"It isn't just about growth, it's about survival," Chambers said. "Market transitions are built on catching them right, and if you miss them it's almost impossible to recover."

Chambers also talked about how collaboration efforts within Cisco almost failed. An effective Web 2.0 strategy has to be spearheaded by a CEO, but leadership also has to give up some power to make it work, he noted. "The hard part about collaboration is we don't like change," Chambers said.

"Nor did my organisation and nor did I. I love command and control and I'm pretty good at it. 65,000 people, I say turn right, we turn right. I very rarely have to say it twice. That's not the future. It's the ability of groups to think together, to combine knowledge and experience." The first two years of collaboration in Cisco were "miserable", Chambers said, noting that when he first thought about Web 2.0 he was interested mainly in telepresence and simple forms of collaboration.

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