Sometimes, in fields where they have experience, they can advise managers on the nitty-gritty just as well as a venture-capital firm would.

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But in the great grain growing areas, by and large, it's just left to rot, or sometimes even burned in the fields.

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These expert-network services connect money managers with people working in various fields, sometimes facilitating the exchange of insider-information that hedge funds have used to profit.

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Women managers in male-dominated fields sometimes find the stress of juggling family responsibilities intolerable.

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Hogne Pedersen, an 18-year company veteran and project manager who identifies and develops oil and natural-gas resources, says the training has helped to refine leadership skills he needs for developing oil fields in challenging -- and sometimes violent -- locations.

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And whether future generations here will look up from their fields sometimes at sunset, at the mud forts and checkpoints built in these final years, and think for a minute or two of the men who fought and died so far from home.

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They have, in fact, a symbiotic relationship with these outside groups, sometimes paying them to keep watch over the fields or scold parents into sending their children to school.

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Mr. FIELDS: Well, I think one of the things that we've learned the most is sometimes in the past we tried to be all things to all people.

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