Nice smart people succeed.

So says Yahoo! executive and self-proclaimed "lovecat" Tim Sanders, author of "Love is the Killer App."

A killer app, in dotcom jargon, is a great new idea - or application - that becomes so popular it transforms or destroys the original business model.

And according to Mr. Sanders, an energetic, sideburn-wearing, dotcom veteran, the killer app that will change today's corporate culture - and help its proponents win business and influence friends - is love.

Despite the new-age touch to his philosophy - and the evangelical zeal with which he promotes it - Sanders's brand of "bizlove" is grounded in solid, practical steps.

The way he sums it up: "sensibly sharing your intangibles - your knowledge, your network, your compassion."

Sanders encourages people to step up and passionately develop and share all three.

"If you're confident in yourself, [certain] that you rock 'n' roll, then you can be a lovecat," he says. "Be a grower of people," he adds, and more tangible success will follow.

On his own motivation:

"I feel like Martin Luther nailing a note on the church door. When we did this book it was for a few thousand people that I call 'lovecats,' [people] I met in my business life. I really wrote the book so that people out there would know that there's somebody else who thinks the same thoughts they do, and they do not have to be ashamed to be nice, and smart, in business.

"Now that the book is out, I get 100 e-mails a day. I used to think when I got a response it would be people saying, 'I used to be a cynical jerk, but now I read your book and I'm an optimist.' That's not what I'm getting. The e-mail I get is, "You have put into words what I've been trying to tell my friends for decades."

On the power of compassion:

"It's a very contagious thing.... When [psychologist and author Abraham] Maslow carefully pointed out to me that people are good, and when they do bad things it's because they're coping with unfulfilled needs, I was a different manager overnight. I was a different employee overnight. I stopped saying, 'buyers are liars,' 'my boss is a jerk,' 'the employees will abuse you.' And I said, 'So, what is my boss going through?'

"It helped me understand."

On his hopes for the book:

"I hope I provoke a conversation in the cubicles of America where other voices like [mine] rise up to say the system is wrong.... I'm saying, 'You don't have to make work impersonal. You don't have to distrust people. You don't have to live cynically.' People like to [possess] youth, and a lot of this book is about becoming young again.

On the people it will reach:

"This book resonates the most with people that are predisposed. People who say, 'I live in a world of abundance. I think people are good.'

"Those are the people this book will resonate with, and what it does is structure it for them. It says 'OK, now that you want to be a knowledge-sharing person, here's how to buy books, here's how to read them, here's how to think about them, here's how to use them.' I do the same thing on network [and] on compassion."

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