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The celebrated shoe designer talks about how and why he started to "do shoes," some factors in his success, balancing art and commerce, and why he's stayed independent.

Venezuelan-based Chocolates El Rey processes some of the best cacao beans in the world, for use in premium products from Belgium and Switzerland. But so far its own brand of chocolate is relatively hard to find outside its home market, and consumers aren't willing to pay a price comparable with those of Belgian or Swiss products. Overcoming the perception that premium products come exclusively from certain geographies is becoming the marketing and branding challenge for emerging markets in the next decade.

Although extroverted leaders have important strengths, in certain situations an introvert may make the better boss. This research suggests that the extrovert's tendency to take over discussions may stifle the ideas of his or her subordinates; whereas introverted leaders tend to listen more carefully and show greater receptivity to suggestions, making them more effective leaders of proactive teams.

Don't reject those overqualified applicants out of hand. New research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other employees, and they don't quit any sooner.

Ever wonder why you just "click" with some people? There's actually a neural basis for that feeling. In good communication, the listener's brain activity begins to mirror the speaker's brain activity. The stronger the resemblance, the higher the listener's comprehension. By studying this uniquely human phenomenon, we could learn how to change other people's minds-literally.

The modern workplace may have made progress toward achieving work-life balance, but many issues remain. They include stress on the job, the underutilized potential of working remotely, the division of labor at home, and pay equity for women.

Managers attempt to make sense of their environment and predict what will result from their decisions. The problem is that there's plenty of random noise in competitive environments, so rewarding or penalizing managers on the basis of outcomes is a mistake. This column offers four ways companies can create more effective reward systems, helping managers to make better decisions.

How the eight sales types perform, and how managers can get the most out of each.

For too long, boards have relied on rules of thumb and conventional wisdom when picking CEOs. New research offers some surprising insights that will better guide succession strategy.

Everyone loves a scrappy underdog-and brands can profit from this positioning.

The days when companies could rely on a poison pill and antitakeover statutes to fend off hostile bidders are long gone.

Though we'd like to think that it always pays to be honest, new research from Harvard proves that it doesn't necessarily. A new study that compared viewers' reactions to a candidate's answers to questions in a debate reveals that when the candidate dodged a question eloquently, people liked and trusted him nearly as much as when he gave a direct response. What's more, they preferred artful dodges to honest but less articulate answers. That finding presents an interesting quandary for any leader who has to field difficult questions.

The relationship between value creation and job creation is more tenuous now than it has been for a century. Revenues report that the economy is doing well, but unemployment numbers remain high. Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School, contends that this fundamental change is a symptom of a deeper structural issue.

Companies that can offer a scarce and coveted good or service that others cannot, will win. Goods and services that are scarce are those that are difficult to conceive, to make, and perhaps at first even to sell. The default for most organizations is to do easy work, such as running a factory, opening a big-box store, making and shipping a product. That used to be the way to grow an organization, but no longer. The only way to avoid the race to the bottom is to create something difficult and valuable, something that people will pay more for. Examples of difficult work include creating things that are tangibly or conceptually beautiful, finding an elegant solution to a problem, and connecting with and leading people.

Michelle Obama has an astonishing effect on the stock prices of the companies whose clothes she wears.

Raj Gupta had led the specialty chemical company Rohm and Haas without drama for years when some of its most important shareholders asked him to orchestrate its sale. Surprised but determined to do his best for the company, in July 2008 he arranged an $18 billion deal with competitor Dow Chemical, which the industry press called "the deal of the century." But Dow was relying on cash from a planned joint venture of its own with Kuwait Petroleum, and when the stock market plummeted, the joint venture-and Dow's financing-fell through. Then things got really interesting. Would Dow try to walk away from the deal? Could Rohm and Haas insist that it go through in spite of the unforeseen global meltdown? How airtight was that agreement? Gupta, who learned he had cancer in the midst of all this, had to find a way through the complicated financial and economic issues. In this first-person account he talks about the most difficult deliverable ever asked of him-seeing through the sale of his company as the world economy was collapsing.

