JimCarroll

Innovation and the new workforce

May 21, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’m keynoting the annual IHRIM (International Human Resource Information Management) professional association in about an hour here in Houston, TX; I’ll have an audience of about 1,000 or so.

My talk today broadly revolves around the issue of “what’s happening with our workforce.” I’m taking the audience on a tour of the key drivers which impact organizations today, whether business or government,

velocity: business is just plain fast, and our workforce must cope with that
change capacity: there’s a big disconnect in how quickly some people can deal with rapid change compared to others
idea instantaneity: we’re in a new world in which ideas or issues can quickly speed out of control, or work to our advantage
knowledgeability: in which global insight is increasing at a furious pace, leading to ever larger pools of knowledge
innovation opportunity: such rates of discovery lead to massive new opportunities with bringing new products and services to market
idea discovery: our interconnected world now allows unique ideas to gain a global audience in a flash
consumer spontaneity: the low attention span consumer is fleeting when it comes to loyalty to brand
business intensity: operational excellence is the name of the game, given an economy which simply runs “fast”
skills availability: all these trends that it is going to be more difficult to access skills

My key point for the audience: When we are thinking about deployment of skills , we must be thinking about:

Attracting the right skills …… at the right time … for the right purpose
Providing for business flexibility in a time of rapid change
Establishing a constantly shifting, evolving “workforce on demand”
Enabling this with sophisticated tools, infrastructure and skills access capabilities – managed by folks such as the IHRIM

These are issues I’ve covered extensively in my analysis, Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills here

Innovating in the era of instant obsolescence

May 17, 2007 by JimCarroll

We’re in the era of instant obsolescence: can you innovate fast enough to keep up? Can you keep up, when faster is the new fast?

In the last few years, I’ve interviewed CFO’s and CIO’s with companies that have achieved rapid market growth, all of them customers of SAP. This includes such global success stories as J. Crew, Body Armour, Adobe, Purdue Pharma, Hunt Oil, Lennox, Jazz Semiconductor, Merit Energy, and others. SAP has had me in to keynote a wide variety of events, and host panel discussions with these senior executives. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to explore what innovative companies do in rapidly changing markets.

I recently lead such a discussion, both online and at SAPPHIRE 07 in Atlanta, under the theme, Velocity, Agility, Complexity, and Flexibility: The Four Key Drivers for Competitive Advantage. I interviewed CIO’s and senior IT executives with four high-growth hi-tech companies: Entegris, Intervoice, Avocent and Citrix (and it Atlanta, Checkfree.)

One of my opening comments: “We’re in the era of absolutely instant obsolescence. We can’t afford to take a week to roll up the sales numbers … we have to know what’s happened in the last 10 minutes.”

All of these organizations are faced with the challenge and opportunity of the high-velocity economy. Rapid growth, collapsing product lifecycles, and the need for a focus on” time to market.”

They provided wonderful insight into how they innovate in order to stay ahead of the market, manage global supply chains, build a cohesive, collaborative culture, and provide for real time insight into their business.

What do these organizations do in terms of innovation? Several things:

operational excellence is a major focus
there are high expectations for growth, and an IT infrastructure that enables such growth
they have a need for instant, need driven relationships with their partners
they focus on rapid agility for new market demands
they are religious on “fast time to market”
they focus on quick marshalling of resources to accomplish velocity
they provide for instant scalability, given market volatility and rapid change

Innovation, and the big “what-if’s?”

May 15, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’ve long posted this challenge to my clients: can your organization deal with the rapidity of change? Brands, product, marketing campaigns, skills capabilities, the depth of your bench: it can all go out of date, really, really fast. The art of innovation includes asking yourself: “what-if?” And you can’t limit your thinking, in terms of the potential of the “what-ifs?”

