Inside the Technology Revolution

Continued

PROFIT: In your experience, do most businesses actively seek out new innovation and new technologies, or do you find that they're having a hard enough time taking advantage of what's available now?

GREENBAUM: It's absolutely both. The fundamental dilemma at the core of the uptake of technology into the business world is trying to juxtapose the requirements for getting the job done today—better, faster, and cheaper—with trying to anticipate the job that is going to come tomorrow and being ready for it with something innovative and exciting. It's a dilemma that translates into very simple questions around the fact that in a world of finite resources, what do you try to do? Stay put as much as possible, or jump ahead and perhaps sacrifice your core, your foundation, in order to be innovative?

PROFIT: Larry Ellison said that when he founded Oracle, conventional wisdom was that relational databases would never be commercially viable. There are many other examples of companies that missed big opportunities or overestimated the potential of a new technology. But the technology industry seems to be able to overcome these problems fairly quickly. Do you think that is specific to that industry?

GREENBAUM: I would say that the technology industry attracts not just some of the brightest minds in the world but also some of the most nimble and self-critical. Having followed Larry Ellison's career for 20-plus years, one of the things that impresses me most is not just how many successes he's had, but how he deals with failure. One thing about Oracle is that there is no rut too deep to get out of and get moving forward. That is why this company, 30 years after its founding, is still a major force in the industry. I think this ability for self-criticism distinguishes long-term success from long-term failure.