The rubicon (for the historically challenged), is a small river that flows into the Adriatic Sea, and in Roman times it marked the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and ancient Italy. In 49 B.C., after some hesitation, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to march against General Pompey in defiance of the senate’s orders. In doing so, he committed himself to conquer Rome or to perish trying. Hence the phrase "to cross the Rubicon" has come to mean risking all, taking an irrevocable step.

In 1959, when I was a very young kid living in Southern California, my parents took me to the then recently opened Disneyland. My two most vivid memories are of walking with my father to shake hands with Walt Disney himself, and of gazing at the fabulous improbabilities of Tomorrowland, the 1950s equivalent of Comdex. Tomorrowland as it was in 1959 stands as just another reminder of the axiom that we tend to overestimate technological improvements in the short term, underestimate those improvements in the long term, and occasionally pursue the wrong improvements altogether.

Bell Telephone sponsored an exhibit that proudly demonstrated the "picture phone," a technology, universally accepted as a future given (think of any movie about a nonapocalyptic future made in the past 50 years that doesn’t feature one). And yet, it has been universally rejected as unnecessary, ineffective and distracting by those who have used it, and intrusive and unwelcome by those who occasionally like to hang around the house in their underwear.

Hope springs eternal in some quarters though. The Asian Wall Street Journal recently reported that Kyocera Corp. will soon market the Personal Handyphone System, a mobile videophone that transmits and receives two video frames per second (standard full-motion video is 30 frames per second). Good idea, guys! Microscopic screens featuring the fluid motion of Japanamation.

What happened to the picture phone back then, and what is happening (or not happening) with video conferencing today, serves as an object lesson in the hazards every organization faces trying to identify and deliver technologies and projects that have competitive value for their companies. This, as we all know, can be a tricky and, at times, very frustrating exercise. It demands that we continually reexamine our priorities to make sure we are delivering what the company actually needs to make a real difference instead of what the company, or factions within it, want.

Sometimes you sweat for months, even years, over a mission-critical, complicated, time-sensitive project, executed and delivered flawlessly in spite of budget cuts and personnel shortages, only to earn little more than a yawn from your effort’s beneficiaries. Then the next week you do something painfully, embarrassingly simple, almost as an afterthought, like adding a field to some report, and the users are so amazed and delighted they practically carry you around the office on their shoulders. The fundamental unfairness of it all screams for a villain. Fortunately, you often don’t have to look very far.