What's the Huge Idea?

Twenty years ago, I started my career turning away from opportunities at well-established companies in favor of work at a twenty-person start-up. I didn't know what a start-up was back then, but what they were doing seemed quite interesting. The people were nice and smart, the vision for the business was compelling, and we were on the outside of a huge industry like David whirling a stone over our head, ready to strike Goliath's forehead.

The Goliaths included IBM and Arthur Andersen, and David was Unix and the Cambridge Training Center. Twenty years later, I look back and see billion-dollar industries that have emerged -- client-server computing (hardware, software and profession services markets, in fact), internet computing and others. These industries were significantly impacted by some wet-behind-the-ears college grads, some ingenious academics (including the requisite mad scientist), some major companies fighting to be relevant(among other places), some technologies that had been around for a while but never valued relative to their potential, a common out-of-scope feature (lack of Y2K support) that resulted in billions spent to overhaul our computing infrastructure, and a myriad of other forces.

Having participated actively in two market disruptions (mainframe to client-server, and business computing to web computing), I have spent a lot of time thinking about what happened and why. I talk about it with colleagues frequently, and thinking about it sparks my current activities and future plans.

As a kid from a working-class family that read The Daily News, not The Wall Street Journal or the NY Times, the nature and concepts of business were new to me until I entered the workforce. So, I look at these ideas somewhat like an alien who visits our planet and is trying to translate observed phenomena into a language he understands.

My language is one of pictures, concepts and dynamics. When I look at something that is working well or poorly, I try to understand the underlying nature of it to explain its performance. For example, when I look at the New England Patriots and their success, it is not enough for me to say "Bill Belichek is a genius," or "Tom Brady is the next Joe Montana." There are a lot of smart NFL coaches and talented NFL quarterbacks. But what is the reason for their success? And will it last? What can others do to compete more effectively against them?

I asked the same questions at every point in observing the client-server and web revolutions: who was winning and why? who would be the next winner and why? and, how could I give the thing I'm working on a better chance of winning? I have learned that some of the most financially successful people asking and answering these questions -- (good) venture capitalists -- realize that it is too hard and fraught with peril to codify answers to these questions. Instead, they master the ability to identify opportunities worth going after (they keep their thinking to themselves, mostly) and finding people who know how to take an opportunity and make it into a success.

For the past several years, I have focused on being the latter kind of professional. I am what I call a "business architect." I listen to a vision for something that could be built -- typically a web-based software product, which is my field of choice -- and I transform that vision into something that is real, compelling, enjoyable and valuable. In the course of the latter, I am getting a little better at the former -- knowing how to identify opportunties that are worth investing my time, talent and treasure in.

I also think in economic terms. Not in terms of "it's all about the dollars." But, on the contrary, trying to understand how to value things, what gives them value, what things cost, how those costs can be managed. Having served on a number of non-profit boards, I have found that the keys to success for a non-profit have their roots in economic theory: it's all about achieving your goals given an ultimately limited set of resources.

Finally, I am most interested in the creative process. Managing something incrementally along does not interest me. I am captivated by creation. The magic of "first you don't see it, now you do." The birthing process of something that starts as an idea and ends up as something real -- I believe that is at the core of who and what we are as humans.

All ideas can be huge. Which ones we choose to make huge, and how we do it. That is what I am passionate about, and that is what I will write about in this blog.