Be a heretic: September 20, 1999 issue of New Thinking

September 20, 1999 New Thinking:
Be a heretic

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September 20, 1999

Be a heretic

By Gerry McGovern

The more I think about it the more I am certain that we all need a new way of thinking. Even though the Internet economy began six years ago, it often feels that it hasn’t really even begun. And it’s not that everything will fundamentally change, but rather that everything we know is either undergoing or about to undergo a period of revolutionary change.

Someday, things will settle again and when they do the landscape will be surprisingly similar to what we had before the revolution. Business will be business and customers will buy from producers and producers will sell to customers. Value will be value and quality will be quality.

For now, though, we have this war of change, where we are all being shunted and pushed about. We look at it all and can be forgiven for believing that the world is about to shift off its axis. Oh, the world will still go around no matter what the next Internet IPO fetches.

But having said that, we need to embrace the heretic and shift off our axis, if only momentarily, so that we can see the world without glasses clouded with old certainties.

Civilization strives towards order. Most of society thrives on order. But all societies and economies need to regenerate themselves. Otherwise, they become staid, non-creative and non-competitive. Regeneration is never easy. It can require a major jolt.

It is heretics who often give that jolt by preaching their crazy notions, by laughing at what everyone else honors and obeys. It’s the heretic who can offer that transforming hand, and in so doing they become the unsung champion and hero.

The heretic is so often hated by those who cling to the old order. They have come to see themselves and the old order as one entity. They cannot imagine another way. Too many people in positions of power are clinging tenaciously to the old order today. At best, they think that the world has gone crazy and that no sane and truly powerful person would listen to the heretic and their views.

I heard Andy Grove, chairman of Intel, talk like a heretic today. He told us that Intel cannot secure its future anymore by being simply a product company. That it must embrace service and that it has an awful lot to learn before it becomes an efficient product and service company.

Over the weekend, I read about Jack Welsh, head of General Electric, who has got Internet. The word is that Welsh is telling GE in no uncertain terms to embrace the Internet or else it has no future.

All over the world the heretics are out and about, questioning, questioning, questioning. Nothing is safe from their probing and nothing should be safe. We all need to become the heretic.

If only for one day a month, we need to absolutely believe that everything we so believe to be true is wrong, and that everything we so believe to be wrong is true. We may end up believing the very same things, but without the ability to think the unthinkable, the unthinkable just might happen to us.

Gerry McGovern

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If only for one day a month, we need to absolutely believe that everything we so believe to be true is wrong, and that everything we so believe to be wrong is true.