Shameless Promotion! Disclaimer: This post is a promotion for my one-day training event in Portland, Oregon on Friday, May 29, 2015, 9:00AM-4:00PM PST. This training session follows BRMConnect, the world's first and highly anticipated conference for BRMs being held at Cascade Crest Conference Center on May 26-28 in Portland’s picturesque Washington Park on the grounds [...]
Information technology is enabling business innovation through new types of product and service, transformed business models and improved lives for customers, consumers, shareholders, employees and citizens. For example, when Sam Walton famously recognized the competitive advantage Walmart could gain by 'turning inventory to information' he was experiencing (and then acting upon) an insight that would [...]
This is the third and final part in a multi-part post inspired by Robert Pirsig's masterwork, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In Part 1 (titled "Reflections on 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' 38 Years Later ") I discussed the implications for IT professionals of Pirsig's musings on 'classic' versus 'romantic' worldviews, [...]
I find that most strategy efforts aren't very strategic. Nor do they have much real impact, or lead to significant change. The Problems with Traditional Strategy Formulation Approaches I think the supporting evidence for my findings lies in the fact that most companies either: Don't undertake strategy formulation initiatives unless they feel they have to [...]
I had a very interesting and exciting week! I was a speaker at an nGenera Senior Executive Summit, which drew about 60 top executives from mostly large companies - CEO's, CIO's, CFO's, HR and shared service heads, and even a couple of Lawyers and Platform/Brand managers. It was an auspicious group - both in terms [...]
In my first post in this series, "Design Thinking 2.0: How Web 2.0 Might Foster and Enable an Innovation Revolution" I summarized the concepts of Design Thinking and raised the question of how Web 2.0 might enable increased innovation. (For an interesting perspective on Design Thinking by Business Week's Bruce Nussbaum, see his excellent essay [...]
In Part 1 of this series, I suggested that the implications of Enterprise 2.0 for the IT organization are dramatic. I also suggested that the ways of designing and executing an IT Operating Model in a Web 2.0 context are quite different from traditional approaches. In Part 2, I outlined the major elements of an [...]
I've been posting on and off about Cloud Computing since I began this blog a couple of years ago. But, as one who spends most of his time with IT leaders of large global enterprises, sometimes the promise of the Cloud seems more like a mirage! I've Looked At Clouds From Both Sides Now Back [...]
I've had this IT funding fantasy for years (I know, it's really sad that my more exciting fantasies are to do with IT funding scenarios!) Supposing the CIO had to do a fund drive every year or every six months the way our local National Public Radio stations had to operate in order to fund [...]
As an IT professional or IT leader, do you find yourself with questions or issues you'd like to get opinions about? Of course you do. As a consultant, researcher, educator and author, I get questions all the time. For me they are my oxygen. If the questions ever stopped, well, I frankly don't know what [...]