RECYCLING IMAGINATION
Steve Hamm of BusinessWeek makes an important point about the Internet boom:
While hundreds of Internet startups are dying or selling out after nearly three years of being pummeled by the rotten economy, many of the technologies they created are destined to live on and play important roles in the future—either via acquisitions, in new startups, or through copycatting by the industry's giants. Think of it as a mammoth recycling project. "The company is the most ephemeral institution in the information technology world. The people are perennial, the technologies are repurposed, and the products find new homes in surviving companies," says Geoffrey A. Moore, chairman of tech consulting firm Chasm Group in San Mateo, Calif.
Although the boom is remembered as a time of frivolity and excess, it was also a bountiful gusher of business creativity. Nearly 6,000 tech companies were financed by venture capitalists, and since there was little pressure to achieve profits in the short term, entrepreneurs were given permission to dream—and in some cases, hallucinate.
Sure, plenty of ideas were silly. But the era also produced an abundance of ideas that were mind-bending, even if their inventors didn't survive as independent businesses. Take ICQ, the instant-messaging pioneer, which flourished after its 1998 sale to America Online. In many cases, the challenge facing the new caretakers of these innovations is to take a potentially world-changing idea and give it business legs.
For another take on creative foolishness, see my NYT column on John Nye's theory of "lucky fools." [Posted 3/7.]