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You're a player at one of the most powerful technology companies in the world at a time when the PC is transforming itself into a new medium. You're responsible for millions of dollars' worth of investments every year in communications, new media, and Internet companies, overseeing a $1 billion- plus portfolio. How do you become more influential?

How about quitting your job?

This year, Avram Miller, vice president and director of business development at Intel Corp., a self-styled "activist strategist" and "corporate kook," left Intel to start the Avram Miller Co., based in San Francisco. "After working for 25 years for corporations, I thought that it would be nice to have them work for me," he kids from the downtown high-rise overlooking San Francisco's Chinatown where he now makes his one-man world headquarters. It's a notable Silicon Valley irony: Only by leaving a $26 billion global corporation and going to work for himself has Miller finally landed a spot on the lofty 20th floor of a financial-district skyscraper, far from the anonymous cubes of the legendarily austere semiconductor company.

In the shift from cubicle to skyscraper, Miller has become a human node in the global network at the convergence of the communications, computer, and media industries. Today, Miller serves on the boards of major Internet players around the globe, including CMGI in the United States; World Online, the largest independent ISP in Europe; and European Technology Fund (ETF), a major European venture-capital fund.

"I'm busy stitching together a worldwide platform by developing relationships between those companies," he says, "so that when I see an early-stage opportunity, whether it's a technology product or a service, I can distribute it all over the world."

At Intel, Miller cofounded the venture-capital arm of the semi-conductor company some 10 years ago, when venture investing was at most something that major companies might dabble in. At Intel, he was responsible for making investments in communications, new media, and the Internet, including the company's investments in CMGI, broadcast.com, @Home, Covad, and GeoCities.

Today, Intel not only boasts one of the most successful corporate venture groups anywhere; it also represents one of the world's largest venture-capital firms of any kind. In June 1999, shortly after Miller left the company, Intel held investments in 275 technology, e-commerce, and Internet companies, making its venture portfolio worth $3.5 billion. In 1998, the company did 130 deals with investments totaling roughly $830 million, including about $500 million in Micron Technologies alone.

But Miller is now convinced that the way to have the most impact on the future of communications, computers, and media is not by developing one company, or by nurturing the ecosystem of companies surrounding that company, but by knitting together a network of major companies from around the globe.

Fast Company sat down with Miller -- an Internet deal maker, future creator, and accomplished jazz pianist -- to listen to him riff on the future of business.