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Infosys has emerged as a titan of the global software industry by carefully designing and constructing a unique corporate culture. Continued growth will test the quality and soundness of the company s architecture.

How fresh leadership, serial acquisitions, and a new market made CEO John Thompson's billion-dollar promise come true.

Five years ago, when the technology sector was booming, Adobe Systems was in trouble. The company was respected for its technical prowess and popular products, but Wall Street was skeptical; Japan, a major market, was tanking; and Quark, Adobe's rival, launched a hostile takeover attempt. Forced to swim or sink, Adobe Systems launched a massive turnaround effort spearheaded by executive vice president Bruce Chizen, who is now the company's president and CEO. In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Chizen discusses how he and his colleagues managed the turnaround, Adobe Systems' competitive strategy, and where the company is headed in the future.

AT 8:25 A.M. on Monday, June 5, 1995, Jim Manzi, chief executive of the Lotus Development Corporation, received an unexpected phone call from Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the International Business Machines Corporation.

I.B.M., Mr. Gerstner said, had just tendered an all-cash offer of $64 a share for Lotus, a storied software maker in Cambridge, Mass., and he hoped Mr. Manzi would come willingly to the deal. Shocked and surprised, the combative Mr. Manzi initially refused, spent two days seeking a white knight to keep Lotus independent and then grudgingly accepted the $3.5 billion buyout, the largest by far in software industry history.

This is the story -- pieced together through interviews with many of the principal players -- of what happened in the aftermath of that agreement. An anatomy of a corporate marriage that started out as the idea of only one of the parties, the story is a case study of the consummation and management of a high-profile merger, offering lessons that have resonance for C.E.O.'s in any industry, not just those in high tech.

Critics say Microsoft's incredible two-decade run at the top of the computer industry has less to do with innovation than it does with bully tactics. But new research from Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack suggest a different reason: the company's ability to spot technological trends and exploit key software technologies.

How does a company turn its reseller channel into a source of competitive advantage? It requires balancing the objectives of its resellers with its own.

Incentive programs are common in the software industry, where, instead of relying on a direct sales force, corporations like Sage Software often turn to small resellers to pitch their applications to a vast market of customers. Incentives as extensive and generous as Sage's are rare, however. For the past three years, the company (formerly known as Best Software) has invested $1 million a year to provide 100 resellers with $10,000 each to hire a salesperson. The initiative, which Sage calls the 100/100 program, provides interesting insights into why entrepreneurs delay recruiting salespeople--sometimes until their companies falter--and what mistakes businesses make in the hiring process.