Lambert certainly has "the vision." When will the rest of the industry get it?
Fez
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INFORMATION WEEK
March 15, 1999, Issue: 725
Section: Business IT
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Corporate Change -- A Culture Of Innovation
Bob Evans
The legendary baseball pitcher and philosopher Satchel Paige, who pitched at an extraordinary level of skill in the major leagues into his 50s, once opined on the need to focus on the future: "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." (In another discourse on the vagaries of time, the sagacious Satch also gave us this one: "Age is a case of mind over matter-if you don't mind, it don't matter.")
I couldn't help thinking of Satch the other day when I read a quote from a top-level executive at one of the computer industry's preeminent hardware companies who had this to say about the pace of change swirling around us today: "This industry is running away from us faster than we can run to keep up with it." A great thought, to be sure-and one that can't be overstated not only by the companies that make all these remarkable IT products but also by the companies that purchase and deploy them. So I was really jolted when I saw that the quote came from a company that has by all accounts been one of the, if not the, most innovative and fast-paced technology companies in the world: Dell Computer.
The quote came from senior VP Mike Lambert, who runs the company's enterprise systems group and was discussing Dell's decision to purchase $16 billion worth of IBM hardware and software over the next seven years (www.informationweek.com/724/ 24iudel.htm). Lambert's point is that for Dell to maintain its dizzying level of innovation and growth, it needs to break some rules-a trait the company has mastered, to its very great benefit-governing how this business works. It gets access to cutting-edge technologies, products, and R&D, and IBM gets not just $16 billion but also access to Dell's manufacturing and distribution expertise.
Go back two years, or even one year-could you honestly have imagined this scenario, wherein two serious competitors offer each other open access to many of their most valuable assets? By not looking back, and by not being shackled by the constraints of the past and the traditions of business as usual from the old days (in this case, pre-1999), Dell and IBM have each made sure to put some additional distance between anybody who might have been gaining on them.
And when Lambert says "This industry is running away from us faster than we can run to keep up with it," what I have to wonder is this: Just who in blazes is out there in the lead running faster than even Dell? And the only answer I can come up with is that it's people who manage technology in business: you, our 400,000 readers, who have unlocked vast new business opportunities via information technology and are voraciously demanding even more capabilities-power, speed, security, flexibility, simplicity-as the entire world and every market or industry within it is being transformed by the realities and potential of electronic business. In the same issue of InformationWeek that contained the quote from Lambert, Chase Treasury Services (a unit of Chase Manhattan Corp.) senior VP Susan Webb said, "The ubiquity of the Internet creates opportunities that never existed before." And in such an environment, Webb says, speed and nimbleness become paramount: "In this field, you have to enter swiftly with high-quality partners"
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