Go Glocal

It is difficult to define innovation maybe that is why it so often is treated as a monolith. Innovating just for the sake of innovation is a major reason why a very many expensive programs end up going nowhere.

How does one go about innovating? Well for starters it is not just by simply handing over the work to the experts. One has to do one’s research before hand and have a clear framework for defining both, the problem to be tackled and the approach to the solution.

An article in the Harvard Business Review Blog called Before You Innovate, Ask the Right Questions has pin pointed 2 questions that can be enormously helpful when dealing with innovation.

How well is the problem defined? The perfect example of this is Steve Jobs and the iPod. Jobs had a very well defined problem. ‘How do I keep 1,000 songs in my pocket?’ and that’s what helped with the conceptualization and development of the iPod. Although not are problems are as easy to define, so the strategy one adopts will depend deeply on the problem definition.

Who is best-placed to solve it? It is usually not easy to answer this question and requires a lot of research and background work. But once you start asking the right questions reaching possible approaches to problem solving will become very clear.

Once the right questions have been asked it is easier to determine which approach to innovation makes the most sense:

Basic Research When neither the problem nor the domain of it is very clearly defined and the research is being done to discover something new. Basic research is time and cost intensive and therefore must be combined with other methods, either internally or through partnerships.

Breakthrough Innovations Even when problems and domains are well defined organizations can get stuck. In these situations many setups are turning to open innovation platforms such as that allow outsiders to solve these problems. Organizations like Proctor and Gamble have built their own Connect + Develop platform that allows them to benefit from expertise in a variety of domains across the world.

Sustaining Innovation There is always a demand for the ‘New and Improved’ in the markets which is why innovation has to be sustained. For example Apple, it hasn’t invited any of the major technologies that affect our daily lives, but they constantly better those technologies and make take them a step ahead. Making them market leaders.

Disruptive Innovation This is the most troublesome area of innovation as the work involves creating a consumer need for the innovation. Like Google, that comes up with products one didn’t realize one needed and doesn’t understand how the company will make revenue from is the best example of Disruptive Innovation.

It is no longer enough for a business to think about the neighborhood competition. Business owners and entrepreneurs have to think global.

An article in Cranberry called 5 Ways Small Business Can Think Global George M. Feiger, CEO of San Francisco wealth management firm Contango Capital Advisors says that while all businesses have local agendas and interests, what happens to these interests is heavily impacted by what happens elsewhere in the Eurozone or in China.

Feiger outlined issues that small & mid-sized businesses must consider in order to compete in this increasingly interconnected and competitive world.

Here are some key trends that Feiger tells us are important to drive entrepreneurial success:

Europe's economic troubles could still affect businesses. Feiger says that while some people believe that the recession being faced by most economies is likely to end by 2014, there is evidence that says otherwise. Further stagnation or decline in the world economy could make it difficult to do business with European companies and markets, but it also might turn into a big drag on local financial markets.

This may be a good time to borrow money. By increasing liquidity in the system banks are not actually creating an explosion of monetary growth, but just creating in effect, more reserves, because the banking system is capable of lending much more than it actually lends because there isn't enough demand.

Steve Mann, CMO at LexisNexis says that a CMO sits at the intersection of creativity and strategy. The CMO partners with the CEO to translate his company's vision into marketing strategies that deliver revenue and satisfy consumers.  The CMO uses various strategies and channels to reach the market. The company's branding, communication, demand generation, pricing and packaging are all ways of translating a business strategy into a marketing strategy.

A recent article in ZDNet called CxO Talk: Can a CIO and CMO be friends? talks about the importance of digital, social, and mobile for a business to reach its stakeholders. Translating a business strategy into a marketing strategy affects what the business does digitally. Companies create digital personas through their digital presence. Mann believes that mobile is a primary platform to translate strategies into "something that is consumable” although the importance should be laid on engagement over platform. Therefore, LexisNexis follows "social first," rather than "mobile first," as a primary strategy to drive market engagement.

While business are moving rapidly into the digital space it is more important than ever for the CMO to balance IT requirements and strategize practices in a way that the marketing goals are met.

