Throughout your career, you'll have opportunities for new jobs and new challenges. How do you decide which to pursue and which to pass up?

It's a conundrum that's gotten only more perplexing with the unsettled economy. In the past few years, we've beheld the spectacle of mass job-hopping, of managers being seduced by promises of new frontiers, more autonomy, more authority and, most of all, buckets of money, usually in the form of that promissory note known as a stock option.

So what will it be: the bird in the hand, or the one in the bush? Do you bet on the executive team or the technology? Do you simply seek the biggest payoff? Many who have taken that route have cashed in big-time; others have seen their paper profits dissolve into worthless paper.

Which is why Dana Harris's story is interesting. Is he a visionary who has struck upon just the right balance in making these career decisions, or is he just another corporate flight risk whose itchy feet can't wait to leap to "the next big thing"?

You decide.

Mr. Harris is the recently anointed vice president of world-wide sales for Copernus Inc., a Cincinnati-based start-up that makes software for collaborative business projects.

He was previously employed by eRoomTechnology Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., a larger company in that market which, by the way, had lured him two years earlier, in part through the promise of a big stock payoff down the road. At the time Mr. Harris left, that payoff seemed imminent, in the form of a proposed initial public offering.

Is this madness? Mr. Harris doesn't think so. The 40-year-old executive has spent most of his career pursuing jobs he believes are on the cutting edge of technology for what he believes are sound reasons. "I'm not going to the frontier for the frontier's sake," he explains. "I'm following the value proposition, which keeps moving."

Mr. Harris launched his quest for greater value after leaving consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand eight years ago. A consultant on knowledge-management and business-process re-engineering issues, he enjoyed dealing with the challenge that each new problem brought, but eventually decided that advising customers on these issues wasn't as fulfilling as grappling with the issues himself.

"I got tired of hearing myself talk," he says.

Drawn to the areas of managing digital content and workflow processes, he joined Interleaf Inc., which made electronic-publishing and document-management software, as manager of strategic partnerships.

But "the proprietary nature of their software made them an island that serviced a small niche," he says.

When two Interleaf executives moved to PC Docs Group, which created products he believed could be more widely applied, Mr. Harris accepted their offer to join as a sales manager.

In talking to customers, he grew to believe that the real opportunity wasn't in managing documents, but in helping businesses create and use those documents. "There was nothing on the market like that," he says. He tried to champion that notion within PC Docs, but, he says, there were several competing initiatives and the company was in the process of being sold.

"The lessons I learned through working with customers led me to my next move," he says. How can we solve the problems we're creating with this new knowledge-management technology, he asked himself? "I gravitate to the next generation of products," he says.

That may seem like a risky notion of career management to some, but it makes perfect sense to Mr. Harris. In technology-related businesses, after all, the market is constantly moving forward and obsolescence is always a threat. "I feel comfortable moving to where I see value," he says. "I see that as prudent."

That led him to eRoom in January, 1999. He'd learned about the company from a former boss and mentor and "instantly embraced their approach," he says. He hired on as a district sales manager and was soon promoted to an area sales director as the sales force expanded.

Mr. Harris won't reveal his compensation there, but says that all eRoom employees had stock options, which looked like they would pay off when the company filed documents preparatory to a stock offering last fall.

But Mr. Harris was still following where the technology was leading. "In this space of business collaborations, the teams have been becoming more and more virtual," he explains. "You have to work not only with teams in your organization, but with teams outside of your organization."

The Internet was the logical place for those interactions to occur, he reasoned. Existing software could handle transactions -- orders, shipping, payments. "But how can I share an idea with someone outside my organization, have two or three people provide input, and make a decision on what we're going to do?" he asks. He didn't see any systems that allowed that to happen smoothly.

But the need for collaborative products was growing rapidly and he wanted to climb aboard. That's when a recruiter approached him about Copernus.

Clearly, the opportunity here wasn't just a bet on the moving frontier of technology. Copernus also was offering him a significant promotion to a position that he coveted and that wasn't likely to be available anytime soon at eRoom. "It was important to me that my next position be part of the executive team," he says. eRoom had an executive team and a vice president of sales."

Still, with a public offering near, a slipping economy and an increasingly hostile environment for Internet-related start-ups, wouldn't it have made more sense to stay put and cash in before venturing into the wilderness again? "Hanging around to cash in wasn't going to do it," he says. "I quickly realized I was going to need more."

By that he means more in terms of personal authority and market potential. Besides, he wasn't as leery as some about the prospects of a start-up. Many of the start-ups that crashed and burned, he explains, weren't chasing legitimate market niches. "No longer can we develop a solution and then hope to find a problem for it," he says. Likewise, many of those who joined the Internet feeding frenzy in hopes of hitting the jackpot didn't understand the market dynamics of the business they were entering.

Naturally, the money counts -- it always counts. And only time will tell which course will prove the most lucrative. eRooms hasn't completed its IPO yet, and while his current position represents a significant step up in authority, it isn't clear what it means in terms of compensation. Typically, smaller and younger companies pay less and dish out more stock options. Mr. Harris will say only that "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think there was a lot of potential for personal and professional growth."

Moving to a smaller company, and a start-up to boot, can indeed be risky. But in critical decisions such as these, understanding the market, the technology and where they are headed is more important than salary and benefits. Even in a down economy, there are business problems that must be solved. Identify the right ones and the riches will follow.

"Just because people are being more rational, that doesn't mean innovation has to stop," Mr. Harris says. "If you understand the space, it's easy to make a sound career decision."