Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice-president of Technology Strategy and Innovation at IBM, writes a very interesting blog entitled Business, Innovation and Survival. The blogs describes some of Irving’s experiences with regard to IBM and innovation. For me, it’s core message is that successful innovation isn’t simply about a good idea. Indeed you could be sitting on the best idea/technology in the world but if your organisation hasn’t a culture of innovation then realising your innovation is next to impossible.
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So your an inventor but are you an entrepreneur? You can develop the technology but can you commercialise it? Lets say we’re talking about a computer game here (an apt example seeing that Tipperary Institute is the home of Robocode Ireland) and lets assume that the game you have developed is actually really good. So where do you go from here?
First things first, having a really good game (even the best game ever) isn’t worth diddly squat unless you can actually commercialise it. You basically have two choices, go it alone or find a partner. Going it alone will require you to develop business skills (namely marketing, sales and finance) and getting your hands on a lot of cash. This is what is known as the closed innovation model - doing it all yourself. The other option is finding a partner that will commercialise your product for you. This is known as the open innovation model, where companies acquire your technology and commercialise it. This is a model that is being used more and more by companies today as they realise that they can’t possibly come up with all the good ideas and that they need to be open to accepting ideas from outside their company. Selecting the right partner isn’t easy. Some potential partners will show high interest, then stall (which Guy Kawasaki, in his book Art of the Start, calls “S-H-I-T-S” tactics). Why would a potential partner use such tactics? For a number of reasons but mainly due to the fact that they like your idea, they don’t want the idea going anywhere else but they don’t have the time/resources to do anything with it just now. If they can stall you long enough the value of the idea may lessen and with it its potential threat.
So what’s the moral of the story? Know what you know, know what you don’t know and know what you need to know. Be patient and prudent. Plan for failure, that’s not the same as planing to fail but if you do fail then learn from it and move on. If you want to make money from your game their is a time at which you will have to concentrate less on the game and more on the gaming business. Remember there is no such thing as a free lunch. Believe in your abilities, get help where necessary, and if you make millions, which I genuinely hope you do, remember who gave you this advice.
A popular business adage is “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist” (I’ve also heard it extended with “and if it doesn’t exist you can’t manage it”). I’ve regularly heard business consultants recite this when they are justifying the need for key performance indicators in relation to a set of objectives.
Anyway, the same holds true for the TippSoc community blog. I have noticed that, according to the TippSoc home page, I regularly have 1000+ “hits” on my blog. But what exactly constitutes a hit? Where are the hits coming from? What percentage of hits actually represent “eyeballs”? If I can’t answer these questions, and I can’t, it means I can’t measure what is being asked of me, and if I can’t measure the number of visitors to my blog then they don’t exist.
So what next? We at TippSoc need to measure who/what is visiting our blog site, when they are visiting our site, how often, what do they read, what do they have for breakfast? Has anyone any ideas how best we can do this?
Today, I read an interesting article in the Irish Sunday Independent by Roisin Burke entitled ‘Adapting and surviving: Reports of the demise of Irish manufacturing have been exaggerated, but the nature of the sector is changing here as it is everywhere.’. Roisin correctly identifies a shift in the manufacturing sector and states that the “manufacturing is no longer a function in isolation and is becoming integrated with other areas such as customer and technical support, supply chain management and research and development to produce complete product lines…Companies will become extended enterprises, which are flexible and responsive to customer needs.“. So what are extended enterprises?
Extended enterprises have, according to the researchers Browne and Zhang (1999), have three main characterisitics:
- Manufacturing organisations concentrate on their core business and technical activities and outsource all other non-core activities.
- Manufacturing organisations establish long tern relationships with key customers and treats them as key business partners.
- Methods, business processes and technology are available to support business activities that cross traditional enterprise boundaries. These methods particularly support supplier-customer integration through the interchange of commercial and technical information, seamlessly and effectively.