Phil Komarny, chief information officer (CIO) at Seton Hill University explains that the CIO must support core organizational objectives, much as the CMO does. In his field these goals include increasing enrollment and student retention, as well as establishing digital initiatives to communicate with stakeholders across all parts of the business. He believes that cloud, social, and mobile computing can help remove siloes, and that can help different people work together. Tools like Web conferencing solutions can help departments and people work together without physically being together.

Phil is consumerizing his infrastructure to create a more collaborative and social environment, building HTML5 portals to bring together data from multiple systems, to make interacting with systems and data easier for users. Management can use these applications and make decisions based on real-time data during meetings; instead of requesting reports from IT. Phil claims that too many IT departments "default to no," which does not work in today's cloud, social, and mobile world. The IT team plays a significant role in the procurement of business applications.

When it comes to procuring business applications Steve warns that vendors fall off his radar when their products are "too difficult to understand." Phill on the other hand is concerned about products that come without clarity on what the cost of ownership will be in year one.  He says, "It's becoming difficult to judge cloud implementations; there are hidden costs requiring due diligence." 

Both Steve Mann and Phil Komarny want to engage with vendors over social channels, including Twitter and LinkedIn. Steve suggests three vendor ideals:

Transparency on strengths and weaknesses

Openness to learning new ideas

Google ditches WebKit for Blink

Google’s Chrome web browser which was built on WebKit, an open source rendering engine developed by Apple, which also is the bases of  many other browsers, including Safari and Opera. But on Wednesday, Google told the world it will no longer use WebKit. Instead, it’s starting its own variation — or fork — of WebKit. This new open source project is known as Blink.

Read More: http://blog.chromium.org/2013/04/blink-rendering-engine-for-chromium.html

Google launches Compute Engine to take on Amazon

Anyone can now use the Google Compute Engine — the web giant’s answer to Amazon’s seminal EC2 cloud computing service. Well, anyone who’s willing to pay Google $400 a month for customer support.

On Thursday, the company announced that you too can now use Google Compute Engine if you sign up for “Gold Support” program, which provides twenty-four-hour-seven-day-a-week access to Google support engineers for prices beginning at $400 a month. Previously, the service was only available to certain beta testers. “You no longer need an invitation or a conversation with sales to get access,” the company said in a blog post.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/google-compute-open/

Facebook Home: A Social Smartphone?

Facebook announced Thursday its big mobile plans for Android: Facebook Home. Although it will initially be available only on a few models, Facebook Home represents how Facebook wants to exist on Android phones.

Read More: http://mashable.com/2013/04/04/facebook-home-everything-you-need-to-know/

Tech companies celebrate April Fools’ with fake products & pranks

Every April Fools’ Day, a handful of big-name companies get into the spirit of pranks and practical jokes. Some — namely Google — go all out with well produced videos, while others just phone in a silly Photoshop and call it a day.

Every business is currently facing the hype about cloud computing and how it can transform businesses. Though what is not being talked about is how, if a business is to adopt cloud computing, the effect will be more on the people and process than the technology integration itself. An article on ReadWrite called Cloud Computing: 4 Ways To Overcome IT Resistance lists 4 change strategies with which an organization can tackle IT inertia and resistance.

Use Tiger Teams To Break Down IT Fiefdoms Existing IT Silos in the organization can hinder cloud adoption. Most likely separate groups will be involved in separate parts of the setup. For ex, storage, computing, networking, etc. Coordination amongst these groups is difficult and there can be a number of issues that can arise due to the sudden interdependence that that groups are not accustomed to. The key is for these siloed groups to work in harmony. For this many organizations are looking at creating TIger Teams. A team of experienced and innovation professionals who can help navigate different functions smoothly. These teams can function successfully even if all members are not in the same location by effective use of tools like web conferencing etc. 

SWAT teams to get rid of analysis paralysis Many organizations do not have the required time it takes for proper proof points of analytics to implement the required strategies. They can not afford to lose money by waiting too long or by starting too early. For such organizations the best option is a SWAT team. A small discreet team that quietly observes systems and comes up with effective model to integrate with the IT ecosystem for evaluation. A SWAT team can be easier to initiate than a tiger team and requires less monetary input. 

