Technology still moving fast

About Moore's law, Intel still invest strongly in 45 nanometers technology in competition with AMD, IBM, ...
For the future, why not quantum computers? May be not ready !
..and atom thin graphite to build transistors...

And this fantastic technology, RFID, with all its opportunities and risks, now at 50 micrometer size !

Man/machines interface:
Suppressing the mouse, eye movement driven computer? It's an old dream. I already tried that in an IBM research lab years ago. A bit disorienting, with a funny feeling not to be allowed to look anywhere, and a sort of sea-sick impression. I hope they improved !
... and why not connect your brain directly to games?

...and how much data world wide? and what for? If we cannot absorb more than 1 info/s (short term memory size limitation), compute how many information you will be able to absorb during your all life (3 Billions ?). Multiply by the population (6 Billion?)... It give something at the level of zettabytes, considered by IDC as the level of amount of data stored around 2010...
So we will zap more and more !

About the advances about programming bots (intelligent agents), look at these social bots !

And the other face, risks are always there, hackers and co .

How to survive in daily business life?

- So many management concepts!
Smoking or non smoking management concepts? I really like this one !
Remind me an old chart about management concepts life cycle...

- A good manager has surely to be stress tolerant, have to feed his curiosity, ...
In daily life, some nice vizualization tools can help him (look at the demos...)
Ignorance is his basic state. Can Artificial intelligence, this prothesis to natural ignorance help him?
("Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?" Steve Polyak)

And so much tasks, contradictory, so many mails, sometimes useful, sometimes just "umbrella" mails ("I copy you, so I am clean"), sometimes just business intelligence information. Microsoft showed that over 70% of information workers spend a fifth of their time or more on e-mail related tasks.
How do people deal with these queues of "things to do", are their trade-off, to decide to do or not, based on their own personal priority system or on organization priority system ?
Recent studies by IDC, the Working Council of CIOs, the Ford Motor Company, and Reuters found that:
* Knowledge workers spend from 15% to 35% of their time searching for information.
* Searchers are successful in finding what they seek 50% of the time or less.
* 40% of corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.
* Some studies suggest that 90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports is spent recreating information that already exists.
* An IDC report suggests that rework costs an enterprise about $5,000 per person per year for an estimated annual total of $12 million dollars across the U.S. Furthermore, not locating and retrieving information has an opportunity cost of $15 million dollars per year.

People are still interested in "learning" how to deal with email better. Maybe Web2 can offer some solutions - for a recent analysis of the situation, see Michael Sampson's series of posts on the topic that starts here..
...but is there a danger that Web2 opportunities amplify the problem?

Knowledgable ?

- Just found a good new book about KM and performance manager. It examines the partnership between decision-makers and the people who provide them with information to drive better decisions and suggestions for 42 decisions areas, taking into account the need to understand your data, but also plan and monitor performance.

- One way to start KM in an organization is to consider it as a service

- KM often needs technology, what do you do in front of that kind of people (good funny story about relation with technology ! I know so many people like that...)
More seriously, I like Martin Koser blog, with this relevant post on Management tools and Bain article

- The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT. Is that true?

- Management of K is not enough, you have too to do things !
- ...and always this relation between Innovation and KM techniques

- Librarians are the historically first "knowledge managers" in organizations. Now, all managers are supposed to be ! Are librarians out? Or any manager is the librarian?
- But classification not so easy: look at this good literature synthesis of some connected concepts

- Teaching (I'm a teacher) and KM tools: a relevant list of techniques

- PKM, a new buzzword or individual productivity still a key challenge?
and Davenport's thoughts about it

- Against dominant thoughts, creating knowledge, tagging changes and improves KM...

- I like this idea about KM strategy to capitalize on know-how can be counterproductive, in the case the know-how you store is average, too low level. It can inhibit employee's will to experiment.

- KM, organizational learning gurus still alive, studying how KM can be a link between NGO and companies, in case they want to cooperate.
-...and a good way to use knowledge at the bottom of the pyramid...

- Are incentives on KM good enough to stimulate K improvement?

Is BI so far from KM? Where is the real frontier?
Does BI concerns more "weak noises", unknown things, intelligence of outside and KM more known things, inside existing knowledge?
BI tools can be applied inside, e.g. to discover new concept through BI analysis of internal stream of messages! So, what new on BI?

- Good strategy and BI: there is a clear convergence between strategy and BI
- Data mining is the central tool of any BI mechanism...

