Constraints and innovation – is there a silver lining?

July 22, 2009 at 7:57 am · Filed under Book Review, Books

The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times, Anthony, Scott D.

The Silver Lining is positioned as a case for the strategic value of innovation in economic downturns. It evolves into a reflection on the role of constraints in innovation and on the possibility of successful innovation within large, complex, organizations. Scott Anthony, the author, is a former student and current colleague of Clay Christensen and is President of the boutique consulting firm Innosight. The book was conceived in October of 2008 and the manuscript delivered to HBS Press in January and offers itself as a good example of the value of tight constraints. (Here is the obligatory book website)

The Silver Lining presents a succinct, focused, argument for how to do effective disruptive innovation within existing organizations. This runs contrary to the research conclusions in Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma that linked successful disruptive innovation with new entrants not industry incumbents. The management practices of successful market leaders emphasize the prudent deployment of resources to address clearly understood problems and clearly meaningful opportunities. Those practices are about coloring inside the lines. Disruptive innovation goes beyond just coloring outside the lines to redrawing the lines and creating entirely new pictures.

It’s certainly not fear of new concepts and management theories; executives seem to buy and change them as easily as a new set of clothes. But executives demonstrably favor ideas that involve ways to do what they are currently doing in a more efficient, more effective manner. Systematizing disruptive innovation is a different beast. Senior executives have to think and act in ways that run counter to everything they have done to be successful in their careers. As Putz notes, they must be multi-paradigmatic in how they structure their business model, run their firms, lead their teams, and most difficult of all, see themselves and frame their identity as leaders. Simply put, leaders who want to capture the potential of disruptive innovation need to be "consistently inconsistent" with their teams and themselves, and still hold it all together and deliver results quarter after quarter. (pp 154-155)

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Review: Why Buy the Cow?

January 29, 2008 at 1:55 pm · Filed under Books, Business Model, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, FASTforward08, Web 2.0

A collaborative writing project, not only sponsored by WebEx but also published by them, this book carries the byline: How the on-demand revolution powers the new knowledge economy. [“on-demand” is a critical element of the “customer revolution” -- the FASTforward ’08 theme]

The premise of the book is well stated in the Forward, written by Dr. Timothy Chou, author of “The End of Software”  (a favorite mantra I repeat, walking IT halls):

…businesses and consumers alike can access amazing functionality, built on massive computing power, by simply connecting to it. Which prompts the question that is the title of this book: Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free? Or, if not for free, by paying only for value received, completely free of the headaches and burdens inherent in “cow ownership.”

As I was writing this (primed with another set of words to begin), these comments struck a different chord. Almost in a reverse-Billy-Crystalesque-City-Slicker sort of way, I thought of the dude ranch mentality. In this case, the irony plays out with the CIO-as-land-baron, who has grown so accustomed to a Dallas-like status that goes with managing a ‘large spread’ (they’re not called server farms for nuthin’), that CIOs can’t imagine any other way of doing business.

But they’ve been duped – somewhat attributed to the term which has labeled them all these many years: Information Technology. The reality is that they’re not barons of information – they’re barons of data. Ten years ago we started a movement to unleash the data from the applications they were locked into. Anyone who has to use enterprise software will suggest that we haven’t gotten very far.

CIOs are the barons of data technology, not information technology. Data only becomes information when it ‘informs’ – which requires a recipient-relevant context (ask any CIO what that even means). A map on the wall of an abandoned gas station in the Mojave desert is only useless data –unless the gas station is marked on the map AND it’s relative directional positioning (e.g. angles of the building to the grid of the map). Information is data in recipient-relevant context – and it has to ‘matter’ to me, as well.

Intentional or not, these barons of technology turned everyone else into information serfs or peasants – left to be satisfied with whatever they were given, whenever it was provided to them, and be thankful.

The internet and decreasing costs of computing power and storage shifted the power base. There was a land rush on – anyone could own a piece of land and call it their own. And they did.

The internet was the virtual space to create your own sandlot game, and let it grow into a major league ballpark (if that’s what you wanted). Many warned about the ungrounded economics upon which the stock prices of eCommerce companies were based – and they gloated when the stocks plummeted. The economics did prove to be wrong, but even in their supposed overinflated states, these stocks may still prove to be undervalued after all (Amazon’s 1999 $100+ price was matched again in Oct. 2007).

But, back to the book…it did get all these thoughts stirred up.

My colleague, Bill Ives, contributed two great chapters, both focused on 2.0 topics, with some stirring of his own. Offering real-world examples, he illustrated simple, successful 2.0 endeavors. Nothing earthshaking – but that’s the point of it all. Earthquakes are powerful and can move a lot of matter in a very short period of time, but they take a long time to build up and the results can be catastrophic.

There’s a time and a place for being treated like royalty, paying $100/person for a dinner. But most of the time, we really just want the price, convenience and the unique features of a really good roadside diner. Bill shares the sights and sounds of the digital Route 66.

