Founder and CEO, Marketspace LLC
What's the fastest way to clear a room of media or technology executives? Mention the word "synergy." It was the false promise of strategic synergies that drove Gerald Levin into early retirement from AOL Time Warner, that led to the sacking of Thomas Middelhoff at Bertelsmann -- and that has created a trail of tears on Wall Street. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. There's just one problem: Synergy isn't dead. Indeed, it's alive and well -- and central to the future of business.
Synergy comes in many forms, of course. First, there is the idea of synergy as a driver of operating efficiencies. That's what reengineering aimed to achieve 20 years ago.
Second, there's the idea of marketing synergy: cross-platform campaigns by media companies to exploit their motion picture, publishing, and merchandising properties. A case in point: Disney's production and subsequent promotion of The Lion King, which turned a $50 million movie into a $3 billion revenue stream.
But it's the third form of synergy that transcends the other two: the idea of synergy as a transformational strategy for business. It's synergy that can create entirely new businesses and industries by melding assets, not just processes. Viacom's MTV, for example, was born from the insight that two disparate industries -- cable television and prerecorded music -- might actually become one, giving rise to one of the most profitable network franchises in the history of television. Electronic Arts and Square Entertainment are two of the many production companies that create video games for the personal computer and for the triumvirate of electronic-game consoles. Video games descend from an unholy progeny of board games and dedicated computerized kiosks known as arcade games, made viable through the cluster of innovations that gave rise to the PC. The result is an industry that, last year, eclipsed the movie studios in total revenues.
Synergy works because it reflects how consumers live their lives. A new generation of young consumers is demanding products and services that facilitate multitasking and parallel processing. Marketers must partner with companies that can assemble advertising and promotion packages across multiple channels. Synergy isn't over; it isn't even passé. The era of synergy has just begun -- and the wealth of the future will be created by heeding its inexorable logic.
President, American Institute of Graphic Arts
I'm not focused on the next big thing but rather on the thing that will help us get there: a way of thinking and seeing that extends far beyond the design world. Call it the art of crossing boundaries. The next 10 years will require people to think and work across boundaries into new zones that are totally different from their area of expertise. They will not only have to cross those boundaries, but they will also have to identify opportunities and make connections between them. Crossover artists -- let's call them that -- are experts in a particular subject, but they have the ability to work in multiple modes and disciplines. They can see problems through a multilayered lens.
The world is infinitely more complex than it used to be. To appreciate and exploit the complexity of a networked economy, people have to push themselves not only to know what they don't know, but also to get to know it. If you're a designer, take an economics course. If you're an engineer, take up painting. If you're a consultant, sign up for an improvisation class. Get to know that new thing to a point where you can understand the tension between your own way of thinking and seeing and this entirely different perspective. For 2003, start to build empathy for the things that are different.
Principal, TSD Communications
It's time for businesspeople to recognize the need for a repersonalization of American politics. Reaching voters through mass communications doesn't work anymore. What we need to do is restart the kind of people-to-people conversations about candidates and voting that ended 30 years ago with the advent of political television ads. We need to return to democracy as the Greeks first envisioned it, when they invented the concept.
How will we get there? With cutting-edge technology. In 2003, it's back-to-the-future time in politics: New technology will enable a return to person-to-person contact. Already, we're starting to see examples. The AFL-CIO has decreased its emphasis on TV advertising and is instead, in some districts, putting PalmPilots in the hands of union members to canvass fellow members on the issues of the day.
Citizens ought to look at it with some degree of hope -- the hope that technology, which so often has tended to drive us apart, can now be used to bring us closer together. It can revitalize old tools and processes that politics used to be about -- and can be again. And if technology can rehumanize politics, that will be good for everyone.
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