What Will Make Your Company Great?

Digital Surf's Up... So I'm reading last week's Moving into the Future cover story in Newsweek (April 29, 2002) about high tech offices of the future. And I'm wondering who writes this stuff? "Remote-access tools let Sam (who is pictured on a beach!) join the conference using his laptop and small video recorder ... over a broadband link, which speeds images and sounds to his recliner." Hello. I can't even get wired high-speed access at the San Francisco Airport. Ubiquitous high-speed access is a fantasy.

But Jim Collins' subsequent article, How Great Companies Tame Technology, snaps me back to reality. Collins, author of Good to Great, writes, "Technology is an accelerator of greatness ... never the principal cause. Great companies first build a culture of discipline -- disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action."

When JetBlue puts all its 500 reservation agents in their homes, it's a business story, not a technology story. When Greenpoint Mortgage implements automatic valuation modeling (AVM) to lower the cost of home appraisals to $50, it's a real estate story, not a technology story. And when Target replaces paper coupons with chip-embedded cards, it's a retail story, not a technology story.

How about commercial real estate? Which owners, tenants and service providers will use technology to accelerate a disciplined culture of change? Wow, that's a hard question. What do you think?

PikeNet Forum ... If you're attending the PikeNet Forum, I'll send you a link Wednesday, May 1, to the case studies on Boston Properties (streamlining tenant communications), Sprint (managing space demand) and Jones Lang LaSalle (creating transaction efficiencies). Great stuff to frame our discussions.

--Peter Pike