In the context of this and today’s announcement of the DaimlerChrysler de-merger (for want of a better phrase): Wow! Things happen quickly. Two years ago, I spent time with some folks at this iconic global brand. There was a lot of discussion about the “what-if’s.” But maybe the probing within the organization wasn’t deep enough, as to where the “what-if’s” could go.

Now the brand has become undone — and it’s a brand that is set to be something from the “olden days.” It happened to Sony too.

And consider The Google Car and Massive Market Disruption. I started it as a joke on stage. It’s perhaps more real by the moment.

The question of whether your brand is from the olden days is an essential one, because the answer to the question shows how far you are willing to go in assessing the “what-if’s”. Obviouly, the DaimlerChrysler situation is far more complex: legacy costs, an innovative but ultimately doomed workforce, a failure with the massive cultural issues in making a global merger work. But is it that much different that the rapidity of change being faced by any organization today?

Consider this: two years ago, it was pre-Katrina. Oil was cheap, gas was plentiful, and everyone was always going to drive a big SUV.

Today, green is in, volatility rules, and — well, lots of people still drives big SUV’s. Except more and more of them aren’t made by American icons. Brands get tired, not for lack of trying, but for lack of challenge as to the severity of the rate of change.

In the high-velocity economy, there’s no room for complacency. That’s why constant, relentless innovation is critical. At least, it gets people thinking as to the “what-if’s.” Because today, the big “what-if’s” can quickly become the “as has now happened….”

Hyperconnectivity — 1998 and on…

May 15, 2007 by JimCarroll

You can read the original blog post Hyperconnectivity? Innovation at Nortel? Invent what’s already invented! about the origin of the word hyperconnectivity, which led to this post)

And also, one astute blog reader and researcher asked, and I responded. Yes, it is true: Nortel did provide copies of one of my books to shareholders in attendance at their annual meeting in Ottawa, May 2000, and asked my co-author and I to attend. They even had a little table for us. The book was Light Bulbs to Yottabits: How to Profit by Understanding the Internet of tbe Future. It’s out of print now, but had some fascinating stuff on connectivity and such. It makes for fascinating reading in retrospect. And yes, I also hosted a national radio show for Nortel during 2000 to 2001 ….. so it’s not like these guys don’t know me…..

To recap:

Globe and Mail, May 11/07 : “The company is making the pitch that it’s the only major communications equipment player that has the products and knowledge required in key areas such as broadband, wireless, and applications products in both corporate and carrier markets. That has left Nortel the clear front-runner, the company says, to take advantage of an emerging technological era that it is now describing as “hyperconnectivity.”

The phrase, which Mr. Roese (CTO for Nortel) says he coined, attempts to describe a state of perpetual Internet access where personal and corporate telecom machines and gadgets are in constant high-level contact.

In any event, here you go. There’s lots more out there.

New Media
The time is now-swim and swim fast:
16 February 1998
Telephony

It’s poised to change the public network, and there’s no way to escape its path. As Internet telephony comes of age, a number of quality, pricing and regulation issues are surfacing

etc etc

But this is an age of hyperconnectivity, where any number of terminal devices can use a variety of wireline or wireless access forms to carry their voice, data or multimedia traffic to any terminal device on the globe. The Internet is the newest option available for backbone transport, and anyone in the business of carrying messages for hire must figure out how this potentially powerful means of transport affects their business.

———————–

Trends to track for the millennium
1 October 1999
Target Marketing

DEVELOPMENTS THAT COULD TRANSFORM DIRECT MARKETING IN 2000 AND BEYOND

AS THE MILLENNIUM approaches, businesses should take note of various trends which will influence both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing. Some of these trends have been developing over the past few years, while others are just beginning to emerge.

etc etc

“Hyperconnectivity” will also promote greater mobility (i.e., wireless offices using microwave or infrared transmitters; satellite links connecting mobile sales, delivery and technical personnel to the home office). Through digitalization, wireless and fiber optics will replace copper wiring as the primary landbased telecommunications infrastructure. This, in turn, will fuel the broader application of multimedia technology in various marketing and business presentations.

