Lesson #3: See the Forest Through the Trees

“I think the more you have a generalist perspective, I think sometimes the more you can kind of see through the forest and the trees,” says Case. “And when it gets a little bit cloudy, you know, have some sense of, ‘Well, maybe this might happen or maybe that might happen.’”

Case attended Williams College, a class liberal arts school with little business orientation. He decided to pursue a degree in political science because it was the closest he felt he could come to marketing. In hindsight, Case believes that his general liberal arts training was one of biggest factors of his success later in life. “In one sense, there’s nothing specific that I learned that was applicable,” says Case. “In another sense everything I learned was a useful foundation.”

For Case, the training he received covered a broad spectrum and therefore gave him a better perspective on the world around him. “I really am a big believer in liberal arts education,” says Case. “I think it's better – particularly in these kind of uncertain times – to know a little bit about a lot of things as opposed to being expert in one thing… I think that gives you a perspective that I found to be very valuable.”

It was this perspective to which Case attributes a large portion of AOL’s rapid success, allowing him to better gauge the success of his efforts. “It has really been a dramatic acceleration of the different ways to communicate,” says Case. “But if you look back in history, those core innovations don’t happen overnight. It takes awhile…you just have to break through.”

In the beginning, Case was walking new ground in the world of personal computers; few had them and few saw the need for them. It was only in understanding the history of the nature of innovation that Case knew he would have to wait for the world to catch up with his dream. “That gave me some perspective and patience that enabled me to persevere in pursuing this particular vision, because I knew it takes a while for things to develop,” says Case.

More recently, Case says many of his company’s challenges relate to terrorism and the fact that it’s not the conventional kind of war. The pace with which technology is changing necessitates a broader outlook on doing business. “They're not the conventional ways to deal with things,” says Case. “All of these things are kind of disruptive new out-of-the box ways to think about your life and think about the world.” It was in understanding these wider trends that Case was able to come out on top.



Case likens his success to that of the telephone and the automobile. Before those products came out, consumers were happy with just their horse and buggies as the major means of transportation and communication. Only as time passed and an increasing number of people were beginning to buy phones and cars did their popularity increase. “It's sort of this chicken and egg thing,” says Case. “Because more people had cars, you started building roads which made the cars more useful.” Indeed, few people today could imagine a world without the technological innovations that Case has played a role in introducing.

Lesson #3: See the Forest Through the Trees

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