I am an accidental entrepreneur. The happy accident arose from a contract to work as intellectual property attorney for a global technology company. I was well prepared in education and experience and downright lucky to be at the right place at the right time in front of the right people.

I started Technology Law Group in a spare bedroom with that single opportunity. We're now in our sixth year.

Entrepreneurship in law is unusual. The profession has time-honored ways of doing things. Over centuries, men have created these ways of approaching client projects and organizing and running law firms. Men similarly predominate in science, in technology, in banking. The list goes on.

Women are recent entrants to the external workforce. The need for productive capacity in World War II brought women out of the home and reshaped them as economically and otherwise powerful.

Women entrepreneurs are an even more recent phenomenon. When I received an invitation to write for the University of Pepperdine Law School's Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship, and the Law, I jumped at the chance.

Here is an opportunity to critically examine how women entrepreneurs operate, what special challenges we face, and how we effectively compete. Would the answers be different than for men? Do women run businesses differently? Do women have unique strengths? And why are there so few women like me out there?

To answer these questions, I harnessed the power of online social networking and posted them on LinkedIn. People from across the United States and around the world have answered my call. Many say that women have to work harder, smarter and more creatively than men to succeed.

The principal reason, they say, is because a woman's entrepreneurial success is directly tied to her willingness to embrace and leverage her power as a business innovator.

Women are more than willing to take the calculated risks that entrepreneurs take. They make the tough and necessary choices to integrate the hard work of entrepreneurship with the hard work of parenting and running a household. Women have the smarts, guts and ambition to succeed as entrepreneurs. Yet women are a small minority of them. Why?

Women flexing their power as business leaders are often viewed disparagingly, as masculine and therefore unacceptable as women. Men using power are viewed as, well, powerful, and we respect and admire them for it. When will we likewise respect and admire powerful entrepreneurial women?

Some say that women themselves harbor a flawed notion that it is somehow wrong to have and exercise power, that women haven't given themselves permission to be powerful. Because women are often ambivalent about their power, they are ineffective at using it. The failure to use power fully and effectively means the failure to achieve entrepreneurial success. This is true for all entrepreneurs and particularly for women.

My discussions continue through July 30, and your response would be valuable for my Pepperdine article. To participate, go to www.linkedin.com, look me up, and click on the Question there. You may also post a comment on my blog at http://tech-lawyer.blogspot.com.

Starting Up is a series published on Thursdays. The columns grew from discussions between the Statesman and local tech and entrepreneurial leaders and are coordinated by Julie Howard, a specialist for the Idaho Office of Science and Technology. Reach her at julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov.

By Emile Loza (email - eloza@technologylawgroup.com)- Special to the Idaho Statesman

Edition Date: 07/24/08