Trends: V.P. for the Future

In U.S. industry, not to grow and change is not to survive. What troubles many companies in an increasingly complex world is how to grow and in what direction to change. The man they are turning to for many of the answers (though not the decisions) is a new and influential corporate executive who is expected to combine the brains of a scientist with the intuition of a soothsayer: the corporate planner. "Ideally," says Vice President John P. Gallagher of Booz, Allen & Hamilton, "the corporate planner would have a law degree, an engineering degree, and be able to walk on water." That ideal has not yet been reached, but more than 700 U.S. companies now have formal planners —and the idea is so new that 500 of the companies have hired their planners only in the past four years.

The corporate planner can be expensive—half the companies spend at least $100,000 a year on planning at the top management level, and many spend much more—but he is not considered a luxury. The increasing complexity of management, the shortened life of many products, the expansion and specialization of markets—all have made necessary the presence of a man who can detach himself from the problems of the present to sniff out the opportunities of the future. The corporate planner is often on a vice-presidential level and usually paid well. His function is to look ahead for as far as ten or 15 years, outpredicting customers and competitors, plotting new products, new markets and new mergers and spying the social, political and economic changes that may affect his company. His basic job is to answer the question "What is this business all about?" Corporate planners like to say that if buggy manufacturers had been able to see that they were basically in the transportation business they might be today's automakers.

Into Hospitals? Michael J. Kami, director of long-range planning for IBM, does not narrow IBM's range to the computer business, believes his firm is in "the problem-solving business"—and acts on that philosophy in his planning. Because the forward planners at A. T. & T. view the company as an all-embracing communications service instead of just a telephone operator, the company had a plan for space communications soon after Sputnik went up—and launched Telstar last year. Working on the theory that "1970 starts today," General Electric has set up a colony of 300 planners—one of the largest groups anywhere—by the ocean at Santa Barbara, Calif., where they ponder everything from long-range prospects for the Japanese economy to the competition in education between the U.S. and Russia. Noting that U.S. consumers are spending increasing portions of their rising personal incomes on medical care, G.E. vice presidents are pondering whether their company should expand its hospital-systems supply business.