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What do Jim Clark, Craig McCaw, and Shawn Fanning have in common? Beyond being the subjects of larger or smaller articles in this issue of Context, each possesses a classic technology innovator’s cast of mind. Each is restless, dissatisfied, easily bored. Indeed, like Bill Gates, two were school dropouts. (Fanning dropped out of college, and Clark dropped out of high school, before discovering an aptitude for mathematics almost accidentally and going on to get a doctorate in computer science.) Each, moreover, has a knack for creating businesses out of his own frustrations. Jim Clark—the serial entrepreneur who brought us Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon/WebMD, among others—delivers his opinions with the bark on. In a revealing cover interview ["The Man With the Midas Touch"], Clark says the impetus of his innovations frequently comes when "I find myself fixated on one thing that bugs me personally.... I’ll just continue asking, ‘Why doesn’t someone fix this?’ until...I say, ‘OK, damn it, I’m going to fix it.’" Wireless telecommunications mogul Craig McCaw—the subject of the Book Excerpt ["High Wire(less) Act"]—couldn’t understand why people put themselves at the mercy of 19th-century telephone technology that chained them to a room. McCaw focuses less on how he thinks people will use a new technology and more on how they should use it. So, driven by a belief in man’s inherent nomadic instincts, he built a pioneering wireless network. Though he sold that business to AT&T for billions of dollars, he is still experimenting and trying to put together a new type of wireless empire. Fanning, the 19-year-old creator of Napster’s file-sharing technology, simply wanted an easier way to trade dowloaded MP3 music files with buddies. Scratching that technological itch, though, may transform the way the Internet is used, as well as unsettle or even overturn the established order in the entertainment industry. Fanning’s precocious endeavor earned Napster one of our annual awards for innovation ["Killer App Hall of Fame, 2000"]. In addition to the award to Napster, we induct two other companies—PayPal and Enron—into our Hall of Fame. We also hand out booby prizes for digital "road kill." This year, we single out a series of venerable companies that were acquired by New Economy businesses. Read ’em and weep. In the awards piece, we take a brief shot at France, as a country that should fit into the Road Kill category. We take a more elaborate shot in a feature ["European Disunion"] that handicaps the race among European countries to establish themselves as magnets for e-commerce businesses. Germany, actually, was the biggest surprise to me. I had written it off because of high phone costs and rigid pricing and labor laws, but Germany seems to be establishing itself as a power in the Internet Age. In Digital Strategy ["The Gathering Storm"], Chunka Mui says competition has moved beyond trying to produce a killer app. He should know, as the co-author of the best-selling book Unleashing the Killer App. He says companies can’t just shoot for one killer app; they have to transform themselves into killer platforms that launch a continuous series of killer apps. It sounds easier than it is. But we will do our best to help out by writing several pieces that develop the idea in coming issues. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, I would love to get a conversation going. Cheers, Paul B. Carroll |
