Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Good luck. The smart guys in Silicon Valley, whose condescension toward AOL has risen in direct proportion to its embrace by the public, have never considered the company a serious technology player. "America Online has built an exceptional franchise on a technology base that could charitably be called dated," says Roger McNamee, founder of the high-tech investment firm Integral Partners. "It has been difficult for its partners to work with, and for AOL itself to maintain." How can the company possibly hope to compete in the corporate networking market if its own network is held together with Scotch tape...
Nancy Stone, a Virginia-based retail consultant, notes that such efforts at customer service fell into disuse back in the 1980s, when commercial real estate prices soared and retailers became obsessed with packing more merchandise into stores. Smart retailers now aim to "give the customer a feeling of familiarity, keep her in the store, make her linger," says Stone. Even small amenities like a coffee bar, says Martin Pegler, a professor of merchandising at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology, can make customers feel more comfortable in a store. "It's not giggles and bubblegum and balloons," says Pegler...
...that proved to be only the first smart move in a crusade that would make him the father of 20th century American industry. When the black Model T rolled out in 1908, it was hailed as America's Everyman car--elegant in its simplicity and a dream machine not just for engineers but for marketing men as well...
...point of this anecdote is that today, no business-news amateur, as I was, could ever nail such a job at a first-rate publication. Once a backwater, business reporting, writing and editing have become smart, sophisticated and the high-walled province of the expert, although it took the better part of 100 years to reach that status...
There are bright spots in the work force of the future. I predict that some people will be born so smart that they can change the world without much effort. Motivation won't be an issue for people who are so smart that everything is easy for them. I call it the Redmond effect...