What's Next for the Net?

Mark Goldstein: All of the excitement is in the startup. Everyone has opted to be in the Bay Area to make an impact, and we're creating more of an impact faster. Kmart explicitly decided to set up a new company in San Francisco to take advantage of the Internet, rather than choosing to start it in Troy, Michigan. Now we have approximately 200 people moving superfast, acting like our company is a startup, which is what we are. We all have equity in the company, and everyone comes from startups. But philosophically, it's all about how we can change things and how we can have an impact. That's still such a big part of the culture here, and it's what makes our work so much fun.

Helen Whelan: You need to have large companies to support you, but if you want to get something done, look at the model that smaller companies set. The massive number of people and the massive egos involved at large companies mean that you just can't get things done. Bigger companies are better at supporting people like us: letting us do things, rather than trying to do things themselves. They are always getting in their own way.

Alan Naumann, President and CEO, Calico Commerce Inc.: Some larger companies get it, and here's what differentiates them from those that don't: individual leadership. I attended a series of meetings today where there was a battle between one leader who was making an aggressive play to adopt e-commerce technologies and another leader who wanted to go slowly, study the technologies, and be ready to implement them by March 2001. There was an enormous difference between the two approaches.

Take John Chambers of Cisco Systems. I heard him speak recently, and it's clear that he's a leader with a clear direction who has embraced the Web aggressively over a couple of years. It's going to come down to that same leadership element for all of us. Some people are using the recent setbacks on the Web as evidence for why they don't have to move quickly. That's a fundamental mistake that some big companies are going to make.

Ron Ricci, Vice President, Market Positioning, Cisco Systems Inc.: The next phase of the Internet economy means that we are no longer involved with the "what"; we are now in the "how." The most important question that we get every time someone visits our campus is How do I do it? Going forward, the companies that help other companies with the "how" are going to be the companies that win. We've got to remember that 80% or 85% of our economy is not yet engaged in the Internet -- and that's just within the United States.

The most important factor that keeps big companies from being Internet companies is how they transition their culture. Talking to top management is the easy conversation. The hard conversation happens when top management leaves the room, and you've got 5,000 or 40,000 employees who are used to doing things the same way that they've been doing them for 20 or 30 years.

Culture is all about getting that larger group of people to move in the same direction. That's really the challenge of the "how": to help companies understand how to transform their cultures so that they can do some of the things that they dream of doing.

Laurie Coots, Chief Marketing Officer, TWBA/Chiat/Day: We're going to start seeing an interesting evolution of the relationship between those who invent and those who execute. Over the past 18 months, the assumption has been that, because I invent, I have to become a company, and I have to grow and get bigger. What I see in the future is an inverse of a parasitic relationship: People invent something, and then, rather than trying to get bigger or trying to do it all themselves, they become the idea factories for the larger companies. At the same time, there will be people who are really good at getting inventions into the pipeline, and they will be part of the equation. What's going to happen is the formation of a wonderful new kind of ecosystem of cooperation and helpfulness that will allow people to do what they do best.

Mark Goldstein: What we've seen during the past few years is what I would call sloppy entrepreneurship: People have gotten money for ideas that were good but that weren't genuinely unique. The recent correction will give us a chance to focus on entrepreneurs who are great, who focus on execution, and who are able to win. The market isn't going to allow room for all of the "me-tooers."

Regis McKenna, Chairman, The McKenna Group International: I pointed out the same thing to Bob Noyce, inventor of the integrated circuit and one of the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc. and of Intel Corp. I said, "You know, a lot of companies in the Valley fail." He said, "Maybe not enough fail." Then I said, "What do you mean by that?" "Well," he said, "whenever you fail it means that you're trying new things."

The most marvelous thing about our economy is that all of these trials are going on, and a lot of people are participating in the process of moving the technology forward. There is an environmental learning process that goes on -- almost a geographic history -- that continues to recapitulate itself here in the Valley.