High marks to Bill for totally ‘nailing’ the real value and potential of Knowledge Management – by aligning it to a del.icio.us example. That suddenly put to rest for me my distaste for Tom Davenport’s continuous insistence on harkening back to the over-engineered, over-controlled, baron-wielding-devices of the likes of Lotus Notes, as proof that 2.0 offers nothing new. KM isn’t about someone else managing my knowledge – it’s about me managing my own, on my own terms: THAT’s at the heart of the User Revolt (you have to understand the ‘why’ of the revolt if you want to seek ways to either quell or leverage the revolution).

Bill hints at, as I firmly believe, that we haven’t even begun to unleash the undiscovered potential of the next, yet-to-be-named-Wiki-Mash-a-Blog-Tag, that might define the rules of the ‘new’ game to be played in this vast field of dreams. One example he offers is Harvard’s H2O project which puts a different spin on knowledge collections (like del.icio.us), by creating playlists of content: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/home.do [don’t confuse the letter in H2O with the number zero, as in 2.0].

Taking the time to champion once again the beauty of the fundamental doctrine of The Cluetrain Manifesto – Markets are Conversations – Bill offered many great examples of how markets are changed by conversations. While I seem to hear more rumors of corporate leaders getting caught in the backlash of having open conversations via blogs, Bill offers a great list of successes. He also features three case studies, illustrating specific economic capitalization:

• Creating Small Business Communities to Develop Markets
  An Oklahoma winery gained its own market attention by drawing upon the collective strengths and energies of other wineries, by creating an online business community.
• Blogging Your Way to Success
  A founder of a 2.0 solution gained focus for his offering by gaining attention to his blog.
• Creating Online Connections and Relationships
  An on-demand service, filled a market need by facilitating the connection between individual needs and the service offerings of others (need-service matchmaking).

Bill shares a number of other artifacts and examples – thought appetizers. He calls attention to the behaviors of these emergent experiences as they evolve and connect one with another – an amazing element of emergence, unintentional results – often more valuable than the original design/intent.

I saw more evidences of a thread of truth, which we are not fully embracing. Enterprise 2.0 is far more significant than Web 2.0 because unlike the corollary of Web 2.0=internet, Enterprise 2.0>intranet. It fundamentally changes the way we can/should consider doing business, internally or externally, for ALL relationships.

A final Enterprise 2.0 perspective from Bill:

On-demand business solutions are already empowering businesses to interact in a richer and more personalized way with customers [I add here, all other relationships: vendors, dealers, employees, etc.]. In the future, we see a movement toward greater integration of these services, to offer a full spectrum of collaboration options, extending the benefits they offer. Participants will be able to move seamlessly from asynchronous dialogue media like blogs and wikis, into virtual meetings when the conversation calls for real-time exchanges…The availability of this full spectrum of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration technologies will expand the options for connection and further enable community.

So to close the circle on that chapter Bill, it goes back to the opening quotes you provided from the Cluetrain Manifesto, right? To ride the crest of the economic wave of ‘now’, we need to find new ways to enable and facilitate (ala. access to facts) continuous conversations – AND participate in them.

I’m waxing my surfboard.

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wikipatterns – The First Enterprise 2.0 Playbook

January 17, 2008 at 12:08 pm · Filed under Books, Enterprise 2.0

My copy of WikiPatterns arrived while I was away for the holidays, so it was a bit of a second Christmas when I arrived back to find that there was a package waiting for me. I couldn’t, as much as I tried, remember ordering anything, so I tore the envelope open and there it was: WikiPatterns (Author’s Site)

Those who know me know that I am not a huge wiki proponent. I don’t talk about them very much and I probably don’t give them as much respect as they deserve. They are one of the few Enterprise Social Computing tools to have reall caught on and I admit: I have seen a lot of success inside companies who use them.

So it was in that state of mind that I jumped in and started reading WikiPatterns. If it was going to capture my attention it had to be more than a book about Wikis, it had to take a much broader view of collaboration and social software.

Wikipatterns starts off in the first chapter by recounting one of the stories behind the genesis of the Toyota Manufacturing Process set in 1950, well before there were wikis. Stewart makes a few key points that made me think this book was about more than just wikis

Instead of giving people a job, and trying to control how they work, it’s better to let go: give them the job, and let them figure out the best way to do it. . . The outcome is what matters, not the method. Not only is the end result better, but it’s not just a flash in the pan. It’s something sustainable. An isn’t that what every organization wants?

The book then dives right in and talks about the elephant in the room: Wikipedia. In the section called “The Wikipedia Factor” Stewart explains the differences between Wikipedia and your own internal company wiki.

Wikipatterns covers almost every component of Enterprise 2.0, from examining the effects on Knowledge Management, fantastic case studies to a guide to running your own pilot programs.

Without rehashing the entire book, I have to say that this one surprised me. This is your first Playbook that will help you break through the frustrations of trying to learn “what do I do next?” when you are eager to bring Enterprise 2.0 tools and strategies to your company.

I’ll be handing out copies to friends and clients. (PS: The links to the Amazon.com wikipatterns page contain my affiliate link. I am doing this as an experiment as I have never done an affiliate link before. Please feel free to just navigate to wikipatterns.com)

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