Doris Christopher, of the kitchen-utensil maker the Pampered Chef, exemplifies improvisation. When she was starting out, her company's 400 percent growth rate was unmanageable -- and inventory was insufficient. So she took the unorthodox route of informing her sales consultants that she was putting the brakes on further recruiting: She presented a business plan that forecast a freeze -- not something most male entrepreneurs would even consider doing. Women-run companies are more likely to stay in business than the average U.S. firm, to grow at three times the average rate, create jobs at twice the average rate and produce profits faster, according to former CEO and BBC producer Heffernan. Heffernan sees a "good cultural fit" between the business cultures these women have built and society's expectation that women will be more caring, communicative and encouraging than men. But readers may wish she had interviewed these impressive CEOs and left it at that. Instead she promotes stereotypes -- all women are this, all men are that. C'mon: Surely there are a few good guys out there. Vallone made the merger a success, writes Heffernan (herself a former CEO of iCAST, Zinezone and other businesses and the author of "The Naked Truth: A Working Woman's Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters''), by facing rather than running away from the "maelstrom'' of M&A anxieties. In this engaging celebration of female business owners, Heffernan offers chapters on 10 "female" qualities and interviews 27 businesswomen about how they put them into practice. Eileen Fisher, the designer, demonstrated her zeitgeist sensitivity by recognizing that women want more comfortable work clothes that transition to evening wear.

Women On Top - Penguin Books UK

With privately held businesses owned by women growing at three times the rate of all such American firms over the past decade, Heffernan thinks it's time to toss out those old-school male qualities of aggression, single-mindedness and hard-edged analysis. I've long called the saga of American women-owned businesses our most underreported business news story. Margaret Heffernan goes a long way to filling this empty canyon. Women on Top is a great piece of reporting, a great piece of writing -- and, simply, one of the most important books, business or otherwise, to come along in many a year." WOMEN ON TOP: Redefining power and the nature of success for the 21st century was first published in 2007. In "Women on Top: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success," Margaret Heffernan shows how Vallone -- woman that she was -- confronted the intense emotions that surround an M&A deal. Nancy Friday's seminal works exploring female sexual fantasy have shattered taboos, exposed hidden desires, and opened up a conversation on women and sex that continues to be relevant today.To find out how and why, she interviewed hundreds of women business owners. Although the way her results confirmed stereotypes about gender differences made her queasy, it turned out that women business owners typically possess the characteristics experts think are needed in 21st-century businesses: combining "discipline, focus, detachment, and systematic thinking with playfulness, empathy, and design." She found that many women started their own businesses after working for corporations that didn't respect or listen to them. In charge of their own companies, their abilities to assert their values, nurture their employees and customers, "orchestrate" rather than "command and control," emphasize collaboration rather than competition, stay open to change, ask for help, learn from mistakes and make time for family became a formula for success.