By Cathleen Benko and F. Warren McFarlan
In 1881, Ferdinand de Lesseps started construction on the Panama Canal. If history was any guide, he and his canal were likely to be a smashing success. Nearly 15 years earlier, de Lesseps had been the mastermind behind the extraordinary Suez Canal project and, incidentally, a new opera house in Cairo, where an opera to commemorate the canal's opening and Egypt's modernization (Aida, by Verdi) was also well received. Thousands of investors flocked to his new company, confident of his future success.
Unfortunately, in approaching the new Panama project, de Lesseps failed to understand that the context in Panama was very different from that of the Suez Canal. He set out to build the Panama Canal using more or less the same methods he had at Suez. But the Suez region was a relatively flat desert, whereas the Panama terrain was a wet, mountainous jungle, traversed by the untamed Changres River and rife with tropical diseases.
The result was an unmitigated disaster. By 1889, construction had halted — by which time some 21,000 people had died in the effort — and the company went bankrupt. The resulting scandal led to riots in Paris a few years later.
That was not the end of the story, of course. When construction on the Panama Canal resumed in 1902, context was fully considered. Among other changes, the wild Changres was tamed and became an essential part of the lock-based canal design. Malaria and yellow fever were brought under control. The American engineers looked not to the Suez experience, but to the lessons of railroad building, particularly for guidance in ways to move literally millions of tons of earth. Ultimately, the project was brought in under budget, and the first ship, the Ancon, went through the canal in
August 1914
The point? Understanding the context of any venture is critical. And we believe that lessons for today's business context can be found in past frontiers. As Mark Twain aptly noted, "History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
The current business context is a convergence of innovative business practices enabled by technologies, new approaches to production and marketing, and historical practices and conditions. While our unpredictable and turbulent environment is unique, it is not without historical precedent. Many of the same forces that generate today's headlines — technology, societal changes, political strife, and economic volatility — could just as easily have been front-page news in the late 1910s or early 1920s, when electrification was beginning to change business productivity in fundamental ways.
This chapter is designed to get you thinking like a settler — to help you and your organization capture value in an unpredictable but opportunity-rich environment. Our prescription for alignment begins with garnering lessons from past frontiers. We then overlay these lessons with the unique characteristics of the information frontier and see how the patterns of the past intersect with those of today. From here, we discern the mind-set shifts needed to best respond to
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