Fumbling the Future or Forging Ahead: Eyes (and Minds) Wide Open

But Steve Jobs had that perspective, and after visiting PARC in 1979, he went on to drive the creation of the Macintosh computer and the rest is, as they say, history.

The visitors from Apple saw a computer that was designed to be easy to use, a machine that anybody could operate and find friendly...even the French.

Jobs found his answer from Jeff Raskin, Apple employee number 31. Raskin's idea was a $600 computer - as easy to use as a toaster - code-named Macintosh, after America's favourite apple. Jobs liked the price but not Raskin's design ideas. So Steve took over the Macintosh project, determined to make it a cheaper Lisa. Triumph of the Nerds, Part III

Oh, by the way, Steve Jobs also invested $10 million in a company that he turned into Pixar, which he later sold to Disney for $7.4 billion. And, under his direction, Apple brought us the iPod. Sure, he's one in 10 Billion, but the key here is his attitude and willingness to keep an open mind, connect the dots, stick to his principles, and forge ahead. Just this week, Apple brought the EMI catalogue on-line without digital rights management (DRM), which by the way is a technology designed to preserve the status quo and resist the impact of change.

To drive home this lesson of keeping an open mind, they taught us the lesson of Xerox in my Organizational Change class. The impact of conventional group thinking on our paradigms and assumptions is stronger than we realize. Just how significant is the maturing Internet and this growing trend of Metropolitan Broadband? I believe it is more dramatic than we can acknowledge right now, because like the executives at Xerox, we lack the imagination to conceptualize such a dramatic change.

Two years ago, I tried to start knitting together the different threads into a more holistic interpretation of what we are going through. The argument in the NY Times article conforms to my white paper from May 2005, On Structural Change.

In that paper, I pointed out that the continuing advances of the maturing Internet imply that all network-based enterprises, indeed all companies that distribute digital content in its many forms, are bound to come under increasing pressure from the Internet. It is inevitable. We've already seen venerable institutions like Encyclopedia Brittanica and AT&T succumb with surprising speed. We're watching other businesses come under increasing pressure, like the lead article describes. The challenge for all of us is to envision the dramatic new future these trends point to and start making changes now.

The new metropolitan broadband industry is driven by such foundational change, both for its beneficial impact on government efficiency, and for other economic and societal benefits. The new businesses that will follow the installation of these networks will increasingly challenge traditional business models. Those cities that get on board this train are betting on this future and will capture more benefit from change than those who opt out or delay. They're playing out the drama of Joseph's Schumpeter's Creative Destruction, which says that a fundamental aspect of capitalism is the churn of old business ideas and the new ideas that arise to challenge them.

But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts [price competition] but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)-competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives. Joseph Schumpeter

The upcoming changes and disruptions to local economies brought about by Metropolitan Broadband are the kernel of the new Economic Development opportunity that these cities will enjoy.

The big question facing cities is not IF this change will occur, but HOW FAST it will occur and HOW it will happen, and the potential for local impact, good or bad, and as always, the Devil is in the Details. City leaders will increasingly face a choice: a) Deny Change and Fumble the Future; or b) Accept Change and Move Forward Deliberately. City leaders who guess correctly and position their cities in the face of upcoming trends, like San Marcos and other cities adopting metropolitan broadband, are taking a calculated gamble.

The question for all city leaders these days is whether to delay in order to gather more information or to take prudent action now, while they continue to learn more.

My question is "Why aren't more cities taking the requisite first steps: a) becoming more aware of the potential and the alternatives they face; and b) mobilizing their populations to prepare for change?" Because I believe the coming changes will be dramatic, and will happen faster than we can imagine. In my opinion, there is less risk in starting now and moving with deliberation and prudence, than in waiting any longer.