Visionaries don't take technology for granted

June 19, 2000

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

As the stock market sank this spring, people began asking if the Net marketing bubble had burst or the tide had turned. It all depends on which tide you're asking about, I think.

We probably won't need or see another online business-to-consumer toy store in the near future because Wall Street likely will begin paying more attention to profitability versus vs. growth in establishing market valuations. Gasoline prices and prices in general may rise, as will interest rates. There may even be an order of magnitude fewer day traders when this shakeout is done.

But there's not a chance it's over. It's just beginning, because "it" is innovation, and technology-based innovation is here to stay. The process is just in the toddler stage, and there's no telling what profitable new products, services and business concepts soon will emerge. You'll go home a loser if you bet against innovation. Instead, broaden your vision as a marketer to predict where the next opportunities will arise.

Last October, long before the recent market correction, business sage Peter Drucker examined the topic of innovation in a landmark article published in Atlantic Monthly. Drucker looked at past waves of technological innovation, including the arrival of Gutenberg's printing press and Watt's steam engine. He pointed out that major innovations such as printing and publishing, and steam power tend to incubate for as long as 50 years before spawning an array of broader innovations with far more expansive results.

Gutenberg developed the printing press to enable the faster production of Bibles. For the first 50 or 60 years after Gutenberg, printed Bibles looked much like their hand-scribed predecessors. The process of producing a Bible became faster, better and cheaper, and it certainly enabled the monks who painstakingly handcrafted Bibles to tend to the other religious needs of their flocks. Then, as Drucker points out, the big innovation arrived: Along came Martin Luther's Bible, which, "relying on the new printing technology ushered in Protestantism, which conquered half of Europe and, within another 20 years, forced the Catholic Church to reform itself in the other half. "Luther used the new medium of print deliberately to restore religion to the center of individual life and of society. And this unleashed a century and a half of religious reform, religious revolt, religious wars," Drucker adds.

Or take Watt's steam engine, which made the Industrial Revolution possible. According to Drucker, "The Industrial Revolution in its first half century only mechanized the production of goods that had been in existence all along." Then in 1829 came the railroad, a wholly new product that completely altered the course of society. Says Drucker, "The Information Revolution is now at the point at which the Industrial Revolution was in the early 1820s, about 40 years after Watt improved the steam engine."

The real challenge is adjusting your senses to the pace of change and having the wherewithal as a marketer to see what lies ahead. Knowing how to define and shape your company's destiny in light of all the innovation around us isn't easy. In some ways, we've even become desensitized and skeptical toward innovation, but we should avoid taking it for granted.

Consider this fact: "An average person is exposed to as much innovation in one day's issue of The New York Times as a person would be exposed to in a lifetime in the 17th century," says Jim Taylor, former chief marketing officer of San Diego-based Gateway Inc. computer company and author of the recently published, Visionary's Handbook, while speaking at a recent conference in Orlando, Fla.

As marketers, we have to recognize the impact of innovation and be the visionary leaders that guide our organizations to take advantage of it. To do this, we literally have to become more visionary ourselves.

I subscribe to Taylor's four criteria for becoming more visionary:

• Know who you are.
  
• Know where you want to go.
  
• Recognize your own seminal moments.
  
• Have an attitude of insurgency.

If you can do these things, you're well on your way toward leading your company in these times of change and opportunity.

Is innovation over? Just yesterday, without really listening, I learned of the following potential innovations: new uses for instant messaging technology; software that will enable three-dimensional imaging and improved online customer experience without sucking up bandwidth; a universal language translator capability; new customer ratings solutions for business-to-business exchanges, and lasers that cram more bits into existing fiber-optic cables.

The bottom line is there's still plenty of innovation left in this technology engine. Or, as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'til it's over," and Yogi, it ain't over.

Michael Krauss is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners in Chicago.
He can be reached at news@ama.org.