I used to work at an arm of Time Warner, the media conglomerate. What employees there learn: Synergy is a joke, and the company's many divisions hate working with each other so much they'd sooner partner with outsiders than give someone in-house a deal. The most famous, if apocryphal, anecdote: When Time Warner Cable asked to license the Road Runner character from Warner Bros., the studio initially wanted to charge $1 billion for the use. Putting AOL in the mix only made things worse. I'd hoped things might have gotten better in recent years — through my retirement plan, I'm still a shareholder. A recent press release made me despair. The headline: "Warner Bros. Digital Distribution Partners with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment." Only inside Time Warner would a collaboration like this be considered newsworthy.

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