Technorecovery?

First technology produced the boom. Then it brought the bust. And
now? Will it lead us into another round of gizmo-led growth? Are there
cool new things to spark our imagination ( and jump-start the stock
market ) ? We asked five of the smartest techies, analysts, and
investors around. Here’s their take on the technofuture.

by Alison Overholt
from FastCompany issue 60, page 61

Bob Davis
Venture partner, Highland Capital Partners
Lexington, Massachusetts

I’ve always been skeptical of the concept of "the next big thing."
Markets are long-term, and successful long-term markets have
always been evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary. It’s
dangerous to lose sight of that as we did during the Internet euphoria.

I also believe that the technology market will follow rather than lead
the recovery. It won’t be until late 2003 that we’ll see strong growth
from this segment of the economy. We’ve seen extensive cost cutting
across most business sectors. IT was at the forefront of the cost
cutting because it was at the forefront of the overspending.

As a business culture, we’ve invested billions of dollars in bits and
bytes and gadgets and features without investing similarly in the
organizational changes necessary to deploy that technology
effectively. Technology exists to build a better brand or to improve
customer relations — pick your objective. But we have been
implementing technology over the past few years almost without
regard for the changes that it demands of our organizations. And
that’s where the great opportunity lies. Quit looking for the next big
thing. Put the technology that’s sitting on the shelves to work, and do it
with a clear purpose. Empower your employees to get something
done. Change the process. Make a contribution to organizational
effectiveness.

Bob Davis focuses his investments for Highland Capital
Partners on information technology. Davis founded the
Internet company Lycos in 1995, serving as CEO until its
merger with Terra in 2000. He then served as CEO of Terra Lycos until he joined
Highland Capital Partners in April 2001. Davis is also the author of Speed Is Life: Street
Smart Lessons From the Front Lines of Business.

Esther Dyson
Chairman, EDventure Holdings
New York, New York

Most capital spending goes into technology in one way or another. As businesses start to spend,
the technology industry will benefit. One new technology that is exciting is local-area wireless,
which is growing very quickly: It’s in hotels and coffee shops and up and down city streets. It got
its start in university towns, Silicon Valley, and downtown New York, but it will spread. Soon you’ll
be able to walk through the airport and have online access anywhere. ( It might even relieve
overcrowding in airport lounges, if we’re lucky. )

Wireless will make computing more sociable. Instead of going to some corner or finding some
special place to log on, you can stay where you are, with other people, while you connect. It
becomes a shared activity, like watching television, rather than an individual one.

Another promising area will be identity management: managing and controlling access to personal
information. For starters, it’s going to be the focus of an interesting commercial market, which will
be filled with companies looking to manage identities for online services. These companies will
have to learn how to handle their customers’ rights to control their personal data. The winners in
this game will be those who understand that people want to regulate their information without
being confused by the tools that help them do it.

Esther Dyson ( [email protected] ) is chairman of EDventure Holdings, publisher
of the monthly technology-industry newsletter "Release 1.0," and sponsor of the PC
Forum and HighT-ech Forum conferences. Dyson is an active investor in
emerging-technology companies and writes a regular column for the New York Times
syndicate.

Kazuo Hirai
President and COO, Sony Computer Entertainment America
Foster City, California

Technology doesn’t drive anything in and of itself. It’s what you use to enhance someone’s
productivity, entertainment value, or overall experience. We offer great entertainment.
Entertainment is where the opportunity is right now. It may be why ours is one of the few
technology sectors — or perhaps the only one — whose grew market last year. Our business
never got into a recession or a slump. The video-game industry grew from $6.6 billion in 2000 to
$9.4 billion in 2001.

Between the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2, we offer over 1,400 titles. There’s
something for everyone. Our demographics are changing rapidly. Across the video-game industry
as a whole, 43% of players are female, and the average player is 28 years old.

Our next move is to take the PS2 into an online environment. It’s a natural evolution for interactive
entertainment. There may be other consoles that are technologically better than the PlayStation, but
they don’t deliver anything compelling in terms of entertainment. That lesson can be applied to
technology as a whole. When we had technologically impressive PDAs, they were too difficult to
use. As a result, people weren’t enamored of them. Older technology with an elegant,
user-friendly approach was better. As we work on taking PS2 online, we’ll keep that in mind. We
will focus on enhancing entertainment value: How do we change a player’s video-game
experience?

Kazuo Hirai is an 18-year veteran of Sony. He became president and chief operating
officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America in 1999 and has overseen the
development of North American PlayStation operations since 1996.

Bill O’Shea
Chief technology officer and executive vice president
of corporate strategy and marketing, Lucent Technologies;
President, Bell Labs
Murray Hill, New Jersey

It’s inevitable that we’ll see a tech recovery and a telecom recovery. These sectors make up the
fabric of how the world works and plays. They’re embedded in people’s daily lives. But as the
broader tech sector recovers, the telecom industry won’t be the leading indicator. Instead, you will
see general economic improvement that will allow service providers to begin growing revenues.
Only then will equipment providers begin to build out networks again.

One thing is certain: We won’t make the same mistakes twice. Now we’re looking to the
development of new products at Bell Labs that are exciting not only for the short term, but that are
also capable of real, long-term revolution in the industry. We’re excited to announce things like a
single-molecule transistor, a product that uses multi-antennae to boost wireless connections, and
software that enables the convergence of data, voice, and video networks onto a single
infrastructure backbone.

Most important, these new data, wireless, and optical products have a remarkable level of
intelligence. They can survey the network and discover what other elements are available, and
then they can configure themselves. These are tasks that used to take 100 or more people to solve
and configure by hand. Intelligence in networking is absolutely the next wave of technology.

Bill O’Shea is Lucent’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of
corporate strategy and marketing. O’Shea also serves as president of Bell Labs,
where he has worked since 1972.

Hector de J. Ruiz
Chief executive officer, Advanced Micro Devices
Sunnyvale, California

Over the past few years, we’ve talked about technology as if it were a stand-alone product —
something that either does or doesn’t "sell well." But it is really an enabler for an awful lot of the
great products that have made life better for all of us, including cars, computers, PDAs, and
phones. Because technology enables these things, any broad recovery will be felt immediately in
the technology arena. Tech is the sweetener in the lemonade, you might say. That said, I don’t see
any significant signs of a recovery in the next quarter or two.

When recovery does come, communications will be the technology category to watch. There is no
question that the need and the demand for connectivity is there, and the communications revolution
is just beginning. Whether you are in the office, at home, or in the car, you want to connect
intelligently to the relevant things in your life. There are 6 billion people in the world, and only a
small percentage are broadband connected right now. That’s a tremendous opportunity.

This slowdown has given companies the opportunity to innovate. We already know that
technology is capable of doing things beyond anything we ever imagined. But let me underline this:
The engine of real economic growth is not technology but innovation. And only the companies who
are customer-centric in their innovation will succeed.

Hector de J. Ruiz was named CEO of Advanced Micro Devices in April 2002, succeeding
the company’s founding CEO, W.J. Sanders III. Previously, he was AMD’s president and
COO. Ruiz came to AMD from Motorola, where he spent 22 years as an engineer and
executive in various positions both in the United States and overseas.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/60/one.html