deal architect

More Innovation

on the New Florence blog

OneCognizant: System of Engagement meets System of Record

Mobile Innovators

The Last Mile at San Quentin

How solar storms cause havoc

What’s the opposite of innovation?

Innovative or weird flavors?

Security as a boardroom agenda item

Talk about Defcon 5. The McKinsey Quarterly (sub required) tells its executive audiences to be wary of cyberattacks. Wow, since when did strategy firms and CEOs start focusing on digital security?

Before IT folks rejoice and spend their likely increased budgets, listen to what Chris Anderson of Wired has to say.

Chris, who knows a thing or two about security and writes in a recent issue about the explosion of drones and related security issues, told an IT audience at HP Discover last month he trusts security in the Google public cloud more than his own IT. Why? Because perversely, it is attacked all the time and that forces it to invest in the best security people and tools. Kinda like a bank. Willie Sutton may find it a good target but it can invest in much thicker safes than we can in our mattresses.

In my recent book, I included “paranoid” as 1 of 12 attributes of the new technology elite. It goes way beyond cyberattacks. As companies embed technology in their products they need to prepare for teardowns, digital espionage and many other industry nuances. i have excerpted the chapter below. BTW, it includes a case study on a drone which can penetrate corporate networks and eavesdrop on mobile conversations.

Download Paranoia Chapter

Improving incumbency is the best “innovation”

An executive told me a few weeks ago “My outsourcer has been reading too many of your innovation books. We hired them to do fairly mundane application and infrastructure support. Instead of doing that better, cheaper, faster, they are always offering to help us with our innovation projects”.

If they are bored doing what they were hired for, why don’t they resign that contract and restructure themselves as an innovation focused firm? Of course not, and they would want a hefty early termination fee if the client asked them to leave.

As I was pondering his predicament, I did a call with my daughter currently in Spain. We did a Facebook video chat and since the quality was poor switched to Skype. Skype told me to turn off video because the line quality was poor. We have Verizon FiOS and the TV networks are bombarded with its next-gen speeds. How about doing some basic things like a VoIP call better?

I see the growing debate around whether Google Now will be a better digital assistant than Apple’s Siri. Nowhere have I seen people discuss that given the state of our mobile networks, the quality of either tool or the cost of using them while roaming outside the US will continue to be disappointing. That does not stop AT&T from bragging about its 4G network. How about doing basic connectivity faster and cheaper?

I see IBM spending millions on Smarter Planet commercials. That’s less than 10% of their revenues. How about better, faster, cheaper in DB2, Tivoli, existing data centers, apps support?

I see SAP and fans talk about nothing but HANA and the promise of SuccessFactors. How about better, faster, cheaper in the $ 75+ billion it and its partners already cost customers every single year?

Not just picking on the vendors above – everywhere you turn in IT and BPO in services – storage, print supplies, hr transactions, very little productivity has been delivered in the last few years.

So, heed the executive – quit reading my books, and focus on improving incumbent performance. That would be impressive “innovation” for my next book.

Summer Innovations

On the New Florence blog – a series on how our summers have evolved

Wimbledon

Summer Parties

Brakes on watercrafts

Vacation Time Sharing

US Open at the Olympic Club

Not your Grandpa’s Perfect Game

Not your parent’s grill

Cordina frozen drink pouches

This month I am running on that blog a similar series on innovations at the London Olympics.

What this dog saw

As my readers know, at any given time I have no problems being pleaded not to be too tough on Vendor A, B, C….

What’s been more baffling has been the reaction to the overwhelmingly positive case studies in my books.

It started with BP in The New Polymath. The Gulf spill brought me a number of negative comments and when I presented about them a number of raised eyebrows. How can you be nice to someone that evil?

I have been generous to Best Buy in both books. It has led a couple of folks to comment: You must be long their stock. I profiled the supply chain of the HP PSG division in the New Technology Elite. People smirked.

Outsourcers tell me I am too nice to Cognizant. Software vendors say I am too nice to Salesforce.com. They conveniently ignore why - the pages in my book and blogs where these companies make me go wow. 

In BP’s case, I wrote about a tiny (12 people) group that has repeatedly delivered innovation to may parts of that giant empire. Due to PR constraints they would not let me profile in my book what the group did to facilitate the clean-up. I later blogged about it. Whatever you may think of the company, admire this team.   With Best Buy I wrote nice things about its customer analytics and social savvy. In The New Technology Elite, I also wrote Apple had become the “category killer” in consumer electronics, but can you not admire anything a company does because they have a few bad quarters? In HP’s case, the supply chain is impressive in its agility. It adjusts to countless hiccups — including ones caused by the Japanese tsunami and the Icelandic volcano — and also how it deals with longer-term shifts as it integrates acquisitions and transitions from PCs to laptops to Ultrabooks.

