to go. As the CEO had just informed him, it had been sold to a successful private equity firm that would hold 100% of its assets and take an active role in its would now become a separate business, Global Digital Imaging (GDI), and Ray would be expected to deliver significant value for its new owner-investor, VE have an experienced management team and a proven ability to build businesses," the CEO told him. "If you can give them the returns they want, they will ident." to the elevator, Ray felt both exhilarated and apprehensive about this new opportunity. Mentally, he started an inventory of the new company's assets. With than 150 companies, revenues of about $3 billion, and 12,000 staff, it was a substantial company in its own right. But operating independently of a much larger ated headaches in a number of areas, requiring the development of separate functions in HR, finance, facilities, and IT. The thought of this last issue struck e we going to do with all the systems?" he asked himself. It would be relatively easy to hire good people to manage the other corporate entities, but IT was a sh. And the last thing he wanted was to worry about IT... not when so much was riding on how well GDI performed as a freestanding company. to do in very little time, and soon GDI was a legal entity. On day one, Ray called his senior people together. "Our first priority is to run as a company VH as quickly as possible," he said. "We need to think like a young, agile company and not like a large, entrenched bureaucratic organization. Fortunately, ition team from VE Investments to help us." And indeed, it was only a few months before complete separation was accomplished, that is, everywhere except