Coevolving Innovations

Following on from David Hawk‘s practice, I’ve continued to lecture at the Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia for the past 3 years when I’ve been visiting Finland. On this visit, I was able to draw on some of the work presented a few weeks earlier at the IT Strategy Consulting conference in Toronto.

I lecture in Ritva Laamanen‘s classes, which are designed for Finnish undergraduate students to pick up greater English fluency that will advance their professional capabilities. The sections that I teach vary. I’ve spoken with business students (easy), and software engineering students (a snap). Since I’ve been studying and working in those domains on the order of 20-plus years, it’s second nature for me to pick some subject that has relevance to the current business climate and to students’ interests. My goal actually isn’t to lecture, as much as it is to encourage students to speak up and practice their English. On my visit last November, I spoke to a class working their way through an English operating system textbook (uggh!) on my personal history with operating system. This included being one of the first IBMers to work with Metaphor Computer Systems, participating in the OS/2 Warp beta, and observing the evolution of Patriot Partners into Taligent. On another lecture with the Stadia Formula Engineering Team has prepared for competitions in Detroit, I’ve spoken on Canadian and U.S. geography and cultural differences. Relevance is important to maintaining interest.… Read more (in a new tab)

Consistent with IBM’s direction on innovation, the Global (IT) Technology Strategy community of IBM Global Business Services held a two-day even in the Toronto area. After four months of planning, about 120 IBMers convened at the Toronto Lab at 8200 Warden (actually in Markham). Although this internal conference was named the “IT Strategy Master Class”, it was in fact a pilot for a series of IBM events.

The theme of “Business Innovation through IT Strategy” brought together IBM consultants from Canada, the United States, Europe (UK, Netherlands, Germany) and Asia (Japan, China). The approach was not to “invent” a program, but, in the belief that innovation occurs by practitioners at work within a community, request content from practitioners that they themselves believe is exciting and leading edge. From over 100 submissions, 20 breakout sessions were selected. Wrapped around the breakouts were some keynote speakers that provided big picture insight.

• Mark Behrsin, Global Leader, IBM Technology Strategy Consulting, framed the meeting as responding to the needs expressed in the Global CEO Study 2006, recently released. CEOs are focusing on three imperatives: to grow (i.e. products, services and markets), to improve (operations and efficiency), and to transform (business and enterprise models).
• Paul Johnston, from Kennedy Information, is forecast growth in IT Strategy consulting from 2006 through 2008 (as a recovery from the post-dot-bomb trough). IBM is a leader in the marketplace in a 2×2 matrix of “Using Innovation for Competitive Advantage” (i.e.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger described colloborative innovation as “innovation coming from people working together in open communities”.  His interest was in open source software development, in particular.  In two talks that I heard today at the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange, in Orlando, Bernie Meyerson (IBM Vice President for Strategic Alliances, and Chief Technologist, Systems and Technology Group) and Tony Scott (Disney Senior Vice-President and CIO) provided reflections on collaborative innovation in two different contexts.

Bernie Meyerson described the development of the Cell microprocessor, with IBM in joint development with Sony and Toshiba.  The large investment required to develop basic technologies underlying the new processor was prohibitively high, but made collaboration made it practical.  The basic technologies were shared, with alternative manufacturers and suppliers brought on board at a later date.  Meyerson said that this story was described in Radical Innovation.

Tony Scott showed a 3.25″ floppy diskette — a reduced-size version of the 5.25″ diskette that Dysan didn’t quite get to production.  He was on the management team for this product that never saw the light of day, after Apple installed the Sony 3.5″ floppy diskette in a hard case.  (There’s some talk about this on Wikipedia).  Dysan didn’t listen to customers who were looking for media in a more durable carrier, and had started investing in producing the 3.25″ floppy diskette drives itself.  Scott made it sound as if this management decision was a leading cause of the failure of the company, a few years later.… Read more (in a new tab)