KM that works — ASAP for Implementation roadmap updates

A quick KM win anecdote and kudos to my team.  The director who leads our methodology and enablement team drove a simple, but effective, effort to incorporate the conversation from our internal social media into our external-facing methodologies.  A new set of accelerators - samples, templates, and white papers - was published based on frequency analysis of [...]

Enterprise SW value, complexity, and R&D

Dennis Howlett’s extended response (here) to Vinnie Mirchandani’s post demanding more simplicity — or begging Steve Jobs to find it — in enterprise apps (here).  Dennis effectively boils down Vinnie’s argument to this:
Why is it that despite all the interest in SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 that the industry offers so very little apparent bang per [...]

Measuring Innovation — Boston Consulting Group Survey

Well, since I took a potshot at BCG in an earlier post (here), I should give them kudos where appropriate.  I had a chance to chat with Harold Sirkin last year when BCG did some work for us (his book on innovation models with James Andrew is (here). 
Measuring innovation is a very knotty topic, so it [...]

What do you hate about Web 2.0?

I always like Hugh at gapingvoid, but hating on Web 2.0 poseurs is one of his strongest riffs.  His top ten is here.
My faves are #4 and #9, but if I’m honest with myself I’m getting a resentment about #8 as well.  I’ll know that I’m in need of an intervention if I start watching other [...]

Gary Hamel on innovation and change

A lot of good discussion in this Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan interview (here) on The McKinsey Quarterly site (registration required).  A couple of good passages…from Hamel first in this post:
Think back to the end of the 17th century, when muskets started to be introduced into European warfare….  It took almost 100 years for [changes in [...]

SAP really is a platform company

This post by Dennis Byron (here) reinforces the urgency to start thinking of ”every project as a program” (here). 
NetWeaver revenue is nearing $2 billion on a trailing 12 month basis (SAP says it’s only a billion euro but I believe it uses a different methodology than I do).   Either way, the key statistic is that SAP [...]

Innovation and Leadership Lessons from Pixar

The McKinsey Quarterly always has some excellent work on-line, even without a premium membership (though you do need to register).  This interview with Brad Bird, a two-time Oscar winning director at Pixar, caught my eye (here).  Three points in particular from both technically challenging projects (The Incredibles) and team turnarounds (The Iron Giant):
When coming up [...]

SAP R&D Spend, Frugality, & Innovation

I don’t have the stats handy, but SAP has sunk a lot into R&D over the last five years.  I think we’re up to about 20 percent of revenue (2 billion EUR +) from about 15 percent in the early 2000s.
This sustained investment makes some of the recent headlines decrying reduced innovation a bit ludicrous, frankly.  [...]

Staying in, Winning, and Changing the Game

Lot of travel lately — Walldorf, Singapore, and Bangalore back-to-back-to-back. 
I want to pick up a thread I dropped earlier, the idea that CIOs get too caught up in this idea that they have to be “strategic.”  For too many IT shops, this approach leads to several common mistakes:

Losing focus on the plumbing, thereby losing credibility [...]

CIOs, CxOs, and strategy

Frank M. at PM Think had a brief post on diverging business<>IT views of the role of IT.   This reminded me of many discussions with CIOs and our SAP strategy guys about overcoming this disconnect.
My take is that this issue has been driven by a basic conflict: CIOs see themselves as strategic when many of the businesses [...]