Who says you cannot learn from airline magazines?
Reading Spirit magazine on a Southwest flight I saw quote below from canine expert Cesar Millan
I think it is also a good way to think of innovation.
Too many back office and infrastructure vendors talk innovation when at the back of the pack they should be cautious and focused on threats – managing risks, on economics, on compliance. Their innovation should come in the form of cloud economics for the back office, analysis of newer business models, staying on top of changing cyber threats, privacy, compliance etc. They should be all over managing cost of IT. And vendors in this space should quit pretending they can deliver what the front of the pack can deliver.
The middle comes from many operational systems which should keep things running smoothly. Easy to say in our fast changing world it means looking at same day deliveries (maybe even same hour with drone deliveries?) , green computing demands on data centers, constantly shifting supply chains and a wide range of industry specific operational changes.
The front has to come from product and customer facing groups. My recent books have shown there is no industry or country where you can survive without ever smarter, IP enabled products and services. As younger consumers influence more buying decisions, there is intense demand to reengineer sales, marketing and customer service. As more machines enter the workplace, customer service has to evolve to support them.
Each part of the pack has a role to play. Problem is too many forget their roles, get too enamored with their roles and many analysts and partners in their spaces do them a disservice by not pointing that out and in fact encouraging them to be distracted.
