Redefining the Business Landscape

Aldous Huxley once observed that “every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.� For researchers who spend their lives seeking breakthroughs, such a truth is, at the very least, disheartening.

For business, however, the implications of Huxley’s aphorism are downright frightening. For in taking gains for granted, business has too often failed to recognize not only how quickly change can occur but also how significantly breakthroughs can alter--and even make obsolete--old ways of doing things.

How can our corporations best prepare for and respond to new realities?

Many businesses--in an effort to prepare for the future and to focus their energies and talents on what they do best--have begun to cross the boundaries that once clearly defined and separated them from one another. International Business Machines Corp. now runs Eastman Kodak Co.’s data processing center, and Pitney Bowes Inc. delivers IBM’s mail. Chrysler Corp. makes cars in its competitor’s shop, and E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. sells products it doesn’t make.

But in a rapidly changing world, the lines that separate one corporation from another are not the only ones that need to be resurveyed. Propelled by two major forces--technology and globalization--entire industries are finding their borders stretched, shifted and subsumed. In response, individual corporations are finding it necessary to expand their own horizons as they scan for new opportunities and new threats.

It is not difficult, for instance, to imagine a time when the boundaries that separate our telecommunications and information systems industries will no longer exist. Already, the two are beginning to merge as new technologies incorporate aspects of each and as industry giants like American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and Digital Equipment Corp. work together to develop products and services. What was once two distinct industries may soon be referred to as one new mega-industry: “teleformation.�

Similar unions are occurring between the entertainment and information technology industries and between the consumer electronics and toy industries.

Just as today the boundaries of Eastern Europe shift, stretch and begin to disappear, so, too, will the lines that separate industries, companies and products continue to blur. In today’s volatile world, business cannot afford to allow what are often artificial boundaries to limit its thinking or its actions.

What, then, can firms do to prepare for the unexpected? Within the corporate structure, business units need to be encouraged to think beyond the boundaries that define them and explore areas that may not be readily apparent in an analysis of trends.

Such activity requires intelligence, information shaped to reflect its potential relevance to the situation or challenge. It requires a broad approach to understanding business risk. Managers need to be able to look beyond the obvious to the most speculative areas of potential change. And it requires an innovative culture, an ability not only to see--but also to respond--to change and the opportunities it presents.

Whether the boundaries that define and limit corporations are ideological, geographical or industrial, American business would do well to revise and question them. Already, the more intrepid corporate travelers among us are crossing the old, established boundaries, looking at the world with a fresh perspective and imagining ways in which we might reconfigure the present landscape. It is time more of us were willing to do the same.