deal architect

Ten Types of Innovation

Doblin is an "Innovation Strategy" firm headquartered in Chicago. I like their classification of 10 innovation areas and landscapes . They provide areas where companies can innovate and examples in each area (click on each). I like the fact that they talk about innovation not just in product design, or just in premium priced products.

Argue about Google not being on any of the lists or snicker about Martha Stewart considered a channel innovator, but it is, well, an innovative way to look at innovation.

Business Model e.g Businessweek.com
Networks and Alliances  - Sara Lee
Enabling Process - Starbucks
Core Processes - Wal-Mart
Product Performance - VW Beetle
Product System - Steelcase
Service - Lenscrafters
Channel - Niketown
Brand - Ben and Jerry's
Customer Experience - Disney Cruises

Technology Innovation and Organization Charts

W. Edwards Deming, the famous management philosopher used to say that the organization chart was a flow chart.  It depicted a flow of blame. He helped the Japenese think about customer driven flows which mattered a lot more.

The reality is there are social networks within companies and they represent how most important work gets done - and innovation happens. BusinessWeek (subscription required) has a neat article on how companies are - quietly - mapping such networks within organizations. I say quietly because we persist in having formal organization charts even 50 years after Deming made his famous observation. If anything with Microsoft Visio and other tools we have glamorized the traditional organization chart even more - when we should be using them to map social network charts - "corporate X-Rays" as the article describes.

Also, see  here how SAP is innovating with its own internal social networks.

IBM in 2006. Ripe for deconstruction.

In a post last week, James Governor wrote "Gartner is like a mainframe in 1979. Ripe for deconstruction."

What about IBM itself? Almost 100 times Gartner's size - and still the "mainframe" of 2006.

IBM is the largest technology services vendor in the world -  services revenues larger than those of EDS, Accenture and the 5 largest Indian firms put together.  Even after spinning off its PC division, it still sells twice as much hardware as Sun. It sells almost twice as much software as SAP.

It talks about its commitment to Linux and open source and the "bazaar", but continues to use the "cathedral" - structured, traditional approaches in its own software and services. The old icon of US technology innovation spends only 7% of its revenues on R&D.  Microsoft with less than half its revenues spends as much on R&D. And most of IBM's innovations appear to come from the numerous acquisitions it makes. It is the symbol of what I call utility spending that eats up too much of incumbent IT spend.

We can and should pick on Gartner.

CIOs would much prefer - and certainly benefit a lot more - if we picked on IBM (and Microsoft and EDS and others). Question why it is not much more innovative and much, much cheaper. Call it something nicer than deconstruction if you want. But needs to be done. As Willie Sutton would say "that's where the money is"

Update: See Nick Carr's post Is the server industry doomed?

The Dubai Disaster

John Hagel explains why in spite of security concerns, if we want world class port management, we will likely not find it in the US. Chris Dickey of Newsweek explains that Dubai is a progressive, moderate element in the Middle East - indeed a big ally to the West there. The ports management contract should not be a big deal.

As readers of my blog know, I am a big fan of free trade and have taken on Lou Dobbs and other protectionists. But I believe here moderate Arabs and Muslims have lost the marketing war.  Dubai, one could argue is like Singapore - a city state ahead of most countries in adapting to the changing world order. But by not more aggressively tackling and criticizing the extreme Islamic fringe, they have let what should be a positive, differentiated image get neutralized.

While Chris Dickey paints the reaction of mainstream Americans as xenophobia, I would argue it is more of a marketing challenge for the moderates in the Middle East. We need to keep helping them, but they need to step up too as I wrote here.

Update: March 10. The deal is dead. Rich Karlgaard summarizes a number of perspectives here.  No reason to celebrate.

This is how democracies work

President Bush is about to visit India. In a Pew survey last year Indians had a much more favorable view of the US then did the British, Canadians and other traditional allies. Commerce, especially technology related, between the two countries has flourished in the last decade. India's growing economy has huge potential for US companies. Thanks go to the current Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh who started India's liberalization policies while he was Finance minister.

