InformationWeek

March 15, 1999

Corporate Change:
A Culture Of Innovation

Bob Evans

he 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 ("Dell, IBM Join Forces"). 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" ("HP's Big Break").

So how does this happen? Does management just send an E-mail to all employees saying, "Go faster?" I would submit that it's a careful blend of three essential and interlinked pieces: corporate culture, knowledge, and innovation. Without the right culture permeating an organization, risk isn't rewarded, change is stifled, constructive criticism is unwelcome, and the focus remains on competitors instead of on customers. On the flip side, though, companies that have fostered forward-looking cultures usually find that knowledge flows freely among employees and appropriate partners, allowing better decisions to be made more quickly and promoting a focus on understanding customers better and communicating with them more effectively.

When those two pieces come together, innovation can flourish: Unswerving focus on customers allows IT organizations to think in new ways and deliver new capabilities, driven not by budgets and what's been done in the past but rather by the power that new thinking and partnerships can deliver. It's the world of E-business, which is more a philosophy than a product or a technology. It's a world that's not for the timid or the cautious--and certainly not for those who want or need to check the rear-view mirror. It's a world driven by speed and capability, where even lightning-footed Dell feels it needs to change dramatically to keep up.

Satch said it all many years ago: We all know something's gaining on us, so don't waste time looking back.

Bob Evans
Editor-in-Chief
bevans@cmp.com