When it comes to vendors complaining about their competitors, I usually point out – I gave you a chance to present your best for consideration for my books. Your PR is constantly bombarding me with earnings reports, new customer signings. How about sharing operational metrics and post-implementation case studies?  

I heard Malcolm Gladwell present a few months ago, and he repeated something he wrote in the preface of “What the Dog Saw”

“Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.”

That’s what I ask for. Sit back and go wow about my episodes from BP, BestBuy, HP and other examples, even if you think the company is evil, doomed or worse. 

“One of the good guys”

Workday is recruiting Jim Holincheck from Gartner. He is a top notch HR analyst, and I agree with Dennis Howlett, “one of the good guys”. Very nice functional and personality fit for Workday.

Jim and I go back a ways. I tried – unsuccessfully – to recruit him when he was at Accenture in 1993. I finally succeeded in 2000. I lost him to my former employer, Gartner in 2003. But we have always been a phone call away when we want to validate anything as peers.

Through it all, I can certify Jim is high-ethics. In his soft-spoken way, he knows how to make his points. I have long admired the fact that he is a tinkerer – always curious about new apps. I always felt if there was a PC Labs for enterprise software he would be a great fit.

I also learned you do not want to challenge the guy at foosball. Or play trivial pursuit on anything Disney World with him.   

I am looking forward to another chapter with Jim as he joins the other good guys at Workday. 

More New Renaissance

on the innovation blog

The Last Mile at San Quentin

You say Football, I say Soccer

Summer Innovations: Not your parent’s grill

Digital Honey-Dos

Homeless to Harvard – Part 2

Reinventing Nature Conservancy

50 Shades of Grey

Fair warning – there is nothing erotic in this post:)

But the bestseller’s title applies to the technology world. Amazing how many versions of the truth we have floating around

a) If you live on Twitter, Google Glass is the best thing since sliced bread, or at least since SAP HANA.

b) If you live on Wall Street, Facebook’s first ever quarterly results due July 26 will be a moment of truth

c) Several people complimented me for posting the technical paper on HANA here. Academic papers are the only truthful stuff left in tech literature, they would say.

d) Doug Henschen brings out in excellent detail how difficult it to ferret the truth between SAP’s hype and Oracle’s FUD on HANA

e) Doug cites my former Gartner colleague, Don Feinberg in his article. To many, Don and other analysts are the ultimate truth. It is a trust they have earned over decades

f) I talk to a consultant who helps many clients on complex data projects, and he adds more gory details to the field experience and how difficult it for clients to unravel the truth in sales pitches.

g) I hear from a CIO who inherited a global SAP environment 5 years ago. Every year since he has had a “delayering” project – consolidating instances, data centers, outsourcers. Each year his cost had dwindled. That’s his truth – more to squeeze out, not to spend more on shiny new stuff.

And then there is the ultimate truth: who will play Christian Grey, the 27 year old entrepreneur from the book, in the movie?

Love to see an academic paper on that selection process :)

Celebrating “Grown-Ups”

Like most in technology, I am a big fan of start-up companies. My books, in particular, have made me just as respectful of companies that have survived 50, 100, 200 years and even more how they have influenced the evolution of technology, even though they may be nowhere near technology capitals.

Take Corning, from my last book

“the basic materials in its fiber optics had been available since the 1930s, but the market really took off in the 1990s when telecom companies started replacing their copper networks. Gorilla Glass, its very successful product for consumer electronic displays, got its inspiration from strengthened glass Corning had developed in the 1960s.”

As part of my research, I got a copy of The Generations of Corning, which was published on its 150th anniversary in 2001.

Or 3M in the last book

The company many of us know best for Post-it notes and Scotch tape has more than 55,000 products and has an uncanny ability to combine highly innovative technologies in new and unexpected ways.

Again, I learned plenty from a company publication celebrating a century of innovation published in 2002.

Last year, I posted on the New Florence blog about IBM’s Centennial and GE’s. This year we celebrate Union Pacific’s 150th, and Citi’s 200th. Spend a few minutes on each post and marvel at the impact each has had on technology and applications in work, life and play.

More New Florence

on the innovation blog

The Clei Cabrio convertible bed

Sabotage by software

The transit of Venus

The IT Consultants – Venture Capitalists

Bit.Ly’s Big Influence

The colors of Las Vegas