From the editor.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey

Leadership isn't only for the bold, argues Michael Treacy in our cover story; his examples of top leaders head companies that specialize in incremental gains, mining information and market niches and moving into adjacent markets. He sees this "nitty-gritty" strategy, which eschews shoot-for-the-moon ventures, being practiced at top companies like Dell Inc., AIG, Capital One Bank and Airbus SAS. A second leadership article in the cover package by Robert M. Fulmer and Jay A. Conger has some very cogent observations about marrying leadership training with succession planning.

Privacy is a sticky wicket, and new laws have made things increasingly complicated. Writer Gregory Millman takes a broad look at some of the ramifications of these privacy codes and hears from privacy officers and others about how they are scrambling to comply--and to assuage consumers that their companies handle data protectively.

China has been the subject of countless articles in recent months, as companies there went public in the U.S. with considerable fanfare and doubts have surfaced over whether the country's corporate culture, banking system and capital markets are up to the task of sustaining rapid growth. Contributor Ramona Dzinkowski spoke to a prominent international expert, Harvard Prof. Kenneth Rogoff, who offers some compelling thoughts about both the promise and the risk faced by those moving into China.

Revenue recognition has been a concern for years, both in terms of legitimate difficulties with a complex standard and as a means of perpetrating outright fraud. Companies like Computer Associates and Lucent Technologies have been hit hard by fraud claims in recent months, and the whole area remains ripe for misdoing. But for good corporate citizens, too, revenue recognition has proven a tough subject to master, and one that FASB is...