I exchanged emails with Brian Gillooly, who organizes InformationWeek events. He was telling me I missed (he had invited me) the buzz last week as Mark Hurd of HP keynoted their conference while his board was debating how to handle the "pretexting" scandal.
Well, it would have been titillating to be there for that.
But honestly, I am sorry I missed Tom Peters presentation on Innovation at the conference.
Tom makes a fascinating point. "My number one company is Netscape. It was born, changed the world and died in 72 months."
"General Motors had 25 good years," "The Japanese started attacking in 1970. General Motors is still around but there isn't anybody staying awake at night worrying about what GM's next move is going to be,"
"There is no proof that any company can be built to last past two decades, although there are a few exceptions, such as General Electric and at one time Kodak."
Sam, Mark, Ivan, Ed, Steve, Hasso and Larry probably scoff at Tom's 20 year run comment - but they represent almost $ 500 billion a year in "built to last" IT and telecom budgets when Tom is telling their customers to focus on "built to delight" innovation...what gives?
