership could have worked: Jobs should have been CEO, and Sculley's boss, rather than the other way around. Plus, other 1985 board members on Jobs then and now, and where they are today.

Earlier this year, I had a chance to attend SxSW. One of the highlights of my trip was a startup dinner which included Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals. At the time, they had just come out with their new book "Rework". I had downloaded a copy to my Kindle, but hadn't had a chance to read it yet. Now I have. Twice. It's a great book. Lots of practical advice for entrepreneurs. I highly recommend it. My second time through, I decided to pull out some of my favorite parts.

It was seventh grade when Patti Stanger made her first match: She successfully set up her best friend with a boy at a local dance. Today, Ms. Stanger is the owner of The Millionaire's Club, an elite matchmaking service based in Los Angeles. She also hosts Bravo's reality show "The Millionaire Matchmaker."

How to spot the right VC investor. According to Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and now Square, it's all about looking for engagement. In the early days of seeking funding for Twitter, Dorsey knew that things were going poorly because the VCs he met with weren't grilling him hard enough. But he says that when he met Fred Wilson, he knew that Twitter had found a match. "Wilson asked the tough questions about the long term goals for the company. He wanted to know the product plan, he was aggressive in his questioning, but he got it," Dorsey says (via TechCrunch). Learn more about where VCs are putting their money in 2010.

It looks like the MBA Oath, a controversial attempt to give the business world its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, may be suffering its first major defeat. The Community Blog at the Yale School of Management (Yale Full-Time MBA Profile) is reporting that an SOM Town Hall meeting ended without an endorsement of the oath. According to the post, “We didn’t reach a consensus, so we won’t join, nor formally oppose the Business Oath. Future classes may decide to take a stance, but for now, the conversation has begun, and individuals can sign or not sign as they see fit.” Bottom line: an oath that has been enthusiastically embraced by virtually every top b-school is getting a noncommittal shrug from Yale.

When people talk excitedly about your products or services, they are a powerful magnet for attracting new customers and driving sales. Here are nine easy steps to word-of mouth marketing (WoMM).

This year's 100 Most Creative People offers our own, idiosyncratic perspective on business. The selections reflect the breadth of news ideas and new pursuits at play in our business landscape. From interface designer Yugo Nakamura to HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we can attest that creativity is alive and well in 2010.

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Graduates of Harvard Business School and other business schools worldwide pledge responsibility by taking an MBA oath modeled on the Hippocratic Oath administered to doctors. The aim is to get as many as 6,000 graduates at 50 MBA programs to swear they won't put personal ambitions before the interest of their employers or society. Bloomberg's Deirdre Bolton reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

The sky is not the limit for emerging black entrepreneur Mandla Sibeko (31), whose lucky star shone at the right time, helping him scoop a multimillion rand FIFA deal to handle the entire look and feel of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Sibeko, who grew up in rural Mpumalanga and owns 40% of Icon SA - a partnership with a UK-based company - declined to disclose the deal's monetary value, but confirmed that the contract will create 3000 jobs nationwide from, among others, production and installations.

Most young managers view having a mentor as their ticket to the big leagues—to greater visibility, exciting assignments and big promotions. Benefits flow to mentors as well, as they enjoy broader influence when their young protégés rise to stardom.

One of the most important things that executives forget when they craft their service model is the need to address customers' anxieties. In today's grim environment, this is more important than ever for all companies but especially for financial services firms.

A few years ago, any discussion of the master's in business administration would begin with discussions of scandal and mismanagement. Look at instances of accounting fraud at Enron and WorldCom: MBAs behaving badly. A president of the United States with mixed approval ratings and plenty of opponents in his own party: an MBA whose leadership skills seemed lacking.