Where Have All The Entrepreneurs Gone? Or, Professional Managers Take Over

In any case, this industry is beginning to operate more like a series of bad political campaigns than the spirited entrepreneurial machine it once was.

We clearly have exited the bootstrapping phase of the

high-tech industry, when dreams were built on the backs of young entrepreneurs. Instead, "professional managers" have taken over.

In my early days of covering this industry, my success as a reporter hinged on finding sources who knew and would talk about products that hadn't been released yet or who would disclose pricing plans and marketing programs intended to change the competitive landscape. When an entrepreneur attacked another entrepreneur, more often than not the argument was centered on a competitor's attempt to control standards or a particular technology. Every one of the early leaders was passionate not only about their own company, but also about the direction in which the industry should move.

As a reporter, I spent many hours at trade shows bar-hopping with CEOs and other senior-level executives who weren't afraid to tell you why their competition didn't have a clue. On the other hand, they, of course, knew exactly what was needed to drive technology standards,and ultimately convince American business to deploy more PC-based technology.

That doesn't happen anymore because professional managers have a passion for money, not technology.

Most of the entrepreneurs are gone. Those who are left have become professional managers themselves, running huge companies. The biggest stories in high-tech over the past several years have had very little to do with technology and products. Rather, they have had lots to do with lawsuits and corporate governance, neither of which advances the industry.

In general, far too little is being done to advance technology and make it truly easy to work with.

Videoconferencing is a good example. The process still isn't as easy as placing a phone call, and it needs to be. Just last week, I was involved in an attempted three-way videoconference between my office in Boston, our New York headquarters and our bureau in Irvine, Calif. After 15 minutes of watching our IT support personnel try to get the audio to work with the video, we gave up and just called each other on the phone.

Videoconferencing is a killer business application, but it has to work easily, every time, and without technical support on hand. The day the technology will find its way onto millions of desktops will be the day we can sit at our desks and videoconference with multiple locations through our PCs.

There is no question that videoconferencing would increase productivity by driving down the need to get on airplanes as often as we do today. And yet the technology languishes, mainly because it lacks the driving force that was behind so much successful innovation in the past.

Microsoft's Bill Gates and Intel's Andy Grove shared a vision that a PC on every desk was possible, and they are to be credited with making that happen. Novell's Ray Noorda was the driving force behind networking in the early days. More recently, Netscape's Marc Andreessen was the vision behind a browser that worked for the masses, sparking a huge number of other business opportunities along the way.

In the end, what this industry needs is more visionaries, more passion and less professional management.

Make something happen. I can be reached at (516) 562-7812 or via e-mail at rfaletra @cmp.com.