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Innovation – Speed – Capital – Leverage
The theory of high performance is not just a
theory anymore. It has finally come into its own. It is a lonely task
to tell people that performance may be increased by hundreds – even
thousands – of percents. Few people believe it. It took a young venture
capitalist from North Carolina to make the theory believable.
Let’s start from the beginning.
It was not until the 1980s that economists
started to talk about “the new economy.”
It was the old
economy on steroids. Business suddenly could be done at ferocious
speeds – ideas and capital could circle the Earth electronically, and in
an instant. Innovation happened everywhere at once, fueled by new
technologies such as the human genome, nano-technology, information
processing, and lightning-fast computers.
How to navigate in
such a world?
A book by Bill
Glynn, Left on Red (Wiley & Sons, 2008), lays out the roadmap in
a book that blazes through the new economy as quickly as the
ever-changing landscapes it traverses, where patience has little caché;
and innovation, venture capital and speed, are dominant and omnipresent.
The connected world
means that a new and original idea has only a momentary non-public
existence before it is put to work. Networks are key to sales and
development, people with brilliant and original minds are hard to lead
but indispensable to success, and companies explode on the scene with
simple and irresistible offerings: Google, Facebook, Amazon.com.
Competitors falter, jobs are lost, and the new giants themselves are
upended by the next rounds of changes and technologies.
Bill Glynn sees a
world that is, above all, interactive. You see an attractive dress worn
by the lead actress on TV. Click on it. Buy it; you have it the next
day. He sees a world in which productivity improvements are not
incremental, but proceed in breath-taking leaps, causing a two-year-old
company to go from zero to $20B in capitalization. He invites people
who have succeeded in this new economy to write vignettes about their
own experience at the end of each chapter. They endorse his ideas and
provide examples of their own.
Many of the stories
are well known, and Mr. Glynn tells them well. Netscape igniting the
Internet revolution, then being trounced by Microsoft’s Windows
Explorer. Amazon.com leaving thousands of bookstores behind, travel
agents watching their customers switching to their own laptops for
ordering tickets, Linked In building an individual network architecture
that outdoes any Rolodex.
Bill Glynn observes that the
speed of change does not allow for hesitation – nor much time to think.
The innovative American economy is doing what it does best – bringing
world class technology and venture capital together, then leveraging
networks, alliances and contacts for distribution and sales. Mr. Glynn
is the insider in the venture capital world: A skeptical, cynical and
merciless world, but one also that operates with human likes and
dislikes. If they like an entrepreneur, they will marshal help and
support that the entrepreneur could never have developed on his own.
And therein lies the purpose of the book: How to Ignite, Leverage and
Build Visionary Organizations. |
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The U.S. economy is
now eighty percent a knowledge economy.
Manufacturing is down to ten percent, and for
another ten percent, people do machine-like work
such as checkout personnel in supermarkets or
tellers in banks. Billy Glynn knows how to succeed
in a world that thrives on innovation and change,
and shares his experience with the readers.
This new world is
America’s ticket to global success. The purpose of
an innovation-driven economy is to create value –
incredible value – and do it so quickly that there
is no credible defense against an economy this fast,
this intuitive, this alert to opportunity.
But it is not unique
to the U.S. Other economies are speeding up as
well, and accelerating their own development and
value creation. Mr. Glynn is providing examples of
a theory of high performance that we have known and
practiced for years. The existence of this theory,
together with Mr. Glynn’s applications, provides the
validation of a new age. In this age, value
creation may simply have no ceiling, and for the
first time, we may see the end of poverty and,
perhaps, the end of disease and war as well.
War? Business is
war, says Bill Glynn, and illustrates his point with
references to market battles that killed corporate
entities faced with overwhelming force in the
marketplace. Perhaps this kind of war may
substitute for conventional wars wherein human lives
– not just careers – are at stake. Business is also
about satisfying human needs as well as making a
profit, and that, I presume, is a type of war we can
live with in the global village.
Glynn uses colorful
language. He writes at breakneck speed, and his
book will be a bestseller. I wish it had been
available twenty-five years ago when I learned those
same lessons through brute experience. Experience
is a great teacher, but it forces you to take the
exam before you have had a chance to learn the
lessons.
The next continent
that will take off into the knowledge age will be
Africa. They can, if they so choose, leapfrog into
growth and prosperity by not repeating the mistakes
made by other countries.
It was the plains of
the Serengeti that taught the world about the
survival of the fittest: Predator and prey, the
lion and the gazelle. The Serengeti also taught the
first humans to be quick and resourceful, to invent
tools and develop agriculture, and to build for the
future.
Business is the new
Serengeti. We know its merciless laws. Everyone
can succeed if they learn and practice these laws.
Everyone.
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