As Jack Myers Noted Last Week: Hold on … Forecast Isn't Pretty …

Last week featured Jack talking directly to his myriad advertising business audiences in great detail about what to expect in the next few years … with lots of negative numbers.

If the pandemic wasn't a hundred percent the cause, it sure figures in a big way about what's coming. Some 40 million or so (think plus or minus 10 million) folks without jobs and a recalcitrant Senate determined to pause remedial action in order to "assess" circumstances means any hope of a rebound is no more than wishful thinking.

So, I won't repeat any data here (look for yourself) … instead, I'd like to suggest something from a bit of left field: concentrate on what you can do now … and plan a little for the future blue skies (yes, they are in the future, just one a ways away.

Listening to the list of companies honored last week, I was struck by how many would fit in any list of true innovators. That's what the greater advertising industry has always done: found new and better ways to do everything. So, I've got a suggestion as to how many of you could plan for an even more innovative future.

As many of you know, I've been on the infrastructure and the programming positioning sides concentrating on the physical footprints of bandwidth … in other words, what was once the cable industry and is now the digital infrastructure industry. Cable, from the '50s through the '20s, has continued to innovate, too. From retransmitting distance television signals to transmitting everything digital.

Cable - both infrastructure and programming - began a true rush to consolidate at the turn of the century … much the same as almost every other industry. Size matters.

But size results in a group of silos run by experts of one aspect of a major corporation or another. Often, the silos don't get along. No matter that they should; they often just don't.

That, of course, happened in most major companies-once-known-as-cable.

But, some thinkers including the Board of Directors at The Cable Center, got to thinking about that and decided to do something about it.

The Center, in Denver, decided to develop a program aimed at teaching up and coming mid- to senior-level employees about managing across diverse interests. Cable, and "The Cable Center," has had to redefine itself a half dozen times or more … in other words, to innovate. Cable was started by and often run by entrepreneurs like Allen Gerry, Bob Magness, Glenn Jones, Bill Daniels, Monte Rifken, John Saeman, John Malone, Ted Turner and many more.

So, why not teach behaving like an entrepreneur inside a major corporation? Voila! There is now the Intrapreneur Academy at The Cable Center:

It is a virtual course taught across eight weeks … check it out. Many of the industry's largest companies have sent waves of students through the course … often.

This isn't an ad; it is informational. And full disclosure, I'm a member of the Board and the Executive Committee and have seen the results of what students have accomplished.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.