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Toward the Millennium: HBS Hosts Wall Street Journal Forum for CEOs
Porter and Yoffie Join CEOs Examining "The Evolution of Commerce"
Some 50 top executives from companies as diverse as American Express, Big Flower Holdings, CNET, Data General, DigitalThink, Estee Lauder, iXL, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Putnam Investments, Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch, and Wineshopper.com won't be at their desks today [Tuesday, October 12]. Instead, they'll be on the HBS campus, attending The Wall Street Journal Millennium Forum, an all-day event in McCollum Hall.
Sponsored by the Journal, Microsoft Corporation, Forrester Research, and HBS, the Forum features an array of keynote speakers, panels, and discussions examining technology, commerce, and the new economy going forward into the new millennium.
Although all sessions are private to ensure a frank and open exchange of ideas, some segments are being videotaped for an hour-long special program to be aired at a later date on CNBC and hosted by network correspondent Brian Williams.
Dean Clark will welcome the participants with brief remarks this morning. The other HBS participants are Professor Michael Porter and Professor David Yoffie.
Yoffie is on a panel examining the inextricable ties between technology and commerce and what that linkage means for society in the twenty-first century.
His co-panelists include Mary Meeker, managing director of Morgan Stanley; Esther Dyson of Edventures Holdings; and Walter Mossberg, the personal technology columnist of The Wall Street Journal.
Porter joins such experts as Ann Cobb, CEO of Visa International; economist and author Paul Erdman; and WSJ Washington bureau chief Alan Murray to take a world view of the new economy and how it will be affected by the converging forces of population growth, migration, and economic development in emerging markets.
Featured speakers at the Forum include Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft; Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web; Forrester Research CEO George Colony; and Peter Kann, publisher and CEO of The Wall Street Journal.
"We call this gathering of CEOs, scientists, thinkers, and journalists 'The Evolution of Commerce' because we see evolution as the new watchword of corporate and commercial life," notes Thomas Petzinger, Jr., former WSJ columnist and currently editor of its special January 1, 2000 millennium edition. "Knowledge consultants speak of 'corporate DNA.' Companies see to 'co-evolve' with their customers. In the world of strategy, 'adaptation' now trumps long-term planning."
Among the HBS graduates attending the Forum are Nick Gleason (MBA '97), cofounder of CitySoft; Lawrence Lasser (MBA '67), president and CEO of Putnam Investments; Monique Maddy (MBA '93), CEO of Adsemi Communications Intl.; Ron Skates (MBA '65), president and CEO of Data General; and Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner (90th AMP), vice chairman of The Estee Lauder Companies Inc.