Do you love processes?

BPM: Processus, toujours un thème central. Ce séminaire a lieu en Europe pendant tout 2007.

Some very nice useful charts, from Gartner, about best of BPM, and a lot of additional charts.
Among these, this one about BPM and SOA relation, or another one...

but... what about HOP (Human and Organizational Performance)?
Must human problems be treated before technological and organizational problems? Old debate.

Is corporate performance depending from good management of management processes?
Sure it is a key necessary condition, but not sufficient!

Projects and processes are closely related:

- What is a process ? many good definitions, but one way is to see it as a never ending project.
So you can apply some of project methodologies to processes.
Why not, for example, prototype a process as we, in agile companies, prototype projects?

- Alignment of projects with strategies is key. To do that, we have to recognize that 90% of projects are created to optimize way of doing, processes. So, project prioritization needs first processes prioritization!

...so what's new about IT projects ?

New world of IT projects, towards globalized agile companies...
and some still alive good laws about conditions of IT projects success (systems integration, databases, IT governance, cost reduction, and delegating work to IT)

IT Governance, key and still alive

So many publications mentionning this topic. Does that mean that
- nobody understand anything?

- there are some unsolved problems in the concept and its application?

- it is now just a way for vendors (consultants, gurus, SOA solutions providers, scorecard specialists ) to market

- Organizations, in spite of the "official speech", are very very far from that?

One of the permanent criticism is that too much governance can kill agility, can kill innovation and adaptation.

It is sure that governance concepts and techniques are mainly "mechanistic", and sometimes far from systemic and "organic" adaptation.

Often too, within governance speeches, a "human" point of view is developed, but is it sincere or just "window dressing"?

Some rebounds on that:

- Is governance, agility incompatible? May be, not?

- SOX and management decommitment !!!

This can occur in some big companies, that are sometimes exceptional at the IT Governance point of view (IBM, ...), and now try to find the right balance between control and need of organic adaptation...

- the key Application Portofolio Management (APM) again and again

- as everybody knows, indicators are connected to Governance. BSC concept is not far, strategic mapping tools too...

Some example of comment on a good usage of bsc...
...a lot of education in business schools on BSC, in a lot of different disciplines
(financial control, governance, strategy, business plans, ...)
examples of students thinking on bsc...

CIO is just in the middle of all that.
- a lot of choices to do in the permanent pressure of demands...
- ...with end user power at last...
- Governance often means contracts. But contracts don't solve everything:
SLA (Service level agreements contracts) cannot replace cooperation in case of outsourcing

- How can CIO solve application challenges? Replace everything by an ERP ? Bridge everything with SOA and Web services? Good question.

- ...And CIO has to use already existing models like ITIL (and others, Cobit, CMMI, ISO xxx, ...)

Searching and Thinking...

I like this one:

MIT's Michael Schrage explains why getting highly relevant results from a search can actually inhibit the iterative process by which we discover and learn.
Idea we have about relevance of our search evolves while searching. Creativity can come from that iterative process too:
I search something, I am partially dissatisfied of the result, that makes me refocus on new idea about my search, I search again, ....

So: If you find what you search immediatly, you stop your brain ! Nice philosophical thought.

You can find there nice high level contributions about searching...
Just took this one too:
Jim McGee talks about the need for businesses to allow employees time to think, and the extent to which thinking can be done in the social public of blogs.

About fast thinking, I adore this fast (at the speed of the brain ), intelligent video from Michael Wesch (Kansas State University) about Web2 (but don't like the music, I stopped the sound...)

Some additionnal comment on it....

Technologies hot news...

What's next after still well living silicium ( yes , 45 nanometers...) to go-on on Moore's law?

Photonic computer is one of the opportunities.

Telephone still moving:

Ultramobile is the keyword. McKinsey (just register!) shows an interesting study about value of mobile phones...

Man/machine interface nice evolutions:

- Flexible plastics, flexible screens, even flexible RFIDs. Why not become invisible, with flexible screen as clothing and a camera behind you, reprojecting background image on the screen ....

- Night vision with new LEDs

and... are you lost in translation?

Mais attention: les technologies portent toujours leurs facteurs de risques !

Innovate ??

Ultimate and permanent challenge for people, companies, societies is to innovate (to survive?)

