For the friends of Eric Schmidt, it may be time for an intervention. The man is stubborn and proud, and it appears there's no way he'll leave his current post of chairman and CEO of Novell without being pushed. But his talents and foresight are much too valuable to be dragged down by the company's floundering stock price, which keeps him looking backwards instead of ahead.

To truly help the Internet economy, Mr. Schmidt needs to leave Novell behind and find a new cause to champion, a new technology to help bring to reality. We don't have the answer as to what that new technology is, but we're not worried. Mr. Schmidt is very smart, and he'll no doubt find something that most of us haven't thought of yet. But first, he needs to leave Novell, which is at present a millstone around his neck.

Mr. Schmidt, of course, will certainly beg to differ, and perhaps he'll even take offense at the notion that things aren't working out at Novell. When asked about the recent nose-dive of Novell's stock, he responded with a patient shrug of his shoulders and optimistic thoughts about winning in the long run.

IT GOES UP, IT GOES DOWN

"I learned from Scott [McNealy, his old boss at Sun Microsystems] that there are good times and bad times for stock prices," Mr. Schmidt said, in a private conversation after speaking at a recent Churchill Club dinner. In the current state of the market, Mr. Schmidt notes, failing to make your numbers during a financial quarter is asking for a whipping.

"If your numbers go up, the stock price keeps going up," he noted. "But if your numbers go down, your stock goes way, way down."

Mr. Schmidt's personal stock is a perennial blue chip. His resume is impressive, including stints at Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which preceded his well-received 14-year run at Sun, where his most-recognized accomplishment was pushing Java to a winning position. Now, however, he's like the NBA star who finds himself playing for the Los Angeles Clippers: His individual skills are respected, but everyone in the league knows he's not going to win a championship there anytime soon.

At the recent Churchill Club dinner, Mr. Schmidt was paired with former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in a wide-ranging panel discussion about the future of the networked world. A perfect foil for the boisterous Mr. Hundt, Mr. Schmidt turned on his trademark dry wit while showing that his thoughts and interests aren't entirely monopolized by Novell's market struggles.

INTERNET OPTIMIST

Mostly, Mr. Schmidt is an Internet optimist, one who is clearly excited by the promise of an always-on, readily available broadband network. "There will be all sorts of new client devices, ones we haven't even thought of yet," Mr. Schmidt predicted. "When the network is not only a utility, but always on and reliable... it will change the way we think."

Since taking over as Novell's CEO in April 1997, Mr. Schmidt has been trying to change the way Novell thinks, making it more Internet-centric and less a Microsoft competitor. But even Mr. Schmidt lapsed into the familiar competitive pigeonhole Novell has been in since the early '90s, when he first blamed (and later retracted) part of Novell's recent fiscal woes on competition from Windows 2000.

By championing technologies like Digitalme, a network-based identity service, Mr. Schmidt has tried to move Novell into the Internet age, but it's hard to break from the NetWare versus Windows mold. Although Novell isn't going away anytime soon -- even with its problems, the company will still sell more than a billion dollars' worth of software this year -- it's suffering from the same problems that also plague Lotus, Computer Associates, and other past software leaders: It's hard to move a big, installed base forward at Internet speed.

SEEING THINGS IN 3D

Mr. Schmidt needs to be freed from Novell's limitations, so he can pursue radical ideas like 3D hologram presentations. When asked how long it might take the industry to support ubiquitous hologram delivery, Mr. Schmidt didn't just guess, he cited some microprocessor and networking statistics and predicted full hologram support in 10 to 15 years.

This is where we need Mr. Schmidt -- pushing for holograms, instead of trying to revive Novell's reseller base. During his appearance at the Churchill Club dinner, Mr. Schmidt mentioned that he was reading a lot about railroads lately and was struck by several comparisons between the advent of railroads and the current state of the Internet industry. Some towns that were bypassed by the railroads, Mr. Schmidt noted, are still bankrupt areas now, some 150 years later. The Internet, he believes, might have the same kind of make-or-break power going forward.

Mr. Schmidt may not like the comparison, but we'll take the poetic leap and compare Novell to a dusty town that once was booming but has now been bypassed by the railroads. And we'd hate to see Mr. Schmidt left behind as the Internet train goes running down the track.

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