The Wall Street Journal recently featured a great article entitled, "New Breed of Business Gurus Rises". The article went on to profile Gary Hamel (Strategy Guru), Thomas Friedman (Columnist, NY Times), Bill Gates (Chairman, Microsoft), Malcolm Gladwell (Author), and Howard Gardner (Professor, Harvard) as the most influential business thinkers in the nation.

However, the article led me to wonder, who are the leading businessmen in sports? Who are the industry's most innovative thinkers? I landed on five (5) names that warrant recognition for their contributions to the industry:

• Michael Yormark (Florida Panthers)
• Brett Yormark (New Jersey Nets)
• Derrick Hall (Arizona Diamondbacks)
• Dan Migala (The Migala Report)
• Mike Veeck (Minor League Baseball)

In this article, I wanted to zero in on Michael Yormark of the Florida Panthers and an innovative B2B concept that his organization recently developed: www.bizteamup.com. Yormark and his corporate sponsorship team created BizTeamUp as a B2B solution to empower team partners, serve as a database for ideas and contact information, and act as a catalyst to solve B2B questions faster, easier, and more directly. Yormark and his team modeled the site after www.nascarpartners.com, but added more 2.0 capabilities to enhance sponsor communication and ideation. The site allows users to create profiles (similar to Facebook) and facilitate communication through an email-based system.

The Panthers organization designed the site strictly as a tool to benefit their corporate partners (not to generate revenue). However, the team foresees having the ability to sell the technology to other teams and/or create a subscription based model for non-sponsors to gain access to the network. Time will tell how much benefit is derived from this technological concept, but nonetheless, Yormark and the Panthers are making great strides to enhance their B2B capabilities!