Chapter 2
Keep Learning, Predict, and Embrace Change
The most important factor in attaining (and maintaining) success is continuing to gain knowledge—about your industry, your customer, your customer's business, your competitors, and the world around you.
Change is occurring at an ever-increasing pace, socially, commercially, and technologically. It took 22 years for one million people to get television sets, yet only four months for a million people to get on the Internet—and two months to sell one million iPhones. The new Casio watch has more computer power than the Apollo spaceship that took man to the moon just four decades ago. In 1943, IBM President Thomas Watson made the statement, “The world would only ever require five computers.” By 1970, there were 50,000 computers in the world. Chairman of Digital Equipment Ken Olson reflected the popular belief of the time when he said in 1977, “There is no reason for anyone to need a computer in his or her home.”
Over 100,000 computers are sold daily in the United States. In 2000, at the height of the boom, 47 percent of financial growth in America was produced in the tiny high-tech center of Silicon Valley, which produced 67 new millionaires each day. It took General Electric 40 years—from 1896 to 1936—to be valued at $1 billion. Online auction site eBay.com achieved this in one day.
Technology has the ability to change our lives in unpredictable ways. I can still recall a time when people believed computers and robots were going ...
