It is, of course, an optical illusion but if I didn't know better, I would say that the earth is spinning increasingly faster. Changes occur at record speeds. It's like a train with technology as its engine. Locomotive and push cart at the same time. We are seeing great changes in such divergent fields as (international) competitive relationships, society and leadership. Competition Competition is no longer as comfortable as it used to be. Just a decade or two ago, there were large, well-established companies who did not fear any competition. I recently came across a fitting description that went as follows: Large companies can often be likened to large, luxury sedans driving on clear, open highways. A nice, straight long lane. In their rear view mirrors, these companies see black dots (the competition) in the far distance, which for years never get any bigger. These organizations have even become so arrogant and self-satisfied that they have put their luxury sedans on 'cruise control' and have not realized that the world around the highway is changing. Suddenly, they realize that a little black dot behind them has suddenly become very large and, worse still, threatens to overtake them at great speed. And, on the heels of that dot come many other dots. The sedan is no longer on its own. From every access road come small cars driven by entrepreneurs. The highway becomes increasingly busier and the world takes on the appearance of a race. Fast responses are now called for. Society Society as a whole is also in a state of change. It used to be that the government, law, education, the church, family, and unions determined the structure of our society, order in our society and the rules for our society. Today that is no longer so. Where once the emphasis lay on land, capital and/or labor, we are now becoming a society for whom the emphasis rests on knowledge. Today's society is directed towards the individual. The individual and his knowledge. But what does that entail? How does it work? What does it look like? Alvin Toffler talks of 'terra Incognita', the uncharted landscape of tomorrow, which no longer concerns land, money or raw materials, but content: intellectual capital. In the mind and stored on systems. Digital, in bits and bytes. Toffler indicates that the future is no longer linear, no longer a continuation of the past, no longer predictable. No, the future is chaos, the future is a series of discontinuous, radical changes. Peter Senge suggests that we must stop basing our decisions on the past; stop deciding by 'looking back'. Michael Hammer adds rather pithily, "If you think you're good, you're dead!" In short, the formulas of the past are not the formulas of the future, and organizations will need to keep that in mind. Leadership As we grow in intellectual capital, we will need a different type of organization than that of the present, industrial orientation. The new organizations will need to be self-learning. Organizations are, and form, a distributed network of ideas, and in the future they will function as 'exchanges' of knowledge and ideas, with people inside and outside the organization working and looking for new opportunities together. C.K. Prahalad thinks that we will have to prepare ourselves in a different way for the 21st century than we have done up until now with our organizations. Previously, the approach was often one of, "On your marks, get set, get smart ....then what?" In other words, the emphasis was on reacting to present problems. No thought, in general, was given to the imminent dawn of the 21st century, an era that demands new markets, new methods, new industries, and new rules. An era that requires an attitude of 'never being satisfied with the status quo'. The structure of organizations needs to change. We must no longer think in terms of hierarchical organizations, no longer in terms of organizations that function 'top-down' according to the organized angst model. We need leaders who can decentralize power, who can democratize strategies, who feel comfortable with discontinuity, and who through all that see new opportunities. Warren Bennis5 describes them as "People with the future in their bones!" And we, the technologists, make it all possible. We create the conditions that support the changes around us and that make doing business efficiently possible. The rules are changing The rules will change in the new millennium. Rules about doing business. Rules about handling computer systems. The rules in our society will change. Knowledge will be the new credo. Not labor, capital or land, but knowledge will be the most important asset for companies. The rules of communication and the sharing of knowledge will change. Everyone, everywhere, at any given moment, through numerous applications, will have access to the Web. At the company where you work, the school where you study, at home or even on your own body, you will find the Web everywhere.

Hans Appel has been working in the computer industry for some 30 years. After training in electronics, he began building and programming hybrid analog/digital computer systems in the late sixties. In the early seventies he took up employment with Sperry UNIVAC, a company that was engaged in designing, building, and selling mainframe computer systems. After working in different functional areas in systems programming, he took his first steps in the world of marketing in the late seventies. With the rise of computerization in the early eighties, Appel went to work at WANG, a company that was, in those days, a leading innovator in the area of computer technology for the office environment. At WANG he performed a number of different functions within the marketing discipline. In the late eighties he crossed over to Apple Computer, a company that wanted to change the world. A company which also has a very unique vision of computer technology being used by everyone. For many years Apple was a model for continuous and groundbreaking innovation. Here, also, marketing was Appel's main credo. Since 1996 Appel has been working at Sun Microsystems, as Chief Technology Officer for the Northern European Region. Sun is one of the few IT organizations where the design of a product, from silicon to end product, still occurs within the same company. It is a company in which the person-technology interface occupies an important place, right next to bringing highly professional IT-technology on the market. Appel always says: "I have two professions: technology and marketing. The combination of the two fields forms a tremendous challenge. 'Keeping up' with these two dynamic areas is an enormous motivator to excel." He published several books and lots of articles on IT and its impact on people and society.