This week, a lot of point of view on this topic, re-emphasizing some basic evident ideas:

First, innovation in IT is often nowadays coming from "transgressive renegades".
Continuous flow of new emerging technologies allows permanently unsatisfied end-user to invent their way.
A good IT department must consider/absorb these innovations, considered as valid prototypes, and to transform them into reliable professional solid applications...

This idea is not far from the need, for organizations who want to adapt and change, to capitalize on "change agents" (This way is the only way! Organizations, closed in their today's paradigm, cannot event imagine the methods of to-morrow. Fortunately, some people, these change agents, are already in to-morrow's paradigm....)

Not far too from this idea is the search of "bumpy bits"
If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits, in an aligned, flat world....

But innovation must be highly stimulated by collaboration, toward collective creativity. That is a new key mission for CIOs...
Some people can think there is a conflict then between IT Governance (driving to a flat aligned world?) and creativity stimulation (subversive guys...). Good debate, where opinions (and experiences) are mixed...

Informal network concept, illustrated by 1993 famous article "The Company Behind the Chart" in Harvard Business Review, still the key condition, following Booz-Allen-Hamilton, for collective creativity.

Some french thinking now...
Les universités, lieu d'innovation, devraient quant à elles être en pointe. Mais...
Le budget de R&D de la Chine, dont les grandes universités s'inspirent du MIT ou de Stanford, va dépasser celui du Japon... qui achève une réforme sans précédent de ses universités... tandis que l'université de Cambridge investit dans des « hedge funds » pour ses placements !!!

Why did I focus on Innovation this week? Just because a friend of mine sent me a personality test, to check if I was really a "strategist" (my official title on my business card...). And guess what? I am not a "strategist", but an "innovator" !!! And you?

Pour les "techies" qui n'ont pas pu aller au CES Las Vegas

Très bonne synthèse des nouveautés technologiques de ce salon....

Miscellaneous news about processes…

- Even if you are not necessarily a military fan, it is evident that DoD (US Department of Defense, may be the bigger worldwide purchaser ) plays an important role in definition of standards, in rationalization of IT.

(Cals, Step, CMMI, ...). This Dod article about processes gives interesting views about defining roles, within an ERP implementation challenge, for Business Process Owners, separating clearly management responsibilities and technical responsibilities....

- About the remanent strategic alignment question: " must we change organization first, an then implement IT solution , or must we facilitate/force changes with IT first" , P,P,P,I, thinks strategy, processes and people issues must be treated before IT solution choice... More complex in real life.

- IT governance and application portfolio techniques not so easy to sell internally in companies...

- Clever way for vendors to (story)tell BPM importance...

Again, some KM questions...

- Is KM enabling more automated decisions? This "old", very good level and still stimulating article on "nonsense of KM", can bring some ideas, with good thinking about what is really tacit knowledge, and a synthesis of a lot of point of views. Nice commentary on it too...

- Sharing calendars and schedule is a good metaphor of som KM challenges

- In the real life, what can be one's personal "rules" for KM? You can apply those one (but who does?)

So much information, so small amount of time to transform it into knowledge, let's go-on zapping !

computers and emotions...

No doubt information and communication technologies, as a major media, can create emotions, through messages, chatting, music and video, ...

But can computer software detect and understand your emotions, and answer to them. Are we, after all those years, close enough from "artificial intelligence" ?

A lot of new experiments these days on that, from neural networks to telephones....

All the chatterbots are trying too the same kind of things from basic Cybelle to sophisticated A.L.I.C.E. (why always female as characters for clever intelligence robots ? )

At man/machine interface point of view, in spite of some random pleasant progress (Wii?) is still at prehistorical age, unable for example to really interact easily without a keyboard, language semantic recognition being still far enough...

Some relations between Marketing and WEB2…

J'était hier à une très stimulante réunion, rassemblant les penseurs avancés (et multi-disciplinaires) français dans le domaine du Marketing .

(Au fait, ne manquez pas le site visionnarymarketing , tout y est bon et sensé, jetez un œil au dossier Marketing des produits ICT, au blog bien vivant...)

Allez donc voir aussi ce site de base sur votre nécessaire bibliothèque de base !!!

La discussion d'hier aurait bien mérité un "bribecast".

Parmi les sujets de discussion et de débats, stimulante interaction avec Thierry Maillet, autour de son livre très moderne et cultivé: Génération Participation .

