The Role of CEOs in Innovation

Recently, Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC Corp. the $6B info storage and management firm wrote a worthwhile piece in the October issue of Chief Executive magazine. Titled, The Role of CEOs in Innovation, Tucci's points are these:

U.S. dominance in technological innovation is not destiny. Manchester, England was the 18th century center of technology, capitalists, skilled labor and interdependent suppliers and competitors, but lost its dominance to India and the Far East when they stopped innovating. Sound familiar?

Innovation is more than R&D and generating “new” products. Equally important is generating new ways of doing business, of managing the tension between the impulse to avoid risk and the payoff associated with rational risk-taking. It's avoiding “group think” and encouraging (sometimes forcing) colleagues to ask, How is our market changing? Are we changing with it? Or even better, how can we reshape the market to our advantage?

Innovation comes from increasing your company's exposure to unconventional thinking.

Admittedly, many companies are still smarting from the tech bubble crash of several years ago, but ultimately if you force your company to think and ACT differently from the rest, the market will reward you handsomely.

So, what is your company doing to break out of the pack? Are you creating your future, or running as fast as you can to react to someone else's ideas? What's the last “unconventional” thing YOU did?

GMS

My visit with Henry Kissinger

Henry and Me

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to meet former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. In addition to telling him about when I was 14 in the early 1970's and wondered how old he'd be when I was President, (so he could be my Sec'y State), I got to hear him speak on the state of the world in 2004.

Leaving out the political intrique of the Presidential elections, I'll focus on his thoughts about China. Dr. Kissinger has known every Chinese leader since Mao, and he believes that relations between our countries has never been better. He marveled at how fast that country has grown over the last 20 years, and how dynamic their economy has become. Chinese leader Hu Jintao is a technocrat who understands China's place in the world economy.

Dr. Kissinger suggested that the "center of the world will soon shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

That got me thinking. How are YOU preparing to take advantage of that opportunity?

GMS

Disappointed Customers & Frustrated Consultants: An Observation

Yesterday, I was in NYC meeting with several large customers who have been using the "big guys" of IT consulting on large-scale projects. I also had a cup of coffee with a senior project executive of one of the "majors" who told me about the frustrations of trying to deliver the services their sales people sold. Here's what I concluded:

--Large customers are getting more sophisticated and are sometimes manipulating the account executives of competing firms to "race to the bottom" in terms of price. In some cases they are being less than forthright in estimated volumes, workloads, etc. Given the past history of some of these service providers, one might be tempted to call it a case of "what goes around, comes around..."

--Even with this new found leverage, clients are frustrated that these projects are not nearly as "seemless" as promised. User satisfaction is falling. I'm hearing that the Morgan Stanley debacle is just the tip of the iceberg.

--The consultants on the ground at various customer sites are increasingly frustrated trying to keep high quality staff engaged on projects, trying to actually deliver what sales promised in the face of fixed cost budgets, large internal bureaucracies and suffocating overhead costs.

It seems apparent that there is something seriously wrong with the enterprise outsourcing delivery model. Customers are demanding more services at lower cost (don't they always do that?), but the vendors appear to be offering prices that do not allow for profitable exectution. Like a drug user addicted to crack, they need larger and larger "hits" to feel the same effect. Unfortunately, the only options open will become death or rehab. Which will they choose?

Lack of Alignment Costs Dollars and Careers

A number of studies have shown that as much as 30% of all IT investment dollars are wasted to some degree due to a lack of "alignment" among the particpants. We believe the same holds true up and down the organization. Any project or group effort that requires more than 1 human being is going to need to be sure eveyone understands the mission and the goals--and is "bought in" to the process.

The literature suggests that positive alignment means success and poor alignment predicts failure.

Most of measurements of alignment are "soft" or "qualitative." We've found one that is QUANTITATIVE and seems to successfully predict the likelihood of success of a project/task/venture/strategy. Give us a call and we'll tell you more.

Your Humble Servant 

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