Coevolving Innovations

Coevolving Innovations

… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies

Monthly Archives February 2006

What precedes an Emerging Business Opportunity?

February 27, 2006
1 Comment

I had done some briefings for a client in western Canada, and the client executive asked if I would be interested in coaching one of their senior executives on some case studies. The client has retained an independent consultant specializing in executive development, and that consultant had suggested that the board work their way through some Harvard Business School cases, namely Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (A), Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (B) and Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (C): Pervasive Computing. This key executive that I was to coach was to prepare himself to act as a resource to the board members. Our preparatory teleconference ended up with some discussions on organization culture, deeper than I would have anticipated.

The cases describe an IBM study in 2003 that recognized difficulties in starting up new businesses in six root causes:

  1. Our management system rewards execution directed at short-term results and does not place enough value on strategic business building.
  2. We are preoccupied with our current served markets and existing offerings.
  3. Our business model emphasizes sustained profit and earnings per share improvement rather than actions to drive higher P/Es.
  4. Our approach to gathering and using market insights is inadequate for embryonic markets.
  5. We lack established disciplines for selecting, experimenting, funding and terminating new growth businesses.
  6. Once selected, many IBM ventures fail in execution.1

A book that captured many of the issues, The Alchemy of Growth2, decribes the company’s business portfolio in three horizons, based on their stages of development:

  • Horizon 1 (H1) businesses were mature and well established and accounted for the bulk of profit and cash flow.
… Read more (in a new tab)

I had done some briefings for a client in western Canada, and the client executive asked if I would be interested in coaching one of their senior executives on some case studies. The client has retained an independent consultant specializing in executive development, and that consultant had suggested that the board work their way through some Harvard Business School cases, namely Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (A), Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (B) and Emerging Business Opportunities at IBM (C): Pervasive Computing. This key executive that I was to coach was to prepare himself to act as a resource to the board members. Our preparatory teleconference ended up with some discussions on organization culture, deeper than I would have anticipated.

The cases describe an IBM study in 2003 that recognized difficulties in starting up new businesses in six root causes:

  1. Our management system rewards execution directed at short-term results and does not place enough value on strategic business building.
  2. We are preoccupied with our current served markets and existing offerings.
  3. Our business model emphasizes sustained profit and earnings per share improvement rather than actions to drive higher P/Es.
  4. Our approach to gathering and using market insights is inadequate for embryonic markets.
  5. We lack established disciplines for selecting, experimenting, funding and terminating new growth businesses.
  6. Once selected, many IBM ventures fail in execution.1

A book that captured many of the issues, The Alchemy of Growth2, decribes the company’s business portfolio in three horizons, based on their stages of development:

  • Horizon 1 (H1) businesses were mature and well established and accounted for the bulk of profit and cash flow.
… Read more (in a new tab)

Coevolving a nation and a business

February 26, 2006
0 Comments

This blog is centred on the idea of coevolving technologies with business, but there’s also other types of coevolving. The takeover of the Hudson’s Bay Company by an American draws attention to the linked heritage between the company, and the opening up of Canada.

In the Toronto Globe & Mail, Val Ross cites The Empire of the Bay by Peter C. Newman, which appears to have first been published by Viking Press in 1989, made into a PBS series in 2000, and then republished in 2002 by Penguin Canada / Madison Press as The Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The article drew attention to the artifacts produced by explorers in the 19th century.

“It’s the only company that became a country,” notes Peter C. Newman, author of Empire of the Bay. And with the transfer of the company could go artifacts and art that are part of this country’s DNA.

Founded in 1670 by a stroke of Charles II’s royal pen, HBC was first known as the Company of Adventurers — greedy and daring men given a charter to be “true Lordes and Proprietors” of all the lands whose rivers drained into Hudson Bay. At its early 19th-century peak, that definition encompassed 1.5-million square miles. An area of woods, barrens, prairies and tundra vaster than the Holy Roman Empire, it was traversed by trappers and mappers bringing furs and reports in to company men, who, half-mad with cold and isolation, kept and sent meticulous records back to London.

… Read more (in a new tab)

This blog is centred on the idea of coevolving technologies with business, but there’s also other types of coevolving. The takeover of the Hudson’s Bay Company by an American draws attention to the linked heritage between the company, and the opening up of Canada.

In the Toronto Globe & Mail, Val Ross cites The Empire of the Bay by Peter C. Newman, which appears to have first been published by Viking Press in 1989, made into a PBS series in 2000, and then republished in 2002 by Penguin Canada / Madison Press as The Illustrated History of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The article drew attention to the artifacts produced by explorers in the 19th century.

“It’s the only company that became a country,” notes Peter C. Newman, author of Empire of the Bay. And with the transfer of the company could go artifacts and art that are part of this country’s DNA.

