Watts next?

Entrepreneur, April, 1997 by Robert McGarvey

Apply this to the records you keep on your customers, and look for how much more you can do. You can not only chronicle the growth of your customers; you can also tell them more about themselves than even they know because you are chronicling them. This lets you anticipate their needs.

Entrepreneur: What do you mean when you say we're in a period of cultural schizophrenia?

Wacker: It's the ability to move in two directions at the same time without feeling inconsistent. It's why the woman who created Mothers Against Drunk Driving can also testify on behalf of the spirits industry. It's why we can say we want less government at the same time we expect more from government.

Why is this happening? It's a demonstration of the crisis of confidence in the institutions left over from the Industrial Revolution. Before the last election, I had the good fortune to predict not only that Clinton would win by eight points but also that this would be the lowest voter turnout of the last century. Where I live in New England, we have what are called "100-year storms." What we had is a 100-year election, and what it said was that government is irrelevant as it is currently defined.

Entrepreneur: You've said lawn and garden catalog companies will do well. Why?

Wacker: Gardening took off because people get a tremendous sense of achievement from it. In the age of access - when so many things are accessible to us - we almost genetically crave the things that are scarce.

One of the scarcest things on the planet today is creativity. Gardening is more about creativity than anything else, and when you put together scarcity and the desire for creativity, you start seeing things like gardening for internal - not external - satisfaction needs becoming prominent.

Entrepreneur: What are other examples?

Wacker: Managing your money is another example. The accessibility of information will allow you to manage your money and derive a sense of accomplishment from doing it. The same tools that let Ford Motor Co. use just-in-time inventory management to cut 12 percent out of its cost structure are accessible to you, too. You can give yourself a 12 percent raise by creatively restructuring how and when you order the goods and services you need and when you pay for them.

Entrepreneur: You say technology is about connectivity. What do you mean?

Wacker: Computing has met communicating. On the most pedestrian level, this means IBM has met AT&T. Satellites, fiber optics, copper wires - all the "carriers" have met the content providers, and what we're seeing is the creation of a new paradigm.

Technology is allowing for accessibility - anything you want, anywhere you want. We're literally on the verge of seeing people in two locations simultaneously. A doctor can be in his office in New York City - and performing surgery in Los Angeles at the same time. That's about computers being applied not to crunching numbers but to doing other things we want. That's what I mean about connectivity. It's changing our sense of concepts such as time, space and location.