Challenge age old ideas Many organizations are not up to letting go of age old tried and tested application specially proprietary applications that may be running on platforms that are no longer supported, simply because they are afraid of the change and very used to the current systems in place. But there are many different techniques for cloud migration, including some require little to no re-architecture efforts. This is important because being on a standard, cloud based infrastructure is much more cost effective than having non standard platforms. Since cloud computing offers better speed and faster processes it is most certainly decrease cost over time.

Change the habit of inefficiency  Most organizations have IT processes and systems that have been in place for years. The cloud initiative presents opportunities to improve these processes immensely by implementing new governance practices and process automation. Sudden change in systems will naturally cause worry and resistance amongst employees  but with the new cloud systems many new roles may emerge. These will help create optimal IT operations eventually leading to the success of the entire team. 

The Silicon Valley is known for its success in innovation like no other place in the world. This is not for the lack of trying on part of other cities. What is a major driving force in Silicon Valley is its culture.  Besides the talent, technology, and capital, present in the region there are also a number of behavioral factors that turn out to be critical to creating major innovation. One of these factors is the idea that helping others is good, even if it is competitors. This act of helping those who need it is called ‘Paying it Forward’ and is a major factor that helps startups succeed.

An article in Forbes called Paying It Forward: Silicon Valley's Open Secret to Success give the story of Jon Schroeder who was one of the original employees at Fairchild Semiconductor, a pioneer in electronics manufacturing in the 1960s. The one regarded as the first major Silicon Valley success story.

He relates how back in the day if their competitors was stuck with an issue and would call for help, they would reach out and do whatever possible to help. “That was the way it worked back then, we were all in it together.” Says Schroeder

“What we see in Silicon Valley is a legacy of the expansion of the American frontier, which required the creation of spontaneous, high-trust communities among diverse strangers.” Says Victor Hwang of T2 Venture Capital

This is the core of this culture of Paying it Forward.

Even in the earlier days California’s settlement, people arrived after months and years of travel. They were rugged, independent people willing to face challenges and deal with difficult situations. To travel any further than Missouri the wagons needed to move in groups. These groups were formed when families would wait and other would join hands with them, basing their decision to move ahead together on a simple conversation. This culture of trust and unity is what has filtered down to the generations now and is helping Californians to beat the odds and succeed through cooperation, where individually they may fail.

Businesses with leading IT setups view innovation as a core competency and gain advantage by keeping innovation activities in-house—especially in those sectors that are or can become competitive differentiators—rather than outsourcing this role to third-party suppliers.

Outsourcing contracts often restrict the scope of innovation on part of the vendor. It is more lucrative to break down the outsourcing contract into smaller, more manageable bits that give third-party providers room be creative and provide more innovation.

Before the innovation begins overcoming common roadblocks is crucial. System complexity, data inconsistencies, and operational issues could take away time and energy that could otherwise be used on more constructive issues. IT complexity are a continuous barrier to improving process as changes in IT can take too long and run over budget, or a new application may not deliver the desired results while creating additional complexity. Investment in IT innovation has to be planned in the best way possible so as to avoid any chances of losing resources in case of failure due to said complexities. 

IT complexity reduction is becoming a more common focus for innovators so that resources can be allocated to  high-value initiatives designed to cut costs and spur growth. With the coming in of a multitude of new softwares and technologies in the past decade it has now become key priority to streamline processes. Mobile applications and big data are rapidly changing the way businesses function.

A.T. Kearney's studies over the past decade have identified six distinct steps to success - 

Develop world-class IT delivery capabilities

Invest and measure IT innovation

Balance IT leadership with business partnerships

Integrate products and services with traditional back-office IT

Ensure IT innovation is a "core" activity

Make sound business decisions on emerging technologies

Top Tech Stories for the week.

Oracle Is Bleeding At The Hands Of Database Rivals

Data base revenue, which has been the cash machine of the company, has changed. There are now alternative databases, as well as the cloud,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “That pressure is still a tiny bleed, but it is out there and the question is – is it bigger than we think it is?