Partiel, partial et en vrac:

- Débat animé ce soir là entre les optimistes croyant fermement dans une tendance participative montante, dans l'espoir d'une noosphère à la Theillard de Chardin (pour les très très vieux lecteurs, il y en a eu d'autres depuis...) et ceux qui y croient moins, malgré la monté de valeurs nouvelles et les possiblités coopératives offertes par les techniques (Web2 and Co). Les "philosophies" pour le Marketing découlent bien sûr fortement de ces postures initiales.

- Rebonds sur la perception de la rationalité (limitée...) du consom'acteur (terme crée dès 2001 par Thierry) , qui peut certes tout comparer, choisir les prix optimaux, être totalement actif, participer, voire créer le produit (voire la démocratie? ) par sa demande mais qui peut aussi préférer rester passif, dans un confort accepté de manipulation par les marques, les archétypes et standards véhiculés par icelles...

Présentation également par Jérome Delacroix, auteur précurseur sur les wikis

Le débat a beaucoup tourné autour de wikipedia

Le contenu d'une telle encyclopédie universelle est-il de la science (au sens universitaire du terme), c'est a dire étayé, démontré, reconnu à l'intérieur d'une discipline, ne disant sur le monde réel que des choses suffisamment valides (à un instant donné, dans une culture donnée), ou "bottom-up", spontané et transverse, reflétant de façon plus journalistique et événementiel un autre réel, aussi consistant, du monde? Le savoir présent est-il neutre ou suspect?
Joli débat non fini!

Le consom'acteur va-t-il avoir à terme plutôt envie:

scenario a: de participer à ces nouvelles cathédrales du savoir...

scenario b: de pencher pour le N.A.O. ("Narcissisme assisté par Ordinateur"), à travers des blogs, des articles non lus dans l'opulence communicationnelle, ces journaux personnels, ces bouteilles à la mer...

scenario c: de plonger dans les réseaux virtuels, certains visant à créer des clubbismes stables dans des objectifs variés (business, plaisirs, jeux et mondes virtuels à la "second life", ou mouvants et infidèles, conformes à l'esprit initial de Rheingold ?

Là encore, le Marketing doit sans doute regarder ça plus finement qu'aujourd'hui !

Random week-end (fast) web readings...

After conducting this test (takes 5 minutes for the first test..), I must admit I am a typical procrastinator (but maybe you are too...)

(I defer very important thinks to do, creating permanent stress for myself...).

I like this article and formula on the topic.

It is surely too late for me to change !!

My permanent auto-justification is the fact I consider not doing things (at the end, I do some things...) is a way to unconsciously regulate myself, in the increasing stress of solicitation created by new communication world and media.

- A rather good online set of articles on Strategic Planning

- IT Gouvernance: Pénétration d'ITIL en augmentation, et quelques règles utiles pour réussir

- All companies nowadays know that main profit gains can come from supplier side, in a globalized world.

(and ....too bad for some suppliers, many ethics issues, where is win-win strategy?, ...)

This article give some good rules to follow in that perspective:

Strategic alignment, Cross-functionality, Simplification, ICT enabling, Process sourcing (BPO)

KM:

- Killer applications in KM? Good synthesis, but nothing new...

- Information is not knowledge! Wiki example

...and an opposite opinion there...

- As mentionned in my 14/1 contribution, role of KM for economies and ... need of KM adapted to specific cultures...

- About the permanent fight of librarians inside KM strategies...

- Back to basics: Deming on KM and management

- Good synthesis in this short executive abstract of some current IT market heavy trends:

Outsourcing for stable operations, new emerging technologies bundles, software subscription rather than ownership, ...

- Net Neutrality: an permanent issue, not solved...

and...

Some Hi-Tech news for teckies...

- BI (Business Intelligence) data delivered on phones: realistic?

- Moore law again: why not play on connectivity?

- Touch screens for many fingers: applications?

- Bug free software: open source a solution?

Mass Customization news....

Created at the beginning of 90's, Mass Customization is still a heavy trend of the future:

How can a company can offer the high quality/low cost/fast delivery product and service to the market, and, at the same time, customize it perfectly for the client?

How can we play simultaneously a cost strategy and a differentiation strategy?

(french readers can look there to read a short contribution on role of time in MC...)

You will find, in this recent update on the topic:

Page 5: A very nice interview of Joseph Pine II, the author of the initial book on the subject.

Good thoughts about Web2 / Mass Customization synergies, cultural aspects.

