Desert Roses

"I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand..."
Sting

I thought of The Desert Rose when I saw this interview with i2 founder Sanjiv Sidhu. I admire entrepreneurs like him who persist and continue to dream of gardens even as the desert sand blows around them.

i2 today, of course, is a shadow of what it was when it acquired Aspect Development for over $ 9 b in 2000.  i2's vision was to add $ 50 billion of value for its customers by 2005.  I have only met Sanjiv a couple of times, but I was proud to have "discovered" i2 as a partner for PwC in 1993, way before they hit the big time. I imagine the last few years have been tough but he appears quietly resolute as ever.

One person who knew Sanjiv better was Art Mesher, my Gartner colleague. who influenced supply chain thinking in the 90s and went on to practice what he preached at Descartes. Now CEO, he has similarly persisted in his vision and execution.  He is one of the smartest people I have ever met but had  a short attention span, so he has shown incredible patience and persistence at Descartes which had a smaller version of the roller coaster i2 has seen.

As this article on Ted Fernandez, CEO of AnswerThink shows from 1997, when he and a few other partners split from KPMG to  2000 when revenues were already up to $ 300 m, it was a heady run. Then came the "nuclear winter" but Ted and his partners, Dave Dungan, Allan Frank, Rick Roth and others have persisted, re-positioned the firm around the Hackett benchmarking and best practices area, signed a nice partnering with Accenture and continue to chug along. Ted is a strong, passionate leader who has kept the group together.

Here's to all the entrepreneurs - and there are many more I could name - who keep on dreaming and refusing to listen to talk of "industry consolidation".  Even if the gardens seem elusive, sand storms make for spectacular sunsets and sunrises as Florida will see this week