Read More: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/24/oracle-is-bleeding-at-the-hands-of-database-rivals/

DaaS, MaaS & DRaaS: The Next Phase Of Cloud Computing

It's no secret that the public cloud market has been growing like gangbusters. In fact, a recent Gartner study found spending on public cloud services is growing at more than 28% per year and private cloud spending is three times that of public cloud. That projects total cloud spending in 2016 to hit $240 billion.

Read More: http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/the-next-phase-of-cloud-computing-daas-maas-draas

Yes, This Week's DDoS Attack Was Huge, And Part Of An Ominous Trend

Depending on who you believe, the week long Spamhaus-Cyberbunker cyberattack we covered Wednesday was either a threat to the Internet itself or hyped up by an overzealous security vendor. Either way, it was still serious business.

Read More: http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/ddos-attack-was-huge-and-part-of-a-trend

Yahoo acquires Summly

Yahoo had the tech world talking after announcing plans to purchase mobile news app Summly, which was created by a now very rich U.K. high school student named Nick D'Aloisio. The app has already been pulled from the App Store, but its technology will soon be integrated into a number of Yahoo's mobile products

Read More: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417047,00.asp 

Amazon buys Goodreads 

Amazon announced that it will acquire Goodreads, the popular social network for books, for an undisclosed sum. Goodreads launched in 2007 and currently has more than 16 million members. The service lets users share and review books they've read or want to read, as well as to keep track of what their friends are reading.

An organization that is focused on driving innovation and keeping IT operations up to date will most definately stay ahead of the curve. A T Kerney is one organization that has regularly been monitoring what drives innovation in IT and how this benefits an organization. 

One thing that they they have come to understand is that more aggressive technology adoption and investment is a clear path toward growth and profits.

In their latest article called IT Innovation Spurs Renewed Growth A.T. Kearney defines IT innovation as game-shifting, technology-enabled strategies. The primary use of IT innovations is to be part of sustained growth and competition by providing a business with new solutions to customers, products, or supply chains. Whether it is analytics, predicting consumer needs, conferencing solutions enabling fast turn around time or product innovation that makes an object more usable and integrated into the user's lifestyle.

High-growth companies look to their IT organizations to drive revenue, not just to reduce costs or streamline operations. Almost 90 percent of companies contend IT innovation has become more important over the past five years, yet investments in IT innovation have declined noticeably.

This can majorly be blamed on the fact that IT and business leaders are often unable to articulate clearly the benefit of investing in IT innovation to stakeholders, so the bulk of IT investment tends to go to business enablement and operations. But those that rate their basic IT services as satisfactory say they are in a better position to deliver more innovative business technologies.

Those who can understand the importance of IT innovation and determine the right level of investment can design an organizational structure that encourages and manages new ideas.

With cloud, mobile, social and big data advancing the way they have been, the way we look at and deal with businesses is fast changing. No matter what the business, technology is reinventing how decisions are being made, executed and how value is being created and delivered.

In a recent article on Forbes, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has predicted three ways in which technology will transform the future of business.

Rometty claims that data analytics will revolutionize decision-making.

With the incoming tsunami of information, decision-making can no longer be based on previous biases. Managers and leaders who want to use this information to their advantage will have to take into consideration data analysis and use it to make better more objective calls. 

Simply having access to this new technology will not enable the change, it will require a change in mindset. 

Social Network Will Drive Value

Social sharing will change the way companies hire and compensate. Feedback from bosses, peers and even customers will in the future impact the compensation for each employee, creating more objective pay models. 

Consumer Segments Will Cede To The Individual

With the massive information available, businesses will be able to tailor the value they deliver down to every individual. It will no longer be about catering to a consumer segments but rather about the individual who is the consumer. This on the part of the business will require very fast turn around time, increasing the use of technologies such as cloud computing and unified conferencing solutions. 

Top Tech Stories for the week

What If The Google Reader Readers Just Don’t Come Back?

If judged by my Twitter stream last week, the shutdown of Google Reader is the biggest story ever in the history of news. Of course, the reality is that Google is likely shutting down the product for a good reason

Read More: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/24/bees/

Embrace, extend, extinguish: How Google crushed and abandoned the RSS industry

Google Reader was born in October 2005. Within two weeks of its soft launch, it had hundreds of thousands of users.