Singh's daughter is an ACLU attorney and one of Bush's harshest critics, as this WSJ article reports. Expect to see a bunch of protests on the streets of India too while the Prez is there. Expect heated arguments about nuclear policies.

But this is one of the ironies of democracy. The world's richest democracy and its most populous are boisterous - but also mature enough to realize what Churchill once said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

Parity in Sports and Economics

I must admit I have not been keeping up much with the winter Olympics. My son asked me how the US was doing on the total medal tally, and I looked it up and said "second....to Germany". "Germany??!!" he exclaimed.

I saw this BusinessWeek article about Japan's blistering growth. Its GDP growth will exceed that of the US for the first time since 1991.  The reader comments at the bottom are even more telling  - almost as if we had forgotten about this economic giant.

Parity - and competition - is good in sports and economics.  So whether it is BRICK in global economics or the fact that Ukraine, Trinidad and Ghana will be playing for the first time in a soccer World Cup, it's good for us as consumers and spectators. Yes, even the World Cup where Germany is the host team - and this time around even my son will not be surprised if they win.

Technology Innovation and Mardi Gras

New Orleans - great gumbo, etouffe - but not much high-tech. Except that the last few times I have been there have been for tech conferences - last time for Sapphire in 2004,  So, it is good to see New Orleans back - even at half pace - celebrating Mardi Gras

While Mardi Gras and New Orleans are steeped in traditions, technology keeps making them more contemporary - Hot beads, the jazz the city is famous for, the webcams of Bourbon Street, the technology and animation which goes in to various Krewe in the parades, the wikis set up to help in the post-Katrina chaos. In this year's Mardi Gras, a multi-media production Olf's Immolation highlights the city's anger and frustration post-Katrina.

As the Marlon Brando character says in the Tennessee Williams classic set in the city, A Streetcar Named Desire  "Luck is believing you're lucky, that's all".

New Orleans - keep believing!

Process Angioplasty - Public Sector

Zoli points to an example of angioplasty opportunity at the CA Department of Health (no pun intended!).

We can all have a field day with government processes. Here are 3 right off the top of my head:

a) In the airport security line employees of a private contractor check your boarding pass and ID, and then a few steps later a TSA employee needs to check your boarding pass again. And god forbid you put the boarding pass with your stuff going through the X Ray machine. Who does the  TSA trust less - the private contractor or you?

b) what if we had "negative tolls" where the government gave back refunds for delays due to lane closure or major construction? You think it would be incented to have 3 construction shifts a day working away? We can have "follow the sun" software development and 24x7 medical service, but civil engineers and construction workers are too complex to so manage?

c) Immigrants are required to have their finger prints taken and verified by the FBI. Fair enough. But because the INS takes years to process applications, many (most in some regions) immigrants are forced to go get another set of "fresh" fingerprints. Do fingerprints ever change? On the other hand for tourist visas we are trying out more sophisticated biometrics. And by the way, should the INS not perform angioplasty on any process that takes years?

One way to dramatically lower sales costs

This in Business 2.0

"Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, who's now working on a new company called Ning, captured the attitude of many startups when he said, "Ideally, we'll never meet any of our customers." After a customer located Ning's offices and dropped by for a visit, Andreessen said, the company took down the sign on its door."

The article later describes how Marc greeted another set of users with cupcakes.

Can you see an IBM or Oracle salesperson getting their expenses audited - green fees $ 200 ok, cupcake allowance more than $ 1.99 - sorry.  Maybe Gartner can learn from him how to reduce their 40% of revenues in sales and marketing cost?

Now this is transparency!

In the old world, a press release would go out "we are the most trusted global company"

Now Robert Scoble of Microsoft brags about it on his blog but also points to an internal mole who tells the world in his (or her) own blog that everything is not well in the most trusted company...

May be I should scratch that request for Dick Cheney to blog...I do not want him to be pointing to any moles in DC...