Name: This Is What Steve Case Thinks Future Business Leaders Are in for
Uploaded: 2016-11-29
Duration: 3 min 48 s
Description: He calls it a “third wave.”

 Steve, you've come out with your first book, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future. What is a third wave? Well, the third wave is the next logical step of the internet. The first wave was getting everybody connected. The second wave was building apps and services on top of the internet. The third wave is integrating the internet in seamless and pervasive, sometimes even invisible, waves throughout our lives. I think it's going to require a different mindset to be successful in the third wave. A different playbook. I think partnerships are going to become much more important. Engagement on policy is going to become much more important. Perseverance is going to become much more important. But the entrepreneurs who embrace those principles, what I call in the book the three Ps, are really going to be poised to really build some significant "change the world" companies in this third wave. And you say leadership is going to be different. What are going to be the traits of a successful leader? Well, you always have to lead in the future. I mean, the world is moving more rapidly. And-- and the leaders, CEOs, founders of companies have to continue to focus, not just on what's there, but what can happen next, not just play defense, but also play offense. So this mindset around leading into the future and a culture around innovation, and risk taking, and experimentation, and trying different things, are going to be important. But the other thing is to recognize in the third wave, partnership really is central. There's an African proverb that will define the third wave. If you want to go quickly, you can go alone. But if you want to go far, you must go together. So it's not just how you lead within your company, but how do you lead around your company, how do you build a network around your company, and figure out a way to connect the people and ideas that can help influence your strategy. And help champion some of their ideas. So that partnership mentality, that collaborative dynamic, is going to be critically important to be successful in the third wave. But how are these leadership traits different from leadership today? Well, a lot of the sectors that are up for grabs in the third wave-- a lot of the leaders have been around for decades. There has not been the level of disruption in some of these sectors that we've seen in other parts of the city. So the new leaders are going to be more disruptive? So I think that in the second wave, there were a lot of people who kind of watched on the sidelines saying, this really doesn't have much of an impact in terms of my business. It's happening over there. I think, now, some of the innovation, the technology disruption, is really cutting across our entire economy and across our lives in much more fundamental ways. So it's going to require the leaders to be more forward thinking, and lean into the future more, and recognize that often the biggest risk is doing nothing. And it's better to be involved, and engaged, and building a team and a mentality around experimentation and recognizing a lot of things you try will fail. But some of those wind up being successes. People still talk about you for the wonderful things that you did to pioneer AOL, you founded the company, you took it public, you merged it-- that huge merger with Time Warner. Maybe things didn't turn out exactly the way that you wanted, but as you reflect back on all of that, what was the most important lesson you learned from that whole experience? Well, I think the most important lesson was people from the early days, I saw the benefit of having people aligned around priorities with that focus and that passion. Later on I saw the downside. The reason I don't think the merger worked well, ultimately came down to people and culture issues. It wasn't so much about strategy. It was about execution. And Thomas Edison said this a century ago, vision without execution is hallucination. So I learned firsthand, ultimately, it's about execution. Ultimately that's about people. Steve, as you look back on your career as a builder and as an investor, what was the best leadership advice you ever received? And how did it stick with you and shape you as a leader? Well, probably the most inspirational thing was when I was in college. I read a book by Alvin Toffler called The Third Wave. And he really was talking about this future, this digital future. I was completely mesmerized by it. And it was the early days, but I knew that was going to happen. So the lesson I took away from that is you've got to lead in the future. You can't focus on what's there. You have to focus on what's coming next and how do you play a role in making that thing happen. 