Thirty years ago, when I started out in The Walt Disney Co.'s inventory-control department, it didn't seem like technology at all. We were still using 13-column work sheets and ledger books.

But I helped design Disney's first inventory system, which led to point-of-sale. In the end, I became responsible for all inventory and logistics systems worldwide.

To some people, Disney may not have seemed that willing to move into technology, but it was always willing. Sometimes we had to do some convincing as the technology changed: One of our justifications to replace mechanical registers with point-of-sale devices in the Disney World hotels was to stop hotel guests from checking out of their rooms without paying all of their room charges. With live transactions, when the guests bought something at a merchandise or food location and then went to check out at the reception counter, all the transactions were posted to their accounts. So upgrading our inventory of mechanical registers made sense.

After Disney, I was recruited to Fred Meyer, the grocery chain, to implement the same systems we had at Disneyhe Peter R. Johnson & Associates (PRJ) inventory-control system. In seven years with Fred Meyer, the company more than quadrupled in growthrom $2.7 billion to $13 billion in salesuch of it through acquisitions. At another company I was with, we did 64 acquisitions in two years. That's two acquisitions a month. It was absolutely insane. And a lot of them were mom and pops. Some had systems, some didn't have systems. It was the ultimate in scalability issues. You can't stop to breathe. You can't stop to reassess. You're just constantly moving.