Page 8: About personalized newspapers

Page 15-21: Mass Customization and fashion. Key for you life, key for your girl (if you are a boy, otherwise key for you...)

news from the Web...

Par davidjf le 17/01/07 - 15:40

IT ROI, again, a nice contribution with 3 categories of funding for IT applications

Stimulating article from McKinsey, on the old problem of relation of IT department with silos.

This split inside IT between "IT demand" and "IT supply" is a (non perfect!) solution. That clarifies too the business owner location, treats better alignment challenges...

En France, les notions de Maître d'ouvrage (dans les silos), de Maître d'ouvrage délégué (souvent dans les fonctions informatiques), de Maître d'oeuvre (SI) permettent ce jeu...

Predictions 2007 again:

On Data Management: I like the last paragraph about the difficulties to make the bridge between ERPs and old applications, in an SOA view...

Nice survey on IT spendings, with an emphasis on "worker-friendly" tools (PDA's, Wifi, ...)

Another view of CIO 2007 priorities:

with this significant hit-parade: ITIL, VOIP, CRM, Storage, Web services, BI

Hi Tech by MIT

Evolution of bandwith on optical fiber

Personal technology: from social networks by telephone to advanced uses of Google map

Intéressant article sur la nécessité de "vendeurs consultants" pour toute vente technologique; Ce glissement n'est pas récent, mais touche désormais tout le monde...

News from KM...

Good news: Knowledge Management still alive.

In spite of vendors appropriation of KM log ( just type "Knowledge Management" on Google and you will find 90% of the connected sites are selling something, products, tools, consulting, ....), fundamentals of KM are surviving.

Recent contributions:

- Relation of KM with semantic web and web2 (with this permanent problem of the balance between "coding the world" and creativity freedom!). See too that nice reaction on this topic

- Thoughts about economy of Knowledge, stimulating contributions and co

- and, and, and, and, and ....

If you want to follow periodically the trends in KM (or anything else!), a good way is to use Google alert , to receive information in your mailbox...

Try too, through Google labs, to see that KM queries are nowadays

- less "fashion" than 3 years before (because we know enough about fundamentals?)

- that queries are mainly asked now by far east and emerging countries (does that mean that they discover now the concepts, or that innovation by knowledge will come more and more from this part of the world?)

BPM, again and again

a recent contribution with some good references...

Some basics on frameworks, serious or not?

Can management concept be seriously treated?

Real world modelization is useful. It is good to reflect real thoughts by concepts and frameworks. But where is the limit between ready to use, "gadget" concepts and real thinking?
Just look at this site. Not so bad, but ....

Let's take, as a basic example, the famous overused BCG growth/share matrix.
We can go further on that on wikipedia, with a bit more in-depth approach.

Look at this one * (I really like this second degree representation). A good representation of the visualization tools. Try it.

Is that enough to understand, or do we need a full business school education on that?

Basic conclusion:

"The map is not the territory" ( Korzybski, "founder" of General Semantics)

Information (even with a good visualization technique) is not Knowledge!

All those models and frameworks become useful only if you have the opportunity to really use them in real situations, in real life!

* I have been warned of this by this nice forum on intelligence (in french, I am member since years...)

Artful processes (les processus "artistiques")

Long time ago, in the 80's, I was already, as quality director for Sales in IBM France, deeply involved in processes.

At that time, IBM Quality Director, Gilbert Stora*, previously Director of a Manufacturing plant lab, used to say: "Manufacturing processes are OK to control, Administrative processes too, but Commercial processes are too "artistic" to be managed and treated the same way..."

This publication of IBM is reflecting, 20 years after, the same thought, with some advances...
("artful" in english does not exactly mean artistic, but the idea is the same)

The idea to mechanize everything is often stupid.
Some core processes can be stabilized by organization and IT, some must remain enough organic, dynamically adaptable to changes.
Where to put the "cursor", for every process, between what has to be mechanized and what has to remain organic ?
What methodology to use to determine this balance point? How to create a correct bridge between the 2 parts?

Every issue of IBM Systems Journal is exciting, process specialist have to read these recent issues on Business Collaboration, this SOA one, this one one business innovation. Some articles are sometimes too "marketing", some too "technical", but every issue has got at least 1 or 2 stimulating contributions!

* G. STORA, J. MONTAIGNE - "La Qualité Totale dans l'entreprise" (Edit. Organisation 1986)