FW: What Enron Did Right  
 


Manager's Journal 
What Enron Did Right 
By Samuel Bodily and Robert Bruner. Messrs. Bodily and Bruner are professors at the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Business Administration.

This is a rough era for American business icons. Subject to the vagaries of age (Jack Welch), product failure (Ford/Firestone tires), competition (Lucent, AT&T), technology (Hewlett-Packard and Compaq), and dot-bomb bubbles (CMGI), managers and their firms remind us that being an icon is risky business. The latest example is Enron, whose fall from grace has resulted in a proposed fire sale to Dynegy.

Once considered one of the country's most innovative companies, Enron became a pariah due to lack of transparency about its deals and the odor of conflicts of interest. The journalistic accounts of Enron's struggles drip with schadenfreude, hinting that its innovations and achievements were all a mirage.

We hold no brief regarding the legal or ethical issues under investigation. We agree that more transparency about potential conflicts of interest is needed. High profitability does not justify breaking the law or ethical norms. But no matter how the current issues resolve themselves or what fresh revelations emerge, Enron has created an enormous legacy of good ideas that have enduring value.

Deregulation and market competition. Enron envisioned gas and electric power industries in the U.S. where prices are set in an open market of bidding by customers, and where suppliers can freely choose to enter or exit. Enron was the leader in pioneering this business. 

Market competition in energy is now the dominant model in the U.S., and is spreading to Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The winners have been consumers, who have paid lower prices, and investors, who have seen competition force the power suppliers to become much more efficient. The contrary experience of California, the poster child of those who would re-regulate the power industry, is an example of not enough deregulation.

Innovation and the "deintegration" of power contracts. Under the old regulated model of delivering gas and electricity, customers were offered a one-size-fits-all contract. For many customers, this system was inflexible and inefficient, like telling a small gardener that you can only buy manure by the truckload. Enron pioneered contracts that could be tailored to the exact needs of the customer. 

To do this, Enron unbundled the classic power contract into its constituent parts, starting with price and volume, location, time, etc., and offered customers choices on each one. Again, consumers won. Enron's investors did too, because Enron earned the surplus typically reaped by inventors. Arguably, Enron is the embodiment of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called the "process of Creative Destruction." But creative destroyers are not necessarily likable, pleasant folks, which may be part of Enron's problem today.

Minimization of transaction costs and frictions. Enron extended the logic of deintegration to other industries. An integrated paper company, for instance, owns forests, mills, pulp factories, and paper plants in what amounts to a very big bet that the paper company can run all those disparate activities better than smaller, specialized firms. Enron argued that integrated firms and industries are riddled with inefficiencies stemming from bureaucracy and the captive nature of "customers" and "suppliers." Enron envisioned creating free markets for components within the integrated chain on the bet that the free-market terms would be better than those of the internal operations. The development of free-market benchmarks for the terms by which divisions of integrated firms do business with each other is very healthy for the economy. 
Exploiting the optionality in networks. In the old regulated environment, natural gas would be supplied to a customer through a single dedicated pipeline. Enron envisioned a network by which gas could be supplied from a number of possible sources, opening the customer to the benefits of competition, and the supplier to the flexibility of alternative sourcing strategies. Enron benefited from controlling switches on the network, so that they could nimbly route the molecules or electrons from the best source at any moment in time to the best use, and choose when and where to convert molecules to electrons. This policy, picked up by others in the industry, created tremendous value for both customers and suppliers. 
Rigorous risk assessment. The strategy of tailored contracts could easily have broken the firm in the absence of a clear understanding of the trading risks that the firm assumed, and of very strong internal controls. Enron pioneered risk assessment and control systems that we judge to be among the best anywhere. Particularly with the advent of Enron Online, where Enron made new positions valued at over $4 billion each day, it became essential to have up-to-the-second information on company-wide positions, prices and ability to deliver. 

The unexpected bad news from Enron has little to do with trading losses by the firm, but with fears among trading partners about Enron's ability to finance its trading activity. In a world where contracts and trading portfolios are too complex to explain in a sound bite, counterparties look to a thick equity base for assurance. It was the erosion in equity, rather than trading risk, that destroyed the firm.

A culture of urgency, innovation and high expectations. Enron's corporate culture was the biggest surprise of all. The Hollywood stereotype of a utility company is bureaucratic, hierarchical, formal, slow, and full of excuses. And the stodgy images of a gas pipeline company -- Enron only 15 years ago -- is even duller and slower. Enron became bumptious, impatient, lean, fast, innovative, and demanding. It bred speed and innovation by giving its professionals unusual freedom to start new businesses, create markets, and transfer within the firm. 

Success was rewarded with ample compensation and fast promotion, and an open-office design fostered brainstorming. The firm's organization and culture was by all accounts not a safe haven for those who believe the role of a large corporation is to fulfill entitlements for jobs. This was a lightning rod for the firm's detractors. And yet, it could serve as a model for more hide-bound enterprises to emulate.

Enron was a prolific source of compelling new ideas about the transformation of American business. It created a ruckus in once-quiet corners of the business economy. It rewrote the rules of competition in almost every area in which it did business. It thrived on volatility.

The proposed sale of Enron to Dynegy risks the loss of a major R&D establishment, especially given Dynegy's track record as a second mover following Enron's lead. Beyond what is likely to be a difficult and time-consuming antitrust review, Dynegy's greater challenge will be to find a way to make Enron's spirit of innovation its own. Or so we all should hope, because prosperity depends on the ability of firms to reinvent themselves and remake their industries.



