In general, executive leadership in information competency was lacking perhaps more than any other category.  This is not necessarily a commentary on the current batch of senior management but more a comment on the lack of deep and strategic understanding of the role information plays in the future of any consumer-intensive firm.  One of the most crucial elements of the firms who were on the road to information mastery was the existence of an individual who represented the heart beat of the firms information transformation was the information renegade.  This individual represented a multiplicity of roles within the firm --  information visionary, whipping post, corporate hero, chief troublemaker, change agent, and master salesman.  It was very interesting to observe that these information renegades were perhaps the most crucial individuals relative to the firm's ability to transform their information competency yet these individuals who performed these roles within most of the firms did so at great risk to their careers.  In essence, these individuals or corporate information renegades represented the end to business as usual and the beginning of the art of all future possibilities for the firm.