Business has always been social. Building relationships and trust with an eye on eventual profit is the implicit goal behind client-wooing practices like wining and dining prospects, hitting the links with industry colleagues or issuing invites to catch a ball game in the company box.

In 1998, Kuhn made one of the biggest gambles of his life. That year, he and several business partners decided to get into the high-stakes world of high-tech gaming by establishing DigiDeal Corporation. The company had the seemingly far-fetched goal of building a six-seat, electronic blackjack table to compete in an industry dominated by felt-covered tables and paper cards.

Heidi Santiago has put a new twist on an old cliché. In her case it was frustration—not necessity—that became the mother of invention. This energetic, former-middle-school teacher was used to motivating students, but when it came to motivating her young stepdaughter to use the potty, she was stumped.

When Tyler and Elliott Edwards were grade schoolers living on a small farm north of Colville, they started to learn the ins and outs of the family computer. 

The first and second of six children, Tyler and Elliott pretended to start a company to make computer games. They had heard of Microsoft Corp., so they gave their enterprise a similar name with a pretend word: Hachisoft Corp.

When I sent my first e-mail in 1991, it felt like the biggest technological advancement for improving workplace efficiency since word processors and computers replaced typewriters. I worked as a part-time receptionist while pursuing my journalism degree and was thrilled with the efficiency and time savings that e-mail provided.

It wasn’t too long before e-mail had replaced carbon copies, handwritten phone messages and the tedious type-print-distribute method we’d used for memos and other business communication. It was like Miracle-Gro for office productivity.

E-mail has come a long way in the last 17 years, arguably becoming the backbone of corporate communication. As a freelance writer, I correspond with all of my editors and clients via e-mail—that’s how I receive projects and assignments and turn in articles, copy and documents.

But over the years, this technological tool has grown wild and unruly, like an untended garden.