Founded in 1670 by a stroke of Charles II’s royal pen, HBC was first known as the Company of Adventurers — greedy and daring men given a charter to be “true Lordes and Proprietors” of all the lands whose rivers drained into Hudson Bay. At its early 19th-century peak, that definition encompassed 1.5-million square miles. An area of woods, barrens, prairies and tundra vaster than the Holy Roman Empire, it was traversed by trappers and mappers bringing furs and reports in to company men, who, half-mad with cold and isolation, kept and sent meticulous records back to London.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Measurement and mathematics – two different things

February 21, 2006
0 Comments

A large portion of managers prefer to run their businesses “by the numbers”. Gary Metcalf wrote about measurement and mathematics, but they’re two different things. Actually, mathematics is a subset of measurement. This is clear in the writings of C. West Churchman.

I got into reading West Churchman‘s writing, since he was Russell Ackoff‘s dissertation supervisor. (Russ is 87 years old, now. Churchman passed away in 2004 at the age of 90, so it’s not like he was a generator older.) In my reading of Churchman’s writings, I came to understand that his dissertation was actually on metrology — the philosophy of measurement. Given that background, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find that progress is the guarantor of the Singerian inquiring system (in The Design of Inquiring Systems).

Making a distinction between measurement and mathematics is straightforward in Churchman’s framework. Progress (including the sweeping in of new content) is the “fifth way of knowing” (if I use the ordering presented by Mitroff & Linstone in The Unbounded Mind. Mathematics is primarily an analytic-deductive inquiring system, which is the “second way of knowing”.

The important distinction between the second way and fifth way of knowing is openness. Mathematics is a closed system, In a Singerian inquiring system, new ideas are constantly “swept in” to ensure freshness and preclude groupthink. These ideas are applied by Barabba and Zaltman in Hearing the Voice of the Customer, and by Barabba in Meeting of the Minds.… Read more (in a new tab)

A large portion of managers prefer to run their businesses “by the numbers”. Gary Metcalf wrote about measurement and mathematics, but they’re two different things. Actually, mathematics is a subset of measurement. This is clear in the writings of C. West Churchman.

I got into reading West Churchman‘s writing, since he was Russell Ackoff‘s dissertation supervisor. (Russ is 87 years old, now. Churchman passed away in 2004 at the age of 90, so it’s not like he was a generator older.) In my reading of Churchman’s writings, I came to understand that his dissertation was actually on metrology — the philosophy of measurement. Given that background, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find that progress is the guarantor of the Singerian inquiring system (in The Design of Inquiring Systems).

Making a distinction between measurement and mathematics is straightforward in Churchman’s framework. Progress (including the sweeping in of new content) is the “fifth way of knowing” (if I use the ordering presented by Mitroff & Linstone in The Unbounded Mind. Mathematics is primarily an analytic-deductive inquiring system, which is the “second way of knowing”.

The important distinction between the second way and fifth way of knowing is openness. Mathematics is a closed system, In a Singerian inquiring system, new ideas are constantly “swept in” to ensure freshness and preclude groupthink. These ideas are applied by Barabba and Zaltman in Hearing the Voice of the Customer, and by Barabba in Meeting of the Minds.… Read more (in a new tab)

Disruptive innovation in services

February 20, 2006
1 Comment

Everyone seems to get the idea about disruptive innovation in product development.  Clayton Christensen‘s original research that led to The Innovator’s Dilemma was based on the challenge of 3.5″ disk drives and 5.25″ disk drives.  The ideas on disruptive innovation in services wasn’t so obvious to me, until I heard Christensen’s lecture on how business schools such as Harvard and Stanford seem to be overshooting the marketplace.

I was listening to an audio recording from IT Conversations, with Clayton Christensen speaking at the Open Source Business Conference 2004.  I’ve read Christensen’s writing some time ago, and was impressed by his style of presenting.  He speaks slowly and clearly, and his students must love him.  I’d heard most of the content before, but was impressed by an anecdote that is actually written up in The Innovator’s Solution (in Chapter 9):

[Clayton Christensen] … had written a paper that worried that the leading business schools’ traditional two-year MBA programs are being threatened by two disruptions. The most proximate wave, a low-end disruption, is executive evening-and-weekend MBA programs that enable working managers to earn MBA degrees in as little as a year. The most significant wave is a new-market disruption: on-the-job management training that ranges from corporate educational institutions such as Motorola University and GE’s Crotonville to training seminars in Holiday Inns.

Christensen asked for a student vote at the beginning of class:  After reading the paper, how many of you think that the leading MBA programs are being disrupted? 