I know those details because the team responsible for developing Google Reader blogged about their progress regularly beginning with that first “Hello, Internet” post more than seven years ago.

Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/embrace-extend-extinguish-how-google-crushed-and-abandoned-the-rss-industry-7000013025/

New 3D Display Lets Phones and Tablets Make Holograms

A new kind of 3D display developed at HP Labs plays hologram-like videos without the need for any moving parts or glasses. Videos displayed on the HP system hover above the screen, and viewers can walk around them and experience an image or video from as many 200 different viewpoints -- like walking around a real object.

Read More: http://mashable.com/2013/03/21/3d-display-phones-holograms/

Canon Rebel SL1: The World's Smallest DSLR Camera

Canon unveiled on Thursday what it says is the smallest and lightest DSLR camera ever made, the EOS Rebel SL1

Read More: http://mashable.com/2013/03/21/canon-eos-rebel-sl1/

Google Gears Up to Take Web Services Beyond the Web

Google just can?? seem to resist baiting the 800-pound gorilla in Redmond. With Google Gears, just announced minutes ago, it?? providing Web developers a way to take their online services offline??ssentially, providing an alternative platform, based on the Web browser, to Microsoft?? Windows.

Further to Big Data Big Impact - I, we now look at how you can use big data. 

A recent report called Big data and the Creative Destruction of Today's Business Models by A.T. Kearney states that Each day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created and the volume of business data worldwide is expected to double every 1.2 years.

According to a recent A.T. Kearney IT innovation study, more than 45 percent of companies have implemented a business-intelligence or big data initiative in the past two years. Further studies estimate more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies will have at least one big data initiative underway within a year.

Harnessing this big data can boost top and bottom line results in an organisation. It can create strategic value by enabling faster, better and more proactive decision making and it can help improve efficiency by helping streamline process, increasing automation and reducing redundant tools.

The three main segments where big data and analytics can create an impact in company are

Customer intimacy

Product Innovation

Operations

As businesses are evolving and using big data, their business models are also changing. There can be 3 basic types of models that organisations can adapt depending on their circumstances and the opportunity. 

The decentralized services model is where each business or function has its own analytics group that enables rapid decision making and execution. This model increases focus, but the lack of an enterprise view can undermine opportunity.

The embedded shared-services model is a centralized model that rolls under an existing function or business unit and serves the entire organisation. It helps in standardisation and enables better coordination between departments but is less transparent in its allocation of analytical resources.

The standalone shared-services model is similar to the embedded model but exists outside organisational entities or functions. It has direct executive-level reporting and elevates analytics to a vital core competency rather than an enabling capability.

Poor economic conditions, changing consumer behaviors, new competitors, more channels and more data are all having an impact on the way businesses are running. Several factors are turning companies toward competing on analytics, from competitors' investments in the area to a need for more insightful data from structured and unstructured data. 

Transforming analytical capabilities and big data platforms begins with a well thought-out, three-pronged approach

Once the big data platforms are in place it has to be channeled in the right direction to get the maximum return on investment.

Research from the McKinsey Global Institute called The challenge—and opportunity—of ‘big data’ identifies 5 broad way of leveraging big data

Make big data more accessible and timely

Use data experiments to expose variability and raise performance

Segment populations to customize

Use automated algorithms to replace and support human decision making

Innovate with new business models, products and services.

Technology is changing the world in more ways than one would have thought possible. The large amounts of data being generated by users, machines and transactions is being monitored and utilised. This usable databank of information is commonly referred to as ‘Big data’. It is current, qualitative and quantitative offering deep insights at a low cost.

Big data is changing the way businesses function. Be it for their customers, employees or processes; Organisations are tapping this information to optimize their day to day running as well as strategic planning. 

A company based in one part of the world can now analyze the way its products and features are being received and used across the globe. With technologies like unified conferencing solutions, cloud storage and offsite processing the world is just a mere click away. The Wall Street journal has elaborated this in their recent article How Big data is Changing the Whole Equation for Business. 