The extended enterprise is a collection of organisations working together, all concentrating on their own core competences, in the sale of a product. What brings them together is an increased focus on customer service and a knowledge that modern day customers demand more than just high quality customisable products but clear advantages from the intangible services and accessories that come with the product (such as customer support, finance, recycling, etc). For example, car dealers, car manufacturing, finance companies all coming together on the car lot, through the embodiement of the sales person, to offer you everything you need to purchase a car.
Why extended enterprises are of interest to me is because extended enterprises achieve competitive adavantage through the integration, using technology, of information and the efficient flow of products, goods and services between the organisations involved in the enterprierse and ultimately to the customer who purchases the “extended product” (the product is extended with such services as customer support, finance options, etc). It is the use of technology in such a way that is of real interest to me. Organisations can start to become extended only if they enable external access, to collaborating partners in the extended enterprise, to their key information systems. This allows everyone in the enterprise, i.e. other organisations, to use everyone elses systems so as to improve the sale of the product. Web services offer great potential in assisting organisations to become more integrated and mobile and wireless technologies (such as RFID) promise to improve the efficiency of information flow.
- Browne, J. & Zhang, J. (1999) Extended and virtual enterprises - similarities and differences. International Journal of Agile Management Systems, 1, 30-36.
Addition 8/1/07:
Irving Wladawsky-Berger has just posted an interesting blog on this subject
A recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EUI) suggests that many EU companies are favouring an open approach to innovation. “In the past, companies tended to invest in in-house R&D and ring fence their ideas and technologies, believing it to be the best way to protect and benefit economically from their IP. However, in today’s information-rich environment, many believe this approach to IP protection and business to be obsolete, favouring instead a more open approach to innovation, where ideas flow in and out of companies.”
See how the students at Stanford implement the Design Thinking Process.
Whitespace: “The large but mostly unoccupied territory in every company where rules are vague, authority is fuzzy, budgets are nonexistent, and strategy is unclear – and where, as a consequence, entrepreneurial activity that helps reinvent and renew an organization takes place.” Maletz and Nohria (2001), Managing in the Whitespace
Last night I was reading about technology management strategies, most of the comments were centred around organisations that provide products and not services. It got me thinking about the service sector (the biggest sector in Ireland and in many other “developed” countries) and how technology can be used as an innovation tool within the sector and in particular the professional service sector e.g. healthcare, education, finance, legal, etc. As with all innovations the focus should be on improving customer value. One characteristic of the professional service sector in general which differs from the industrial sector is the time required to “transfer” the service to the customer. I can purchase an iPod (once I have decided that’s what I want) in minutes, but to purchase the service of a doctor, solicitor or teacher can take anything from hours to years. That increases the cost of the service (the cost of time) for the customer. Surely technology can be better used in innovative ways to reduce this cost? Do I have to visit my solicitor in person to discuss the purchase of my new house? Do I have to sit with my mortgage provider for an hour as she “transfers” her service to me? Do I have to go to class to learn how to do my business accounts?
There are many arguments for and against outsourcing IT functions. Many believe that if it is not part of your core business then you should outsource. I tend to agree. But one thing is for sure - if you can’t do it in-house don’t try. If you have problems managing your email (or are simply fed up with it) then you should seriously consider moving to Google Domain Apps.
I teach programming to 3rd level students. I have 10 years experience as a programmer and feel both my knowledge and experience allow me to effectively teach the topic. However, I am somewhat haunted by the saying “Those who can do, those who can’t teach”. While I disagree with the saying, I do feel my teachings are negatively impacted on by the lack of experience I have in many of my teaching topics. As a successful programmer in industry, I knew all the latest and greatest technologies and techniques. When I joined academia these technologies and techniques advanced and, while I kept myself up-to-date in those that are relevant to my teachings, I lacked real world experience. Ideally I should work in industry for a period every year so that I can ensure my level of experience in these matters keeps apace with my level of reading. Unfortunately this is not possible. So I do the next best thing, I read the blogs of practitioners. This allows me to incorporate the “voice of the practitioner” in my teachings. I am lucky because there are a lot of bloggers out there that, as practitioners, blog about topics I teach. It allows me to critique my teaching material based, not on my own experience but, on the experience of others. Invaluable.