Exact change

We are living in the world that we have invented, and we are constantly reinventing it.

I generally grew up in the world packaged by generations of the past - my father his father, etc.

But my son and daughter, both in their early 20s, live in a world heavily engineered by people five to 10 years older than they are.

The message is change. The requirement is change.

And companies that succeed must be flexible. To prosper, they need to exact change.

How else to explain the couple profiled to the right by Shelley Coolidge. They asked to work 200 miles away from the office, were accommodated, and became more productive. (Why did it take this long to figure out that happy people are more productive?)

Telecommuting is not new, but the degree to which technology and women are changing the workplace is so comprehensive as to be almost routine. Almost.

Perhaps the most visible yardstick for transformation lives on Wall Street - which spells "change" A-O-L.

Look at the chart on page 15. The companies exacting greatest leverage on the market indexes virtually didn't exist 10 years ago.

And the market feels as if it's sorting through another change (again, page 15) - sort of a rotation, sort of a widening, but sort of something else.

Value mutual funds, former wallflowers at Wall Street's party, have suddenly become the belles.

Jim Tyson profiles a hot value fund on page 16, and another, Fidelity Value, went from two-year loser to April screamer.

Bob Dylan, prophet of the '60s, couldn't have been more right. "Times, they are are a changin'."