I just returned from the AESC Americas Conference in New York City and it was a fun and interesting trip. The agenda for this year was Focusing on What Matters, and it was more packed than usual, and some of the sessions were very telling for the future of the job market.
One of my favorite sessions was entitled “Looking into the
Crystal Ball,” which had a number of prophecies about the Internet and
web-driven business. David Barnard, director of U.S. Research for Sanford
C. Bernstein & Co., moderated the panel, and Jeff Lindsay, a Senior
Research Analyst for Bernstein, presented some interesting research findings on
growth areas:
- The Internet sector will remain strong – not with the same hypergrowth we have seen in the past, but strong growth nonetheless.
- Their prediction is the Microsoft/Yahoo acquisition will go through, which will have some interesting implications for the search market.
- Internet access is a booming market, which holds promise for both telecom and cable companies.
- Advertising, online subscriptions, and e-commerce are also predicted winners, as more vendors migrate to online advertising and retail models.
- Wireless Internet is also a growth sector, for obvious reasons.
- Open source is also a growth area as Facebook and Amazon migrate more extensively to open source platforms like Ruby on Rails and Linux.
One of the more interesting trends identified by the Bernstein research was the advent of mergers & acquisitions to unlock potential value. Internet companies are made up of a number of vertical Internet companies with focused markets and limited growth potential; and they are all badly organized due to rapid growth and not enough time to plan out their organizational strategy. One panelist opined that these Internet companies have management organizations that Josef Stalin would easily recognize. Through M&A, professional managers (as opposed to management-stunted entrepreneurs) can be brought in to unlock the value of the assets of these companies and eliminate waste and redundancy. The Microsoft/Yahoo deal may prove to be the first poster child.
Another interesting revelation from Bernstein’s research was how poor U.S. companies are at exporting Internet technology. U.S. corporate management doesn’t travel well. They tend to parachute into a foreign market long enough to get their feet wet, then retreat to home ground and try to manage by remote control. UK experience doesn’t translate in Shanghai or Beijing, which is why Ebay and Google aren’t doing well in Asia. (As an aside, my favorite quote from the conference: “Mumbai, Shanghai, Dubai, or Goodbye.”)
As the old Chinese curse says, we are in for interesting times. So executive job seekers should think hard about their market opportunities and do their homework, and more homework, before electing to make a career change.
