Go Deep: Think Big

Steve Case represents the best example of thinking big. He sought to exploit his big idea but he always saw the greater picture. He was confident that he was on to something major. He may have had a couple of strikes against him, but he was willing to run with his newfound baby for as long as he could. He viewed it as having a significant impact in everyday life.

This confidence was highlighted when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sold his stake in AOL after senior management refused his offer to buy them out. Case stuck to his guns even after Bill Gates made his now legendary claim of putting him and AOL out of business.

In your pursuit of personal, professional, spiritual and material "profit," you will cross paths with people that may or may not share your vision and goals. It is up to you to take the proper course of action.

In the most ironic of twists, back in 1995, then editor of Information & Interactive Services Report Roc Kuckro, called Case the "Ted Turner of online services." The analogy made sense. After all, what made Turner successful was bundling content and distributing it over his cable empire.

The irony however is that Turner sold his company to Time Warner, later acquired by AOL. When it was all said and done, Turner was on Case's payroll.

Case was not interested in building content. He wanted to offer a platform that would allow a critical mass to have access to the Web, with a clean and simple interface. Case bundled the network, interface and content better than anyone, including himself, could have ever imagined. He offered "best of breed" content before anyone thought of the term. He made comments that went against the institutional imperative by claiming for example that "content is no longer king, building a community around that content is the key." He also managed to drive the commerce component of the Web fast enough to allow him to buy Time Warner.

While Case may not be considered the greatest visionary, his business sense inspired many mergers in media and technology, ill-fated or not in hindsight. After all, convergence may be a buzzword, but Case was doing it way back, stating: "we weren't smart enough to call it convergence" in 1985. While many felt that customizing content (or "disintermediation") would be too hard for most, Case made it happen.

He has taken his one big idea and shown that you need not be the first to market – you need to be the first to scale. Case managed to scale his business far and wide without being the smartest, but by being the one who made it simple.

The most successful business ideas endeavor to make something so simple that your consumers and investors scratch their head and ask how come they did not think of it. This was the AOL model, the same model that allowed the young firm to buy the venerable Time Warner.

Case and company went on to combine speed, offense and a killer instinct to come out on top in a competitive and lucrative field. He shared Intel co-founder Andy Grove's notion that "only the paranoid flourish" and he wasted little time. He rode up the stock market and used his newfound stability and traction to weather the storm when the market cratered. It was that paranoia that drove him to acquire Time Warner. In hindsight, it was a disastrous merger, but at the time, it redefined media and technology; essentially blurring the line between Old and New Economy.

AOL never cared about building the best technology: they cared about finding out what consumers wanted. Bob Pittman served as a very important Head of Operations in AOL's rise. Perhaps the best hire Case ever made, Pittman put it best when he said: "I remind people all the time that Coca-Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft is not the best operating system. Brands win."

At the time, the AOL/Time Warner merger was the biggest of all time. Was bigger better?

It looks like the answer is: it depends. After years of promoting the ''bigger is better, we need size'' mantra, many of the mergers that were hailed as necessary were subsequently questioned. Pittman resigned from AOL Time Warner in July 2002. By then, Time Warner executives were holding many of the top positions at the new firm. But the fact remains: AOL – the first Internet company to crack the Fortune 500 list – hedged itself by acquiring Time Warner. Using its stock as currency was the icing on the cake. Steve Case naming himself Chairman was the cherry on the icing. While analysts raved about convergence, Case was more interested in hedging himself. Noble it might not have been, but who said business was about anything other than surviving?

If history does repeat itself, it did with Case and AOL.

Centuries earlier, Alexander The Great's dream of uniting a global empire that spanned from Europe to Asia to Africa led to his demise. Alexander conquered Asia by defeating the mighty Persian Empire, but on his way to conquer Africa, he fell ill and died. What made the tragedy worse was that his reluctance to select a successor made it impossible for future generations to build on his accomplishments. By spreading himself too thin, he never fully attained his enormous potential.

Never underestimate the importance of execution and focus. No one should hold you back from thinking big. But to achieve greatness, you need to focus on one thing and execute - only then will you keep the inning going and have a chance to step up to the plate again. That is how you build an empire.