The fact that businesses are fundamentally changing also raises the question of how business people will need to evolve and Forbes has highlighted this problem in see How Big data is Transforming the Hunt for Talent focusing on the human resource function and how the hunt and retention of talent is impacted by big data availability. 

Big data helps companies minimize attrition by pin-pointing specific problem areas, whether the employee is local or global. This enables HR practitioners to reach out to remotely located employees using web and audio conferencing tools to have the right career conversation with them.

The knowledge of analytics that comes with big data can be intimidating for HR practitioners but it is a skill worth having as it can have an enormous impact on the business.

Once an organisation can access and interpret big data to better its performance it certainly will. The challenge is to find resources with the right skill set to use, evaluate and write the correct algorithms to maximize the insights from the data. – They need ‘The Data Scientist’.

Traditional database administrators will have to increase their skill set by learning how to migrate traditional applications to newer program platforms such as Hadloop. Enterprises now have the opportunity to quickly step into the domain of big data provided their developers find new ways of bridging the traditional with the modern.  Forbes has highlighted this shortage of skills problem in a recent article ‘ Combating the Big data skills shortage’ 

Maximising the data 

Vess Bakalov is someone who caught the big data train at the right time! 

His company SevOne is IT performance management service. They collect data from every device in a business that creates it in real time and report back on the performance of those devices.

SevOne is a fast growing company with 80%YOY growth over the past 5 years. They already monitor more queries per second than Facebook and migration to the cloud along with the virtualisation movement will only create a greater need to monitor device performance and their services.

Bakalov said his company never had a quarter where they did not make money. He also states “We are still a relatively small company, but we are the largest company with a single focus on performance management.”You can find more on VessBakalov's SevOne: Making Big data Manageable from this article on Forbes.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of annual film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences held at Austin, TX, USA. 

SXSW Interactive has become the place to experience a preview of what is unfolding in the world of technology. SXSW Interactive is focused on emerging technology, a focus which has earned the festival a reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies and has probably been the biggest of its kind in the world since 2007.

Here are the top updates on SXSW 13

Hands on With Leap Motion's Controller: Leap motion's powerful controller is said to be future of desktop computing and its creator demonstrated how this light weight device effortlessly recognizes both expansive and fine movements. Read More: http://bit.ly/134DeeO

Best Keynote by Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX:  The interactive keynote address by Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, generated the Most Social Buzz. During his keynote address, Musk said he would one day like to set foot on Mars, but only if he knew his company could carry on without him and the technology could get him there safely. In 2012, SpaceX made history as the first privately held company to send a cargo payload to the International Space Station. Check out the keynote video: http://on.mash.to/ZDRrsZ

Big Data, the buzz word is making rounds these day and this impacts various aspects of business.  Let's understand what big data means. Businesses run on data and everyday growth of this data add to the trillion and quadrillion data points. Companies like Google and Amazon are already dealing with it, gathering huge amount of data.

This big data is used in various ways, for instance, it is used in capturing  preferences of customers and design or improving products and services. This further helps companies in getting a bigger picture which was not available through traditional marketing research

Another variation of big data usage is with human resources department.  Companies are able to get lot of value addition in data analytics in hiring and designing employee benefits doing predictive analysis of past behavior.

With increase in % spend on softwares by organizations there is lot more executives can learn from the software organizations.

The strategic and operational challenge is that software is not constant. Many have come to think of it like electricity—something that can be plugged in and mostly forgotten about.  But software and the processes and applications it touches are, in fact, constantly changing.

Almost every company is becoming a software company. Global executives need to learn from software firms's business model for its performance. By considering business and operating models pioneered by the software industry and tailoring them to their own needs, organizations can lower their costs, boost performance, and turn software into a competitive advantage.  

4 things that organization needs to impart:

Moving from products to platforms

Accelerating revenue by creating new business models

Accelerating cycle time and cocreating with customers

Creating an agile organization

Technology advancement and rapid adoption among organizations has enabled swift flows of information.  It has contributed to improved  customer communication and richer insights.

According to McKinsey, improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises is a potential value addition of $600 Billion annually in four commercial sectors: 

Consumer packaged goods 

Retail financial services 

Advanced manufacturing 

Professional services