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| MEDICINE MEN
In the world of opera and classical music, we have seen an increasing number of performers try to cross over to pop or jazz. Why do they think they can do it? That’s hard to tell, because with the possible exceptions of Andre Previn and Wynton Marsalis, crossovers have been one disappointment after another. On the Web, a few doughty entrepreneurs have tried health-care crossovers as well, sites that would be all things to all patients and all physicians. So far, however, thorns have sprouted as surely as roses bloom. Howard Wolinsky’s article ["Medicine Men," August/September 2000] describes the birthing pains of a new health-care crossover called HealthCite.com. It is using a Web business model called the "metamediary," described as "a digital answer-man, impresario, and circus master, all rolled into one." The article highlights the meticulous planning for the site, including the willingness of the content designers, mostly physicians, to go back to square one when they realized HealthCite wasn’t sufficiently patient friendly. Yet what is friendly to patients usually isn’t useful to doctors, and vice versa. Even the very expectations of doctors and patients are vastly different. Doctors, realistic in the ways of medical research, welcome small incremental advances; patients crave breakthroughs. Doctors are interested in medicine; patients focus on what ails them. The clinical knowledge gap between the average patient and even the average family physician is staggering. And the gap is four times that size between the family physician and the cardiologist or endocrinologist. Terminology that is useful to a lay person is often impossibly vague to a generalist physician, and generalists are babes in specialists’ woods. In their efforts, HealthCite’s founders come across as cursed with boundless enthusiasm and youthful optimism despite medical training that should have sobered them. Perhaps the countless hours of focus groups did them in. Perhaps they have good ideas that don’t emerge in the article. But perhaps they should keep their medical day jobs. Medicine is much too complicated, and, more importantly, much too diverse, to be tamed by an all-encompassing Web site, even one as ambitious as this. —Mark Bloom
ALCHEMY I just read Bob Francis’s article about the transformation of Eastman Chemical ["Alchemy," August/September 2000]. I’m impressed with any chief executive who recognizes a catalyst among his people and brings that person forward to lead a corporate culture with creative thinking and problem solving. In Internet World, we often read about other companies that have moved from bricks and mortar to clicks and mortar. This article really focused on how Eastman made it happen, not just from a technical standpoint but from a resource-deployment and cultural standpoint. I appreciate Francis’s pointing out that Eastman is efficient, that it has positioned itself on the cutting edge at minimal expense. Too often, companies move forward with Internet technology by simply throwing more money at the issue. As a technology person, I was gratified to read about the role of Mark Klopp [director of digital business ventures]. He helped his CEO shift the perceptions of the board and upper management. Moving an entire corporate culture to a new way of thinking and doing is no small task. Their ideas and techniques are definitely usable. Thanks! —Marla Senter Morris
FAST FORWARD Roger Fillion was right ["Fast Forward," August/September 2000] when he described how college students and their heavy use of technology could be the model for all customers in the future, but two cautions are in order. First, the experience of our research firm suggests that marketing matters as much as technology. Several years ago, Insight conducted a study on wireless calling habits. The premise was that only college-age folk would adopt a cell phone as their sole phone. In the midst of the study, AT&T launched its One Rate plans, and the market changed before our eyes. By burying roaming charges, AT&T removed the guilt associated with placing long-distance calls from a cell phone; it thus changed calling habits at the upper end of the cellular market. It wasn’t just college kids who were using cell phones as their primary phones; everyone started to use cell phones, all the time, for local and long-distance calls. The competitive reaction to AT&T lowered industry prices across the board and increased the total base of users. Second, before the general population could emulate college students, we would have to see ubiquitous broadband access extend beyond campus boundaries. We are still years away from that. —Robert Rosenberg
LIKE BEES TO HONEY Jill Rupple’s piece [Inner Game of Work, August/September 2000] states clearly and succinctly the single most important success factor in recruiting at any level: commitment and purposeful involvement by the senior team. Without it, the cost of recruiting is almost always significantly greater, whether measured in dollars, time, or quality. —Robert Whaley
