The information highway is going to be founded by what we call creative divergence. The companies that are going to make it are the kind of classical, venture capital, little start-ups. It’s not going to be the big, dumb RBOCs, Microsofts, Intels that dominate the future. The mergers are nothing, they’re only about corporate ego. Shareholders will be left holding the bag in this. Synergy is nothing but an excuse for the exercise of corporate ego. There’s no synergy! Synergies don’t exist.
Predictor: Colony, George
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, David Buerger interviews George Colony, president of Forrester Research and the creator of the term “client-server computing,” about the future. After asking about the convergence, Buerger quotes Colony saying: ”One of the most horrible myths ever perpetrated on the public. How can I sum it up? Complete and utter nonsense. How about that? [Laughs.] When was the last time you saw a fabulous new market start up with a lot of big companies merging and converging? It doesn’t happen that way. This is not about Al Gore, Time Warner, Microsoft all slamming together in conversion. The information highway is going to be founded by what we call creative divergence. The companies that are going to make it are the kind of classical, venture capital, little start-ups. It’s not going to be the big, dumb RBOCs, Microsofts, Intels that dominate the future. The mergers are nothing, they’re only about corporate ego. Shareholders will be left holding the bag in this. Synergy is nothing but an excuse for the exercise of corporate ego. There’s no synergy! Synergies don’t exist.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Power Pundit: Super Analyst/Consultant George ‘Golden Guts’ Colony Delivers Some Really Educated Guesses
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.03/colony_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney