Cornell Business

Issue date: 4/6/00 Section: Johnson News

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Never before have the environs of the Johnson School been so quiet. For three hours on Wednesday, March 29, Sage Hall was nearly deserted, and hundreds of Johnson School students sat nearly motionless and, more impressively for a group of the most outgoing, friendly and compassionate people in the nation, nearly silent as Statler auditorium was turned into a TV studio for the filming of the fourth CEO Exchange.

CEO Exchange is a new program sponsored by WTTW and PBS and underwritten by A.T. Kearney that features in-depth panel discussions with top business leaders. Hosted by Emmy Award-winning journalist Jeff Greenfield (you may best remember him as the most visible of ABC's political analysts or more recently as CNN's Senior Analyst and Co-Anchor of CNN & TIME), the monthly series of television specials features in-depth, candid conversations with internationally recognized and respected CEOs, concerning newsworthy business and social issues. States Dan Schmidt, President and CEO of WTTW, "CEO Exchange brings today's most respected CEOs together with the best and brightest business leaders of tomorrow, for a series of provocative dialogues on high-level business issues. There's nothing else like it on television today."

Last week's CEO Exchange certainly lived up to its billing. Jeff Greenfield hosted special guests Dr. William Haseltine, the CEO of Human Genome Sciences, a company that is attempting to produce pharmaceutical drugs engineered after the human gene, and Dr. David Huber, founder and CEO of Corvis Corporation, which is attempting to establish itself as the market leader in all-optical global information networks. These companies are positioned in the middle of the two most dynamic, exciting and socially relevant emerging fields in today's rapidly changing global economy. Drs. Huber and Haseltine have incredible visions for their companies, and last week's CEO exchange had special relevance as it examined the issues of entrepreneurship and vision in addition to the natural leadership role of today's CEO.

Dr. Haseltine shared his vision for the future of medicine. In it, drugs will be created not from plants or chemicals, but designed from genes within the human body. Some of these drugs have already been created today, and Dr. Haseltine believes that isolating these genes and using them to create drugs which eliminate many of the illnesses associated with aging are all that stands between today's healthcare concerns and a point in time where all humans are entirely capable of living a full, active human life until 100 or even 125 years of age. Dr. Huber envisions a world where all information is transmitted almost instantaneously, in almost inconceivable volumes, at prices approaching zero on all-optical information networks. As an example of the tremendous potential for optical networks, Dr. Huber expressed the example of Moore's Law, which states that processor speed doubles every 1.5 years. Alternatively, optical transmission capabilities in the past five years have improved 16,000 times. Dr. Huber is entirely confident that this rate of change can be maintained, and he intends to keep Corvis Corp. at the front end of this revolution.

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