At 85, Mrs Dean last year visited the house in Kansas City that her family were going to live in before the iceberg claimed her father's life She says she won't be going to see Titanic. Navratil says his father "had no intention of ever taking us back, and since he knew he was at fault, he chose to change his name to Hoffman". As it turned out it was the father who never saw his sons again.Some years ago, Navratil was taken back to the site of the disaster. He said that he had felt a "strange sort of sadness", as the image returned to him of his father standing on the deck "upright, proud and resigned to death".Navratil, who became a Professor of Psychology, dismisses the legend that the band struck up a hymn as the boat sank, saying: "I never heard the hymn Nearer my God to Thee being sung, nor did I see passengers panicking or kneeling down to pray."Their lifeboat was spotted by the liner Carpathia and they were taken on board to safety, apparently an event more upsetting than the actual flight from the sinking ship. While his two-year-old brother Edmond was put into a lifeboat, Michel's father took him in his arms, saying: "Maman will come and get you. Tell her that I have always loved her, and that I still love her."The story of how Navratil came to be aboard the doomed ship is extraordinary in itself. His father, separated from his mother, borrowed a friend's passport, snatched his two sons and fled France for the New World.

Later, the two boys were sleeping in their second-class cabin when their father woke them: "He quickly dressed us in warm clothes and took us up to the deck," Navratil told Midi-Libre in his home town of Montpellier. Andersen Consulting says that executives who have had sneak previews of the forum are enthusiastic: one apparently likened it to "a mixture between business school and the Tardis".The firm has already found increasing evidence of a divide between the best multinationals and the rest. "For a long time I followed my father [on the ship] with my eyes until the lifeboat drifted away ..." The 90-year-old Frenchman, one of only seven living survivors of the Titanic, spoke to his local newspaper last week, in what may well prove to be the final public account of the disaster. Navratil remembers that on the night of the wreck he ate fried eggs with his father and brother in the ship's dining room, which was festooned with lights "as if for a party". TO A four-year-old boy, unable to grasp the historical scale of what was happening, the dying ship looked like "an enormous toy full of lights" Michel Navratil says he cannot remember being afraid. Mr Berger says: "The best are quicker to spot the trigger points of future opportunities.". Mr Berger and his team are also holding discussions with several other companies.One of the ideas behind the venture is to use the latest information technology to encourage executives to arrive at the right decisions more quickly and more directly. At its heart is a multimedia environment designed to help managers find their way through the specific issues facing them.Andrew Berger, a partner in the firm and director of "The Third Millennium Forum", says: "It is physically impossible for senior executives to solve their problems by working harder or longer hours.

What they must do is work smarter."The forum creates an environment that enables them to concentrate on what is "vital to the survival and growth of their organisation by helping them navigate through a landscape of relevant knowledge, grouped for easy navigation into knowledge objects", says Mr Berger.Like the Stanford initiative, a fundamental aim of the project is to create an exclusive club of forward-thinking companies which can steal a march on competitors by gaining access to the latest information and best practice, and to identify other leading companies with whom they can explore strategic alliances.Among companies that have given their backing to the initiative and contributed state-of-the-art products for use in the workshops are Compaq, Psion, Toshiba, NEC and Tektronics. But Andersen is hoping that it can use the information technology expertise it has amassed to guide senior executives through the challenges ahead. The forum, developed at the firm's Windsor operation and launched this month, will concentrate on management teams from the automotive, electronic and high-tech industries in the UK and Europe. WITH the New Year bringing the Millennium a step closer, Andersen Consulting is seeking to help existing clients and other multinational companies to realise what they must do to prosper in the coming decade and beyond, writes Roger Trapp. Dubbed "The Third Millennium Forum", the initiative is not the only one of its kind. The consulting arm of the Stanford Research Institute last year announced its own "Business in the Third Millennium" programme. Britain's transformation into a service economy was confirmed with financial and professional services, retail and distribution, and food, drink and catering also prominent.More than 90 per cent of companies featured are started by people younger than 40, with nearly 60 per cent less than 30.Two-thirds of companies originated as start-ups and many have grown organically rather than through acquisitions Ninety per cent are financed from retained profits..