Sep 10, 2009 | Change, Management, Uncategorized
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, used a graph 40 years ago to predict the rate of growth in IT capacity by stating his belief that the number of transistors that could be put onto a chip would double every two years.
He was talking about computing power, a long way from the environmental debates raging around us currently.
On the radio a day or two ago, I heard a credible source observe that he was astonished to note the rate of carbon being released to the atmosphere was roughly double estimations made just a couple of years ago.
This comment brought to mind Moore’s law, and started me wondering if it perhaps applied to the climate change debate. A recent Newsweek article also observed the rates of carbon emissions were well up on estimates, and that the rates were increasing, significantly because the rate of change was feeding on itself, creating a sort of multiplier effect, Moore’s law at work.
The unedifying sight of Australia’s two political parties taking opposite sides of the debate, simply because that was their allocated role, and apparently refusing to allow the facts to get in the way of a good argument smacks of Monty Python, not the serious debate that is required to start to address the scientific, commercial and social issues surrounding reality, or otherwise, of human induced climate change.
If Moore’s law holds true in the rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere, and the release of carbon is indeed a cause of global warming, we will need to move very quickly indeed to prevent, or perhaps at best mitigate, a catastrophe.
Sep 9, 2009 | Demand chains, Management
Power has shifted dramatically to consumers from the firms that inhabit the supply chains that serve them.
Scale used to give market power that could be leveraged, but IT development has radically changed the location of the power towards the customer.
Scale now just gives the opportunity through scope and access to resources, but that is no longer enough without the one to one engagement with customers enabled by technology.
You do not have to be big to be intimate with a customer, you just have to understand them and react to their needs, thereby turning the old notion of a supply chain on its head, creating a “demand chain”.
Sep 8, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
The first syllable of the word “innovation”, describes how most organizations see the process. Look inside the business for better processes, better science, better customer service practices, better product offerings. Problem is, that way you are always seeing the world from within the boundaries set by the status quo that pervades the business.
Looking at the world from another point if view, from the “outside” is usually a better way to create something new.
Innovation thinking from outside requires new rules about collaboration, and where you can get ideas, and it requires a special sort of leadership to enable an enterprise to activiely seek those who “do it” better than you.
Procter & Gambles A.G. Lafley reinvigorated the company by actively seeking ideas from outside the huge P&G innovation machine, recognising that most of the great ideas will be elsewhere, and the skill of the organisation is to recognise and commercialise them.
The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz noted “we observe everything from a point of view”, and like much of his other writing, he was centuries ahead of his time, as the really successful innovators remove themselves from the shackles of the corporate point of view, to bring the outside inside their innovation efforts.
Sep 7, 2009 | Uncategorized
Reacting to something takes little thought, it is easy.
Responding to something is harder, it takes thought and usually some resources
Initiating is really hard, it requires you to be prepared to be wrong! This is always hard, as it often leads to questions that invoke the power of hindsight in the questioner, and if he/she is your boss, what then?.
This simple thought, “what will the boss say if it is wrong?” is enough to stop 95% of people from initiating anything, and some of those who do grasp the nettle, do get fired. Not comfortable.
As Thomas Watson, the founder and first chairman of IBM said, “The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate” so initiate something today, despite the risk, it will make your day!
Sep 6, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
Then notion of “industrial commons” as a metaphor for the clustering of firms of a similar type in an area put forward by Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School is immediately attractive, as it easily explains things we have all seen, without recognising the implications.
Pre industrial revolution, the notion of commons applied to the common land on which all villagers could graze their cattle, or carry out other communal activity.
In the post industrial age, it is about the manner in which particular skills assemble over time in a location that enables them to leverage the proximity of the intellect into goods and services. Silicon valley is the best known example, but there are many others.
This puts a simple platform under many publicly funded efforts to enhance “clusters” in my area of work, particularly in the production of high value specialty food products.
The growth of Orange in the central west of NSW as a fine food centre is supported by a wide range of agriculture, from broad acre cropping to intensive horticulture and wine making, further supported by mining operation which give some scale to the engineering services sector, and the University offering agricultural science amongst a wide range of disciplines. By contrast, nearby Mudgee has all the agricultural advantages, possibly more, but lacks the mining, university and the attraction to general tourism and passing trade, and so the clustering of food value adding has failed to gather the momentum of Orange.
The challenge in creating a “common” is the timeframe of the return on investment in the necessary infrastructure. Governments create and abandon a development program in sync with the electoral and economic cycles, commons will take a generation at least to gain traction, so governments should not be surprised to see their efforts largely fail, whilst next door, a “cluster” will evolve with little or no engagement of public funds beyond basic services, simply because it has all the natural conditions to thrive.