PHONE FUN Joanne Kelley’s article [Virtual Horizons, August/September 2000] does an excellent job of putting the wireless future in context. At the heart of this future is the marriage of the wireless phone and the Internet—not just to deliver Web sites but, as the article points out, to use the network to deliver "come-to-me" services. The wireless device will change the Internet from a place to which you go for information to a presence that is always delivering information to you if you want it, regardless of your proximity to the desktop. In other words, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! —Tom Wheeler
HEARTS AND SOULS Passion is a great topic to write about, especially now that computers, the Internet, and innovation are key to continued success ["Hearts and Souls," June/July 2000]. At Innovative Designs for Education, we think about this topic often. What is innovation? What is commitment? How do you continually innovate and still produce whatever it is that you do daily for your company? I think one needs to think subtly about innovation. I often come up with innovative ideas for seminars when I’m driving along listening to National Public Radio, or in the fish store looking for new fish, or browsing the toy store for something for my two little girls. The key for me is to be working on something I am passionate about; then the ideas flow. In our company, we also read a book a month. It’s my job to select those books that will spur innovation and help create energy. With the company picking up the tab, we meet for dinner in random places. We get so much out of these sessions; ideas and team unity being the two most important. I might add that reading Context has spurred several ideas for my work. Thanks, Context! —Brad Pearl
’E OLDE ANTIQUE SHOPPING So old Bob Gilbert thinks he’s experienced enough to know the difference between a primo Windsor chair and one that’s been cleverly repaired, eh? ["'E Olde Antique Shopping"] Then why was he so dumb that he bought a doctored one over the Internet after looking at a blurry jpeg picture? Hey Bob, I have a great potion that calms the stomach and even grows hair. Please grab your credit card and visit my Web site. All kidding aside, Gilbert’s article accurately demonstrates that the antiques marketplace—especially in its online form— is rife with phony treasures and cleverly repaired pieces. But fakers have always been out there. As someone once said: If the English "antiques" arriving every week in America were all real, Britain wouldn’t have had enough wood to build a navy back then. Caveat emptor, antiques buyers. —Chris Zikakis
GROS PROFITS I’d like to alert you to some misstatements in the article "Gros Profits" [June/July 2000]. There are three in one sentence: "When Enron unveiled a bandwidth trading system late last year, its market value rose $10 billion that day and has been rising ever since." First, it wasn’t late last year when Enron’s market value rose so much in one day. It was in January of this year. Second, Enron didn’t unveil the bandwidth trading idea late last year. In March 1999, Dow Jones Newswires carried an article explaining Enron’s ideas on bandwidth marketing and quoting Enron officials including Tom Gros and Joe Hirko. Dow Jones Newswires carried several more articles on the idea through the rest of 1999. Enron also presented the idea at a telecommunications conference in New York City in May 1999. CIBC World Markets published a report on bandwidth marketing in December 1999. Ray Niles, then at Schroder & Co., now at Salomon Smith Barney, published a report about it Jan. 12, 2000. Third, Enron stock hasn’t been rising ever since that day in January. Any day trader who follows the stock has probably been selling Enron stock whenever it’s in the mid-$70s and been buying it back in the mid- to upper $60s. That’s the band it has been trading in since Jan. 19. The article has other problems. It says of Lynda Clemmons and Enron’s weather derivatives business: "The liberal-arts major now runs a $1 billion-a-year business at Enron." However, Clemmons left Enron in early March along with a number of other people on Enron’s weather derivatives desk. Finally, the article refers to the "flop" of Enron’s plans to sell gas and power to residential customers. It was never the plan for Enron Energy Services to focus only on residential customers. Commercial and small industrial companies were always included in the plan. Enron went after residential customers in California and Pennsylvania as those states began to work on deregulation, and it lobbied hard. But the entrenched electric utilities had more lobbying power and were able to slow deregulation of residential markets. Enron moved away from residential customers when that became clear. But Enron hasn’t given up on the residential power market. That’s why it joined with America Online and IBM in May to launch the New Power Company, which will sell power, among other things, to residential customers. —Michael Rieke
Editor’s Note: The writer is correct that there were two errors in the article:
As to the other points:
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The introduction of the bandwidth-trading system and the one-day surge in
the stock price occurred in January of this year, not late last year. We regret the error.