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Steve Gaffney vividly recalls the day he literally got a whack upside the head that gave him a lifelong lesson in success—one that would come in handy this year.

Running a key sector in one of the world's largest information technology companies may not seem to have much in common with automobile repair. But one corporate leader draws from that discipline to drive a group that has undergone a complete overhaul since a serious breakdown little more than a decade ago.

Despite common interests and goals, the military and the information technology sector are hampered by cultural differences that thwart their ability to work together, according to a former U.S. Defense Department information technology leader now in the private sector.

George Pedersen always wanted to run a $1 billion company. When he started ManTech International Corporation on a shoestring budget several decades ago, the hard-charging executive knew achieving that level of market share would be a watershed moment for his fledgling enterprise.

If throughout your entire professional life you had gone by a nickname associated with one of the towering giants of American literature, what would you do when you finally retired from the corporate world?

A former niche technology will greatly improve how military and commercial organizations stock and track supplies and products. The system permits the identification of equipment fitted with radio frequency devices known as tags. This capability allows quartermasters to know a cargo container's contents immediately as it enters a theater of operation. Inventory information can then be fed into a database to follow incoming parts and equipment shipments, allowing commanders to react quickly to demand spikes.

After several years of depressed revenues, the telecommunications industry is poised to recover in 2005, experts say. Rebounding from the historic lows of the past several years, the equipment manufacturing sector can expect robust growth while gains for services will remain modest. But storm clouds loom on the horizon as emerging technologies such as broadband and voice over Internet protocol threaten to radically change traditional service carrier arrangements.

Shrinking military budgets and stagnating sales are placing pressure on European defense firms to survive by merging. Companies seeking to do business on the Continent must be especially enterprising to find opportunities in this tight market.

Ken Dahlberg sometimes likens his burgeoning high-technology business to a high-speed ride at a Disney theme park. No, he is not being sarcastic-far from it. In just six years, Dahlberg's information systems and technology (IS&T) group at General Dynamics has become one of the largest and most respected outfits selling technology services to the nation's defense and civilian agencies.

The rapid evolution of the Internet and other telecommunications networks has begun to eliminate national boundaries and geographic separation among countries. Scientific methods used to study international information flows and resulting globalization indicate a correlation between the flows and major political and economic changes over time.