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'Take risks,' CEOs told
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January 31, 2000: 9:08 a.m. ET
Yahoo!'s Koogle and others say leaders need to be brave, act fast
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DAVOS, Switzerland (CNNfn) - Scions of multibillion dollar dot.com and traditional companies came together in Davos Monday to discuss managing for the future, and they took a remarkably similar line about how to keep a company ahead of the game.
Wrestling with the theme of: leading in an era of creative destruction, Tim Koogle, chief executive of Web portal Yahoo! (YHOO: Research, Estimates), shared a platform with Scott Cook, co-founder and chairman of the executive committee of financial software provider Intuit (INTU: Research, Estimates), and, representing "old" business, Durk Jager, CEO of Procter & Gamble (PNG: Research, Estimates).
The three men were in broad agreement that the business world moves faster today than ever before, requiring senior executives to react and adapt more quickly than ever.
Jager identified huge changes to his company's operations, "our products will be obsolete much faster than in the past," and said the nature of relations with customers would have to change radically, moving away from mere branding to include a closer relationship.
As part of the way to adapt to this new set of rules he has encouraged staff to come up with ideas to set up new ventures almost outside the traditional operations of the company. These entrepreneurs are provided with funding, but generally left with little input from higher management layers, which Jager calculates can threaten the greenhouse atmosphere of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Koogle defined his role at Yahoo! as "adult supervision" of the bright young people who originally founded the company. He expounded a vision of management based on embracing risk, and intent on manufacturing rapid change. For CEOs around the globe faced with the rapidly-moving challenges of technology - principally the unstoppable rise of the Internet - Koogle had a simple piece of advice:
"Try something, if you fail, fail fast, modify it and make the next change."
A similar strategy was espoused by Intuit's Cook, who admitted that taking his company through the fire of major reorganization had been a tough job.
"Changing to the Internet is the hardest thing - you can't believe people's resistance," said Cook, who added that as the company's stock initially plunged, doubters within the company emerged.
Cook turned the company's fortunes around however, and the insiders who queried the company's ability to succeed were won over. As a recipe to triumph Cook said, "Success on the Internet is all about action, speed, momentum. It's not about assets...this is an area where entrepreneurship is victorious." 
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World Economic Forum
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