Face Forward Hey, watch where you're going, buddy! Opportunity abounds on the road ahead.

Ever wonder what will follow the Internet as the next hugeopportunity? Do you ever stop wondering? Juan Enriquez offers someideas in As the Future Catches You (Crown).Enriquez, director of Harvard Business School's Life SciencesProject, says the most important business language today isn'tEnglish; it's genetics. The economic revolution wrought by ourgrowing understanding of the genome will, Enriquez says, outpaceeven the growth of the computing revolution's early years.

Many gene-related business opportunities will arise from arevolution in health care. For example, Enriquez predictsopportunities in the area of preventions as opposed to cures.Enriquez also foresees information processing benefiting frompowerful biological computers and disciplines from medicine torobotics employing tiny machines created using nanotechnology.

He doesn't stop with technology either, positing greatsocial unrest as nations split, underprivileged groups rebel andboundaries crumble, influenced by unprecedented shifts of wealthand power.

The book is oddly formatted, with type in many sizes andgenerous white space, but it reads easily enough-and I'd betsome of the most successful companies of the next decade willspring from opportunities sketched out here.

Gotta Have Priorities

The Agenda (Crown), the latest fromMichael Hammer, co-author of Reengineering the Corporation(HarperBusiness), presents nine principles for a new world ofbusiness. Today, he says, there must be collaboration betweencompanies and control of internal business processes. He contendsmeasurement must be part of every manager's life. Mostimportant, customers, not companies, are in control. Hammer'sacronym ETDBW, standing for Easy To Do Business With, is a rallyingcry for the easy-to-understand principles he presents.

Austin, Texas, writer Mark Henricks has covered business andtechnology for leading publications since 1981.