Managing risk a theme at summit.

• Position: Events

The 2002 FEI Summit program in late April featured a variety of top-notch presenters and a terrific venue, The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. While the main hotel was being renovated, the adjacent conference center worked well as a location for more than 700 attendees and almost four dozen vendors.

In the opening keynote address, Brian Wesbury, chief economist at investment bank Griffin, Kubik, Stephens and Thomas, offered an upbeat view of the economy in a speech, "The New Era Under Attack." The recent recessionary period, he argued, is more of a "pause that refreshes" than a more permanent downturn.

Wesbury argued that good times are usually associated with good federal policies -- and bad times with uneven or poorly constructed ones. Hence, he said, the economy was strong in the 1980s and 1990s, when tax rates came down and federal monetary policy was constructive, and weak in the 1960s and 1970s when federal policies, in his view, were wrongheaded.

Wesbury forecast an unusually strong 4 percent gain for the economy this year and "five percent plus" for 2003. In fact, he sees a 10-year period of strong growth before recession crops up again. In the short term, he expects the Federal Reserve to start hiking rates in the summer, but by only 25 basis points at a time -- a stance he sees as "neutral."

In a second keynote address, Agilent Technologies CEO Edward "Ned" Barnholt talked about "real world" risk management. Agilent, an equipment maker spun off a few years ago from Hewlett-Packard Co., has been dealing with risk from the outset, Barnholt said. In his view, risk permeates everything, and companies need to: give things time; look for markets with underlying "discontinuous change"; and look for markets with "white space," or unmet needs.

Barnholt underlined a series of lessons he says he has learned from his experiences at H-P and Agilent:

1. There is a crying need for leadership, not just management;

2. The CEO needs to find "champions for change" and help them succeed;

3. Communication can never be overdone;

4. Challenge can invigorate people;

5. The biggest risk of all is not to change.

In an afternoon breakout session, Robert Dangremond, a principal with turnaround consultants Jay Alix & Co., spoke at length about the troubles companies can get into and offered advice about getting out of them. A former banker, Dangremond offered a series of thoughts and observations drawn from assignments over many years.

He detailed a list of...