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This chapter is excerpted from ‘Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies'. As business leaders look to the future, especially in troubling economic times, many are considering how to remain competitive in an era of scarce resources. For most, capital projects are constrained and the idea of growing the workforce is a distant dream. So what can business leaders do about this? Some savvy leaders are recognizing the potential of virtual business and more specifically, many are implementing a virtual business strategy to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Business Goes Virtual combines real-world practitioner success stories, augmented with proven academic theory, to arm executives with proven leading practices to accelerate growth capabilities. Despite several false starts, the concept of virtual business is finally coming to fruition. A melding of four critical enablers drives this new reality: social technology, visionary leadership, an increasing recognition of the value of a collaboration culture, plus virtual worlds. This so-called TLC+V (technology, leadership, collaboration, and the virtual) of virtual business has suddenly combined to create exciting and uncharted business opportunities waiting to be harnessed. Fortunately, some pioneering leaders have blazed the path and demonstrated the untapped potential of this new domain. Many definitions exist for the term ‘virtual business,’ and although we do not want to engage in a lengthy discussion of which is best, we do believe we should explain what we mean by the term. From our study of businesses in the domain, we define the term as follows: ‘A virtual business provides innovative solutions to new and traditional business challenges by exploiting social technology, leadership, and collaboration in both the real and virtual words.’ This book examines four virtual business strategies that are showing unprecedented opportunity. The ‘any place, any time’ strategy focuses on providing high quality service 24/7 by ignoring traditional geographic challenges. The ‘people know best’ strategy harnesses the power of everyday people to create value. The ‘everyone has a stake’ strategy considers the stakeholder view of the organization and guides leaders in tapping this vast store of wisdom. Finally, the ‘real in the virtual world’ strategy offers incredible opportunity for real businesses to sell their wares in the virtual world. As with all innovative strategies, some potential pitfalls will demand the attention of virtual business leaders. The first is developing a social media policy that enables creating a collaborative culture while guarding corporate intellectual capital - this is often a difficult balancing act. Equally important and just as challenging is the difficult issue of not succumbing to the forces we plan to tap. Social technology is a double-edged sword and an angry consumer group can quickly become a network army with incredible power: witness the Twitter Moms who took on a large corporation and won. Throughout the book, we present a collection of best practices derived from our case studies of real virtual business successes. We include a healthy dose of not-so-successful stories to remind us that these strategies are not a quick win but rather the product of sound strategic planning combined with focused and skilled execution expertise. Finally, we gaze into the future to consider what is on the horizon. This uncharted territory will be of great interest to early adopters who are looking for the next big thing. What we have learned from researching and writing this book is the future of work is here now, and more leaders simply need to embrace it. The reality is Business Goes Virtual is here to stay; we hope you are action-oriented leaders taking advantage of what others have achieved. Collaborate or Die was one of the titles we were toying with earlier. This is not an ‘if we should’ or ‘when’ question, it is a business imperative and those that get it will succeed, those that don’t will lag and many will face demise.