Bruce Springsteen and tech innovation

I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert the other night. The first thing he said was “Is there anybody alive out there?”

 

It was a packed house for the Boss, so he didn’t mean it literally. They were lyrics from his new single “Radio Nowhere,” an apocalyptic vision about seeking a human link in a dark-hole world.

 

Bruce has been around a long time. He’s 58 years old. His debut album came out in 1973. Thirty five years of making music. That’s staying power, sure, but this isn’t what makes him special.

 

As I watched the Springsteenian faithful sing every lyric to every song with gospel fury, it struck me how the Boss personifies career innovation. His music has ebbed and flowed through the years, including pop, country, soul, political, Americana and more. But through it all, he’s remained true to himself and his ideals.

 

Bruce keeps finding ways to connect. And he’s constantly improving his “product.” How many concerts have you attended where songs from the new album are played and people are shouting “Play the hits, not the new stuff!”  Last week I was actually more excited about Bruce’s eight new songs then nearly all the legendary stuff. His new album, “Magic” is that good.

 

“Pour me a drink Theresa, in one of those glasses you dust off, and I’ll watch the bones in your back like the stations of the cross.”          

 

As he told Rolling Stone, “That’s my business, that’s what it’s all about – trying to connect to you… being a conduit for a dialogue about the events of the day… At this point I’m in the middle of a very long conversation with my audience.”

 

All this brings me to technology, communications and public relations. As I drove home on a dark night with 34-degree flurries hitting the headlights, I thought about how some of the giants of our industry not only survived, but improved and innovated, because they stayed connected.

 

Apple started up three years after Bruce. They innovated like crazy but when Jobs was ousted and Sculley came in, the culture changed and there were challenging times including a lawsuit against Microsoft that bogged the company down.  When their founder-compass returned, he restored the visionary passion. Not only did Jobs reinvent the music industry (and his company in the process) with iPod and iTunes, but he continues to one-up himself. Seven generations of iPods since 2001. Seven!  I bought the new iPod touch two weeks ago for a friend and was blown away with the innovation not found in my sixth generation iPod. How many of you want one for Christmas?

 

IBM is a terrific example of a company that’s been around a very long time but keeps improving. Nearly 100 years since their founding, but they’ve stayed viable and connected, despite hurdles that killed all the others. IBM was one of the BUNCH companies during the mainframe era, remember? (Is there anybody alive out there?)

 

Eventually Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honeywell, RCA and GE all exited the computer business. But IBM went from mainframes to minicomputers then got into the PC business in 1981. The company faced massive antitrust challenges, layoffs and in 1993 reported a nearly $5 billion loss, the biggest corporate red ink ever up to that time. But somehow they kept transforming, refocusing and improving. They got into software and professional services, and today they’re # 15 on the Fortune 500. Not too shabby.

 

EMC’s been around since 1979. They’ve gone from memory boards to disk drives to large storage subsystems to software to professional services. They took risks entering the virtualization game in 2003, but ended up winning big with their VMware acquisition in 2003. This year they sold a 10% stake in VMware, which trades at a market cap of about $30 billion. Not too shabby, redux.

 

The communications industry is also a living example of longevity and improvement. Public relations agencies have been around since The Publicity Bureau opened its doors in Boston in 1900. Today, the PR industry is undergoing an historic transformation as the social media revolution redefines the way clients communicate and build communities. None of us are standing still. We’re all learning new things, experimenting and getting better.

 

Like Bruce said back in 1984 “We made a promise we swore we’d always remember. No retreat, no surrender.”