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John Jarve
General partner of Menlo Ventures, a venture-capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif.
Almost every year, there is a dramatic change that affects the way we conduct our business. The key thing this year is the Internet. It has revolutionized business communications. The Internet is exploding -- I think all the partners here use it actively for E-mail, not only with our existing portfolio companies, but also with potential investors. I've received business plans over the Internet. I've sent term sheets over the Internet. It enables me to send stuff that's in my computer to your computer. So much of our lives today happens to be in our computers.
We installed our first network about five years ago. Then we put all our servers into place to share our company databases, investing databases, people databases, and so on. Next we set up remote access, so all the people at Menlo can work at home in the evenings and on weekends and tie directly into the company network. Currently, our remote access is done using modem technology. In a year or two it will be done using ISDN [integrated services digital network] technology. In California ISDN is inexpensive, and it offers communications capacity that's about five times faster than the fastest modem with compression. As files become bigger, whether they're data files, presentation files, or things like voice and video, that extra speed has a very dramatic impact on remote-access-links performance. We have seen, in California, a dramatic growth in ISDN. Companies offering ISDN-related products find that their business is just booming.
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Paul Saffo
A director of Institute for the Future, in Menlo Park, Calif.
We are in the early stages of a period of absolutely fundamental change that's at least a century-scale change, but it may be even larger. We are throwing out our industrial-age models and our metaphors for our organizations, and we're substituting new models that are based on biological models. So it's a shift from organization to organism. And you see it all over the place -- in the rise of business teams and the de-emphasis of hierarchy. It used to be that our companies' organization charts looked like trees. Now our organization charts are beginning to look like webs, the quintessential biological structure.
The problem with all that is, we don't have any words for the new organizations that are emerging, except for very basic terms like virtual company. Our vocabulary is impoverished -- just as the vocabulary for different kinds of organizational structures in the 1880s was very impoverished, and no one quite realized what was going on.
The innovation is going on within small businesses. It's not the IBMs of this world that are figuring out new models of organizational effectiveness. It's small companies, people who are setting up to run small businesses, and they have counterparts in other cities. They're creating small virtual companies, or they're leveraging telecommunications to project a presence that's vastly larger than they really are.
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Jim McCann
President of 800-FLOWERS, a retail floral company based in Westbury, N.Y., with more than $100 million in sales
When I was growing up, in the 1950s and 1960s, we used to shop on Main Street. Merchants knew who we were. Then we started traveling out to more suburban areas, where discount stores had opened up. People became willing to trade the convenience of a local community store for the better price a discounter could offer.
Technology has allowed those progressive retailers to offer not only a better price but also quality service. Technology squeezes the inefficiency out of every process in the retail chain, from manufacturing to distribution.
Our company is able to provide very warm, customized personal service, the kind you'd expect from your local community florist. We can do that on a worldwide basis because of our database capability, our communications capability, and our effective employment of technology to squeeze the inefficiency out of our systems and processes. So we're able to offer superior value and superior service to a worldwide community of consumers.
On a personal level, it used to be a real burden for me to take a week off, but this past summer my family and I rented a place out on Long Island. I was able to exercise with the kids in the morning, go to the beach, and be back in at 11 a.m. From 11 to 2:30, I had my portable plugged in and I'd return phone calls on my cellular phone. I'd answer E-mail. I'd be in touch with my secretary, who would have updated my calendar on-line. So I'd work for three and a half concentrated hours. I'd play golf with my son in the afternoon, and when I'd get paged, I'd use my cellular phone to return the call. I'd come back in the afternoon, look at my E-mail, and answer everything. The kids would go to bed at around 10, and I'd spend 45 minutes just going through stuff on my computer, even making a couple of appointments for the next day.
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Abby Margalith
President of Starving Students of San Diego, a moving company
