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The internet's size and impact on the global economy will only increase over the next few years, according to projections from the Boston Consulting Group. In the United States it already accounts for a larger slice of GDP than the federal government. In China it's among the top six industry sectors, and in South Korea it's among the top five.

As the global economy continues to sputter, new businesses--and the jobs they create--are more important than ever. Here's a visual look at the factors in various countries that affect the entrepreneurial climate.

Urban growth projections for 2020 show a dramatic expansion of industrial corridors and population centers, predominantly in southern and eastern Asia. This map compares those projections with the landscape in 1990.

The World Economic Forum surveys experts and industry leaders every year to see what risks concern them most. This year's results, compiled from the responses of 469 leaders, put chronic fiscal imbalances at the top of the list. Other leading worries are rising greenhouse gas emissions; terrorism; water-supply crises; and cyber attacks.

Members of the HBR Advisory Council share their insights on the sustainability performance of their company's supply chains. Many say they feel hindered by forces beyond their control, such as cost, complexity, lack of information and know-how, and the sense that customers and investors are not deeply concerned about sustainability issues. And they overwhelmingly cite financial concerns as the chief obstacle to sustainability innovation in their supply chains.

In a recent survey, HBR readers told us how well they think strategy is developed in their organizations, which obstacles get in the way of effective execution, what kind of impact the financial downturn has had, and more.

A survey of more than a thousand HBR readers showed people and businesses bracing themselves for the worst for at least another year. Asked to describe the effects of the economy on their companies and their professional lives, readers painted a fairly grim picture, though they also reported several opportunities to improve how they innovate and operate.

For three months this spring, HBR Green hosted a six-part series of online commentary and discussion exploring best practices and new thinking in green business strategy. Leaders of the business world-including Brian Walker, CEO of Herman Miller; Judith Samuelson, an executive director at the Aspen Institute; and Stuart Rose, chief executive of Marks & Spencer-asked provocative questions about how environmental issues are affecting key corporate disciplines: operations, corporate governance, marketing, ethics, leadership, and supply chain management. Featured contributors and readers from around the globe-executives of companies large and small, consultants, heads of utilities, academics-answered with robust and lively commentaries. Their contributions taught us that in marketing green products, companies must not lose sight of the basic reasons consumers buy them in the first place; that products that are green from the ground up have fundamentally different economics and markets from products that start dirty and are cleaned up by reengineered processes; that global pooling and exchange of technology are vital to cleaning up supply chains and reducing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions; that going green requires a sustained and unified effort from a diverse set of companies, customers, suppliers, workers, nonprofits, governments, and NGOs. And, as the highlights collected in this special section reveal, no company, industry, or executive will remain untouched.

A new study shows that downsizing often prompts demoralized survivors to quit, which hinders efficiency and costs companies money. To add insult to irony, career-development programs are associated with even higher turnover after the ax falls. The researchers say that certain types of HR practices may help.

The mere thought of being on the receiving end of verbal abuse hurts people's ability to perform complex tasks requiring creativity, flexibility, and memory recall, new research reveals.

Employees in stigmatized occupations can be helped with an array of techniques to cope with or even feel proud of their jobs, including developing an occupational ideology to confer a more positive image on the work; creating social buffers such as professional associations; and avoiding specifics in conversation with outsiders.

New research confirms that the bigger the employees' smiles, the happier the customers.

More women than men at Fortune 1000 firms have reached executive officer positions in their 30s, 40s, and 50s--and they've done it faster. Still, nearly half of those companies lack female executive officers altogether.

Like it or not, leaders need to manage the mood of their organizations. The most gifted leaders accomplish that by using a mysterious blend of psychological abilities known as emotional intelligence. They are self-aware and empathetic. They can read and regulate their own emotions while intuitively grasping how others feel and gauging their organization's emotional state. But where does emotional intelligence come from, and how do leaders learn to use it? In this article, 18 leaders and scholars (including business executives, leadership researchers, psychologists, an autism expert, and a symphony conductor) explore the nature and management of emotional intelligence. Their responses varied, but some common themes emerged: the importance of consciously--and conscientiously--honing one's skills, the double-edged nature of self-awareness, and the danger of letting any one emotional intelligence skill dominate. Among their observations: Psychology Professor John Mayer, who codeveloped the concept of emotional intelligence, warns managers not to be confused by popular definitions of the term, which suggest that if you have a certain set of personality traits then you automatically possess emotional intelligence. Neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg agrees with professors Daniel Goleman and Robert Goffee that emotional intelligence can be learned--but only by people who already show an aptitude for it.

The events of this past year have prompted intense soul-searching in many quarters and led us, in this year's list of the best business ideas, to reassess some of the most basic assumptions about strategy, organizations, and leadership. We began by reconsidering the role of the leader. Discussions of leadership focus almost exclusively on the CEO. But attention also needs to be paid to the other people who make organizations work: the followers--to their responsibilities, their power, and their obligation not to follow flawed leadership. And we considered the fate of soft issues, like emotional intelligence, in hard times. It's tempting to dismiss them when your employees will do anything just to keep their jobs. But hard times are good times to employ such tools on yourself. Despite valiant efforts to lead change and eliminate inefficiencies, organizations stay messy. Perhaps it's better to learn to live with messiness. There's growth potential, too, in considering the company as a portfolio of opportunities--but only if managers can sell off poorly performing business units as easily as they've been shedding ailing stocks of late.

