Penny Herscher

The world is slowly climbing out of the great recession as companies around the world begin to increase investment and hiring. But for B2B sales teams looking to recapture growth during these early days, it's critical to understand who's really paying their bills and keeping the lights on -- and...

The same issue comes up every time I mentor technical women:

"I offer an idea at a meeting, no one listens to me and then a man says the same thing and everyone listens."

Often the woman is the only woman on a team and so the only woman in...

We are facing an ongoing threat to America's global economic leadership and increasing the number of engineers in our workforce is one powerful way we can change our destiny as a country.

In Silicon Valley we have one engineering job open for every two engineers that are employed -- this...

Let's face it, CEOs get fired all the time.

CEOs with less than 5 years of experience are more likely than long-standing ones to be fired, so it's going to happen all the time but there are ways to do it, and ways not to.

Yahoo's

Do women lead differently than men? Yes, usually. Do women face more barriers than men? Frequently. But do women sometimes hold themselves back ? Yes.

Tech companies are competitive and dominated by men. Fact. So how, as a woman, do you adapt and learn how to lead in that environment?...

In a world where women still make less money than men for the same job, iVillage and Today.com have released a survey that shows -- shock horror -- that salary is the most important criteria for a woman choosing a job.

"97% of working moms surveyed saying that...

Google is getting cluttered up in a way that is now starting to impact its usefulness as a search engine -- and we users need a better solution. There has been a tirade from a number of writers over the last few months driven both by Google getting...

John Batelle, one of the gurus of Search, wrote as early as 2004 that the secret of Google's success was its understanding of the web as a database of intentions. He described the web as "a place holder for the intentions of humankind -- a massive database of desires, needs,...

We all sell, all the time, and there are endless jokes and ads about how knowledge of the person you are selling to (whatever you may be selling) can help you seal the deal.

Everyone's been there -- figuring out the likes and dislikes of someone we want...

It's a fact that women entrepreneurs only get 4.2% of the venture funding in the U.S., but the reasons why are more murky -- and some would say women hurt themselves with the venture capitalist community by being emotional.

I sat on a panel yesterday at the Astia...

On May 5, Google announced a new navigational bar for their search results along with new contextually relevant search tools -- and took a step in right direction towards becoming an application. John Battelle, one of the search industry's big thinkers wrote a thoughtful piece on why this...

The examples in today's news of the disconnect between a corporation's mission statement and its actions teach that poor company values can lead to poor company performance -- and vice-versa.

BP is living the corporate image nightmare. A company with a terrific ad campaign ("Beyond Petroleum" -- you'd think it...

It's well known that US employees don't get as much vacation as employees in Europe do, and they typically don't take all the vacation they are given -- and yet we also know that vacation is really important to long term health and employee satisfaction. So how do we fix...

If you were on the compensation committee of a public company board how would you set the CEO's pay?

There is so much written about fat cat CEOs and their unfair pay packages that this is a question worth pondering (if you care). The really hard part about it is...

A massive shakeout of venture capital firms has been predicted for years but it is finally going to happen over the next year because of a perfect storm of timing.

There are countless books, a few movies and mountains of silicon valley gossip about the good...

As Dickens said "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and the phrase could be applied to California here in April 2009.

The unemployment data released last week touts California at the top of the jobless lists at 11% - worst in the country -...

Gender stereotypes already make it hard enough for women in the workplace but in tough times how women treat other women matters even more.

Today women make up 50% of managers in companies, but only 15% of executive officers. It's still rare to find women in any executive positions except...

Challenge is the crucible of leadership and there is no time like the present to look for the leaders in your organization. So what should you look for - and how can you create the environment to bring out the leaders?

There are many books which have been written about...

The global publishing giants have declared war on the new technology generation of content distributors -- but they have lost sight of what consumers value and how they want to get to the value. It's time to separate content creators from distributors. It's time for a new business model...

There's a turn in the U.S. employment market happening. There's evidence that the number of layoff announcements and reported layoff events has started to drop. This does not mean the number of job losses will drop yet since announcements precede the actual elimination of jobs, but it is a leading...