For decades, computer scientists have tried to teach computers to think like human experts. Until recently, most of those efforts have failed to come close to generating the creative insights and solutions that seem to come naturally to the best researchers, doctors, and engineers. But now, Tony Hey, a VP of Microsoft Research, says we're witnessing the dawn of a new generation of powerful computer tools that can "mash up" vast quantities of data from many sources, analyze them, and help produce revolutionary scientific discoveries. Hey and his colleagues call this new method of scientific exploration "machine learning." At Microsoft, a team has already used it to innovate a method of predicting with impressive accuracy whether a patient with congestive heart failure who is released from the hospital will be readmitted within 30 days. It was developed by directing a computer program to pore through hundreds of thousands of data points on 300,000 patients and "learn" the profiles of patients most likely to be rehospitalized. The economic impact of this prediction tool could be huge: If a hospital understands the likelihood that a patient will "bounce back," it can design programs to keep him stable and save thousands of dollars in health care costs. Similar efforts to uncover important correlations that could lead to scientific breakthroughs are under way in oceanography, conservation, and AIDS research. And in business, deep data exploration has the potential to unearth critical insights about customers, supply chains, advertising effectiveness, and more.

CEOs and other senior executives these days must manage countless complex, high-stakes conversations across functional areas and divisions, with alliance partners and critical suppliers, and with customers and regulators. The pressure of such negotiations make them a lot like U.S. military officers in an Afghan village, fending off enemy fire while trying to win trust and intelligence from the local populace. Both kinds of leaders face what the authors call "dangerous negotiations," in which the traps are many and good advice is scarce. Although the sources of danger are quite different for executives and officers, they resort to the same kinds of behaviors. Both feel pressure to make quick progress, project strength and control (particularly when they have neither), rely on force rather than collaboration, trade resources for cooperation rather than build trust, and make unwanted compromises to minimize potential damage. The authors outline five core strategies that "in extremis" military negotiators use to resolve conflicts and influence others: maintaining a big-picture perspective; uncovering hidden agendas to encourage collaboration; using facts and fairness to get buy-in rather than grudging support; building trust; and focusing on process as well as outcomes. These strategies provide an effective framework with which business negotiators can change their thinking ahead of the deal as well as their actions at the bargaining table.

When responding to a complex, fast-moving crisis, leaders must constantly adapt their mental models and create a "unity of effort," argues Allen, a retired U.S. Coast Guard admiral and the national incident commander for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That's a much bigger management challenge than approaching the job as a military operation and drawing on unity of command, and it can require nuanced and creative strategies, such as deciding to go "off book" when standard protocol simply won't work. In this edited interview, Allen-who also brought post-Katrina New Orleans back from the brink of anarchy and headed the Coast Guard's response to the September 11 attacks along the eastern seaboard-stresses the need to lead both from headquarters and on the ground. He discusses how the phenomenon of publicly available, real-time information has affected crisis management in recent years, addresses the challenges of managing multiple public and private stakeholders, and shares his thoughts on how to lead when an anxious public is counting on success.

Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers-trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility-make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience revealed differences in how the branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps) prepare leaders for business. Those differences reflect the trade-off between flexibility and process that each branch of the armed services must make. Army and Marine Corps officers operate in an inherently uncertain environment. They define the mission but then give subordinates the flexibility to adjust to realities on the ground. This leadership experience tends to turn out business executives who excel in small firms, where they can set a goal and then empower others to work toward it. Navy and Air Force officers, who operate expensive, complex systems such as submarines and aircraft carriers, are trained to follow processes to the letter, because even small deviations can have large consequences. In corporations, these leaders excel in regulated industries and in firms that take a process approach to innovation. The larger lesson that the military can offer the business world is that fit matters. Different circumstances demand different leadership skills. Hire the person who fits the job.