… Read more (in a new tab)

Everyone seems to get the idea about disruptive innovation in product development.  Clayton Christensen‘s original research that led to The Innovator’s Dilemma was based on the challenge of 3.5″ disk drives and 5.25″ disk drives.  The ideas on disruptive innovation in services wasn’t so obvious to me, until I heard Christensen’s lecture on how business schools such as Harvard and Stanford seem to be overshooting the marketplace.

I was listening to an audio recording from IT Conversations, with Clayton Christensen speaking at the Open Source Business Conference 2004.  I’ve read Christensen’s writing some time ago, and was impressed by his style of presenting.  He speaks slowly and clearly, and his students must love him.  I’d heard most of the content before, but was impressed by an anecdote that is actually written up in The Innovator’s Solution (in Chapter 9):

[Clayton Christensen] … had written a paper that worried that the leading business schools’ traditional two-year MBA programs are being threatened by two disruptions. The most proximate wave, a low-end disruption, is executive evening-and-weekend MBA programs that enable working managers to earn MBA degrees in as little as a year. The most significant wave is a new-market disruption: on-the-job management training that ranges from corporate educational institutions such as Motorola University and GE’s Crotonville to training seminars in Holiday Inns.

Christensen asked for a student vote at the beginning of class:  After reading the paper, how many of you think that the leading MBA programs are being disrupted? 

… Read more (in a new tab)

Knowing what we want — more choice (or too much)?

February 7, 2006
0 Comments

In coevolving technology and business, do we actually know what we want?  This may come with a presumption that more choice is better than less choice.  In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz suggests that we may think that we’re going to be happier with more choice, but in fact, we’re probably not.

I first listened to the audio recording of Barry Schwartz’s talk, "Less is More" at the Pop!Tech 2004 conference.  (For a visual approach to the content, look at the sketch by Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio). The idea is simple, but Schwartz isn’t just a journalist, he’s a professor of psychology.  I’ve now been reading the book.  Since I’m a reader of footnotes, the book provides a lot of foundations from psychology.

In the prologue of the book, Schwartz starts off with references to political philosophy Isaiah Berlin, on the distinction between "negative liberty" and "positive liberty".  He then cites Amartya Sen (Nobel laureaute in Economics) and Development as Freedom.  Schwartz argues that:

  1. We would be better off we we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
  2. We would be better off seeking what was "good enough" instead of seeking the best (have you ever heard a parent say, "I want only the ‘good enough’ for my kids"?).
  3. We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisions.
… Read more (in a new tab)

In coevolving technology and business, do we actually know what we want?  This may come with a presumption that more choice is better than less choice.  In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz suggests that we may think that we’re going to be happier with more choice, but in fact, we’re probably not.

I first listened to the audio recording of Barry Schwartz’s talk, "Less is More" at the Pop!Tech 2004 conference.  (For a visual approach to the content, look at the sketch by Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio). The idea is simple, but Schwartz isn’t just a journalist, he’s a professor of psychology.  I’ve now been reading the book.  Since I’m a reader of footnotes, the book provides a lot of foundations from psychology.

In the prologue of the book, Schwartz starts off with references to political philosophy Isaiah Berlin, on the distinction between "negative liberty" and "positive liberty".  He then cites Amartya Sen (Nobel laureaute in Economics) and Development as Freedom.  Schwartz argues that:

  1. We would be better off we we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
  2. We would be better off seeking what was "good enough" instead of seeking the best (have you ever heard a parent say, "I want only the ‘good enough’ for my kids"?).
  3. We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisions.
… Read more (in a new tab)

Enterprise joy

February 7, 2006
0 Comments

I’m writing this as a response to one of David’s comments , where he noted the dark cast of my first posting on this site. 

I agree that there is a kind of serious cast to that post, where I talk about the complexity and uncertainty that managers face.  This prompted David to comment about the pain-relief school of management consulting.

However, I did mention the notion of sustainment, and this was meant in the most positive way, as an indication of the mutually life-sustaining relationship among human beings and their institutions.

I’d like to go a little further and propose the thought that enterprises may be a source of joy, and may even be thought to experience joy.  I credit this notion to one of our IBM colleagues, Sukanya Patwardhan.  As part of an extended discussion, I introduced one of my standard themes, which is that human social systems are fundamentally living systems , which, as usual led to a health care analogy.  Sukanya pursued this point further by saying that maybe what we should be concerned about is not simply healing, but rather to foster well-being in enterprise institutions.  She further said that as services professionals we should go beyond feeling our clients’ pain, but rather share their joy.

I have thought a lot about those words, and they resonate with me.  I agree with David that technologies can be fun, as well as utilitarian, or dominating in the sense of providing competitive advantage.… Read more (in a new tab)

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