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schools—which was great for the department and its ability to maintain its power but not so great for those individuals facing heightened competition. Early entrants into the corporate consulting team at SAP, not just Zia Yusuf, benefited from being valued pioneers of an important, new (for the company) business unit with tremendous visibility at the executive board level. Many people moved from the CCT to other important roles within SAP—something that was intended from the beginning, since one of the department’s defined objectives was to be an entry point for talented people from different academic disciplines. But after a while, what was novel became routine, and it is far from clear that those entering SAP today would benefit as much from beginning their careers in the CCT.

This type of trade-off—pioneering a new path and the risk that entails versus entering an established domain but facing greater competition—occurs at the business level as well. When Apple introduced the first personal computer in the late 1970s, there was no competition, but, as Steve Jobs frequently noted, the product was often dismissed by those who thought it was too small to do serious computing. Now the legitimacy of the small computer product category is unquestioned, but current entrants confront a highly competitive market with very strong players.

Your answer to this dilemma depends on the extent to which you are an organizational entrepreneur and risk taker. It also depends on whether you are satisfied being carried along by a powerful tide or you want to get ahead of the wave or create your own pond where you can stand out.

Ann Moore became chairman and CEO of Time, Inc., in 2002 and has been frequently listed by Fortune as one of the 50 most powerful women in business. Moore graduated from Harvard Business School in the late 1970s, but instead of following her classmates into consulting or investment banking, she chose her lowest-paying job offer to join Time’s finance department. After spending one year in the more typical MBA role of financial analyst, Moore sought a central role within the magazine group. She moved to Sports Illustrated. At the time, the cable division, which included HBO, looked like where the action was going to be, as magazines were perceived as a dying entity. Moore started a sports magazine for children and later moved to People, where she was named president of the magazine in 1993 and increased People’s performance from an already high level. Moore’s career success came from her standout performance in a “dying” unit, and from being a woman in a man’s sports magazine, which helped provide her visibility. By taking a different path, she helped her prospects for career success.

Entering the Ford finance function, the University of Illinois physics department, the cable division at Time, or the consulting unit at SAP even relatively late in the game would, as long as the department remained powerful, assure you of a good career both in terms of position and money. But if you want to break out of the pack, other things being equal, you would be better off in a different department with more new opportunity. Witness Yusuf’s move to the ecosystem unit and the additional career success that has provided, and even more recently, his move out of SAP to pursue new opportunities.

What I have detailed is the risk-return trade-off faced in countless business arenas. As such, there is no right or simple answer. But whatever your choice, you would be well served to try to understand not just what today’s powerful departments are, but where you think the power is going. And that forecasting skill is possible, although not assured or easy, by paying attention to the unfolding dynamics of the particular business and its environment.

Cisco, the designer and manufacturer of networking equipment, was founded by computer scientists from Stanford. The power inside the company originally resided with engineers and those with the technical expertise necessary to develop and manufacture the company’s first products. But by 1994,