"I was a very early believer in the idea of convergence"
About this Quote
“I was a very early believer in the idea of convergence” is executive self-mythology in a single, tidy sentence. Jean-Marie Messier isn’t arguing for a strategy so much as staking a claim to foresight: not merely that convergence mattered, but that he saw it before the crowd. The phrasing does the quiet work of repositioning him from operator to visionary, which is especially loaded given his legacy as the CEO who tried to fuse media, telecom, and entertainment into a seamless empire at Vivendi before the early-2000s crash turned “synergy” into a punchline.
The genius of the line is its vagueness. “Convergence” is a word that flatters everyone and indicts no one. It suggests inevitability, a historical current you either surf or get swallowed by. By calling himself an “early believer,” Messier borrows the moral prestige of conviction - belief implies courage, not just calculation. It’s also a subtle defense mechanism: if events didn’t go his way, the problem becomes timing or execution, not the underlying vision. Being early is a way to be right while still having lost.
Context matters because convergence was the era’s secular religion: dot-com exuberance, deregulation, and the fantasy that content plus pipes plus capital would print money. Messier’s quote is a reminder of how corporate language turns risk into destiny. It’s less a confession than a reframing: history, he implies, will eventually catch up to him, even if the balance sheet didn’t.
The genius of the line is its vagueness. “Convergence” is a word that flatters everyone and indicts no one. It suggests inevitability, a historical current you either surf or get swallowed by. By calling himself an “early believer,” Messier borrows the moral prestige of conviction - belief implies courage, not just calculation. It’s also a subtle defense mechanism: if events didn’t go his way, the problem becomes timing or execution, not the underlying vision. Being early is a way to be right while still having lost.
Context matters because convergence was the era’s secular religion: dot-com exuberance, deregulation, and the fantasy that content plus pipes plus capital would print money. Messier’s quote is a reminder of how corporate language turns risk into destiny. It’s less a confession than a reframing: history, he implies, will eventually catch up to him, even if the balance sheet didn’t.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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