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Attention on science and tecnology vital despite recession
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While corporate executives struggle with a recession-induced miasma of layoffs, plant closings, inventory reductions and balance sheet issues, there is a soft drumbeat in the background that is hazardous to ignore.
Jack and Suzy Welch, in their regular column in Business Week, put it this way, “throw some time and energy into figuring out what your company’s future could and should look like. When the upturn arrives the business landscape will be brand new. There will be fewer competitors and more opportunity for those companies that are primed to seize it.”
Elsewhere in Business Week there is a story proclaiming that “corporations worldwide are crying out for new thinking.” The issue becomes focused when the need for new leadership is imminent, a common reality since on average CEO tenure is 5-6 years. The CEO job has been likened to star athletes—high pay and short careers.
A daunting challenge for new CEOs and those aspiring to that pinnacle is to cope with exponential advances in science technology contrasted with the business as usual culture in many if not most businesses.
IBM’s Global Business Services unit, a nearly $20 billion business, arrived at a strategy that is summed up with the statement that it “provides the business expertise to help create a smarter planet.” It includes markets such as complex transportation systems and upgrades of the electric grid.
A subject that keeps coming up in boardrooms is how to inspire innovation at a time when coping with recession has top of mind attention. Judy Estrin, in her new book Closing the Innovation Gap, states flatly:
“America has lost the core values that were the catalyst of its success. We can—and must—regain our momentum, adapt to a new reality, and restore our culture of innovation and commitment to science at all levels of society.
She added somberly, “If we do not, we will lose our position of strength, and with it our hopes for ongoing prosperity and enhanced quality of life for our children and grandchildren.”
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