What could be more fundamental to management, or more difficult, than motivating people? After all, a manager, by definition, is someone who gets work done through others. But how? A typical recipe for motivation calls for a mixture of persuasion, encouragement, and compulsion. Yet the best leaders, we suspect, need no recipe: They get people to produce great results by appealing to their deepest drives, needs, and desires. And so we discovered when we asked a dozen of the world's top leaders to describe how they each met a daunting challenge in motivating an individual, team, or organization. Some of the leaders appeal to people's need for the rational and the orderly: Mattel's Robert Eckert emphasizes the reassuring power of delivering a consistent message, and HP's Carly Fiorina focuses on facing hard truths and setting step-by-step goals. Some, like celebrated oceanographer Robert Ballard, Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell, and BP America president Ross Pillari, see the powerful motivating effects of asking people to rise to difficult challenges. Others focus more on the human spirit, appealing to the desire to do something, as BMW's Chris Bangle puts it, "rare, marvelous, and lasting." And quite a few inspire through example, as Dial chairman Herb Baum did when he donated $1,000 from his bonus to each of the company's 155 lowest paid people.

What's wrong with executive compensation, and what can we do about it? HBR and the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance convened a roundtable of compensation experts last October on the university's campus in Newark, Delaware. The 12 panelists, from CEOs to investors, from the professionals who advise them to a chief justice who rules on their disputes, provided an extraordinary diversity of viewpoints. The panelists began by debating ways to align the interests of the senior executives with the long-term interests of the company. But the discussion expanded to cover broader questions of corporate governance and company values. It was a lively and wide-ranging discussion of one of business's most pressing issues.

Some organizations repeatedly come up with great ideas, even though each act of innovation is really a leap of imagination that can't be taught or predicted. But even if they can't exactly replicate those successes, can other organizations learn from them? HBR's editors asked 16 innovation experts--leaders but not necessarily inventors themselves--one question: "What's the one thing you've done that most inspired innovation in your organization?" Some of them--like Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari; CEO Michael Dell; and venture capitalist Esther Dyson--emphasize the importance of letting people experiment and take risks. Hal Tovin, an executive vice president of a financial group, and John Talley, a pharmaceutical researcher, believe that hiring people with widely divergent skills and talents sets the stage for increased innovation. Larry Keeley, the president of an innovation strategy firm, encourages others to innovate in customer service, business models, and networking. Luciano Maiani, the director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), states the case for pure science by claiming that it drives innovation as much as markets do. These experts and others pull back the curtain on the mysteries of innovation.

In the last year, war broke out, the economy took a nosedive, and an alarming number of businesses went belly up. Thus, it is with some urgency that we bring you this year's list of the seven best new business ideas to help you find your way through these complex times. History Returns. Many thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of a new world order, one in which history didn't matter. But September 11, 2001, put an end to that theory. And it raised serious questions about globalization, security, and strategy. Enter the Everyday Leader--at Last. CEOs are used to getting all the glory, but leaders outside the limelight--middle managers and tempered radicals--are beginning to receive the attention they deserve. The Internet Is Not About You. The real value of the Internet may lie less in connecting individuals than in connecting databases, servers, and devices--a web not of people but of machines. Mind Your Behavior. Behavioral scientists are beginning to be able to predict accurately the ways individuals and crowds will respond to stimuli, and the implications for business are profound. Don't Delight Your Customers Away. Companies have wooed and coddled customers for too long. The truth is, people delight in being teased and are repelled by those who try too hard to befriend them. Games Are for Losers. Financial game playing and verbal politicking are seriously damaging businesses. Honesty is more than an admirable virtue; it's the foundation of every lasting enterprise. Three Cheers for Creativity (Sometimes). Creativity and best-practice replication are fundamentally different undertakings. Managers who mix the two achieve creativity that is merely incremental and replication that is sadly inept.

If leadership is personal, then personal experience must hold some of the most valuable lessons in leadership. With that in mind, HBR's editors canvassed leaders in business, academia, and the arts, asking them to tell us about the experiences that taught them the most about leadership at its best--and worst. Each of the 17 responses was unique, of course, but some common threads emerged. Many of those we asked credited one or both parents with teaching them principles of good leadership. Several cited their own lapses as examples of bad leadership. Some leaders were transformed by experiences in the military or on the playing fields of school. Others found defining moments in the social movements of the 1960s. The leaders canvassed include Disney CEO Michael Eisner, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, director of NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute Francis Collins, and Semco owner Ricardo Semler. Ultimately, what all of these stories demonstrate is that the act of leadership is just that--action. It's about showing, not telling, and setting the right example.