—————————

E-Query With PWC – Navigating the future.
16 July 2001
The Edge

Question

I have heard so much about the “mobile Internet”. What is it exactly? How will it impact my business as well as my personal life?

– Old Economy player

Answer

The mobile Internet or the wireless web is the use of wireless communications to access network-based information and applications from mobile devices.

etc etc

Joining the dots – Hyperconnectivity

The above features, although compelling on their own, must be successfully integrated with each other to create the killer application. “Hyperconnectivity” between these features will become crucial, as the killer application must be able to seamlessly link previously unrelated events and make this information relevant to the user.

——————-

TIME TO GET A GRIP NOW THAT THE CARNIVAL IS OVER.
13 August 2001
Infotech Weekly

In the aftermath of the tech market crash, an IT expert is warning that businesses now risk over-correcting. RICHARD PAMATATAU reports

Fred Balboni, the Asia-Pacific leader of information technology and systems for global consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, says investors, companies and individuals behaved without thinking during that period.

etc etc

“I call it hyperconnectivity as well, but there are privacy issues because if people are always online, then they can always be reached,” he says.

People will use the Internet more and more for mundane transactions, Mr Balboni says, from buying “loo paper” to updating their driver’s licence.

Loo paper? We seem to be knee deep with this!

Hyperconnectivity? Innovation at Nortel? Invent what’s already invented!

May 11, 2007 by JimCarroll

Gosh, I just wish Nortel would wake up one day. They haven’t yet. Their much hyped new “hyperconnectivity” strategy, announced to much fanfare by CEO Mike Zafirovski over the last few weeks, really isn’t anything new. Neither the concept, nor the phrase, which they now claim to have invented.

Their “bold” new strategy is curious, considering I’ve been using the phrase hyperconnectivity for over a decade, such as found within one of my Profit Magazine columns in 2002. [ read the article ] and have used it as a key trend on stage in front of tens of thousands of people … including with people at Nortel, as well as their competitors and industry partners. My observations on hyperconnectivity have also been covered in the media, such as this story which ran in 2003.

For Nortel to claim is has found a bold new strategy in a bold new phrase “hyperconnectivity” is simply untrue, and makes the current management team look rather sillly.

Gosh, over the last decade, I’ve provided my insight through internal and external keynotes and workshops with some of the senior business, R&D, marketing and sales executives at some of the world’s leading companies in the “convergence” space, including Motorola (including a meeting with all of their senior global R&D staff — 225+ people — in 2005), Verizon, the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers, Microsoft, Disney, the BBC. I’ve seen some remarkable thinking, particularly around architectures with respect to the new world around us in which everything is plugged into everything else.

I’ve also done my share of stirring up some futuristic thinking on this trend; it’s captured in a video clip from my site, circa 2002 or so, in which I talk about the “hyperconnectivity” trend. I’ve got dozens of clips from some pretty heavy duty events (Society of Cable Telecom Engineers, Tampa, 2000+) in which I banter around the phrase.

Which brings me to Nortel:

can this company do nothing right?
how can it claim in a big new marketing strategy that it is doing something “new” when it is doing nothing of the sort?
if it is trying to come back to the marketplace after living in scandal-land, can it’s senior management team not do it with at least a bit of intelligence?

To much fanfare, CEO Mike Zafirovski announced to shareholders in early May that it was back in the game, and it’s game was — hyperconnectivity! Their brand new strategy? They were set to be a major player in this exciting new marketplace in which everything is plugging into everything else.

They were onto something revolutionary!

Yesterday, John Roese, the new CTO, in an interview in the Globe & Mail, claimed he “coined” the phrase.

OK, that ticked me off. As soon as I heard Nortel use the word “hyperconnectivity” my ears popped up. Heck, I even think I even had the phrase in my my slide deck when I presented to Nortel customers at the 1995 Nortel PGA Open in Tucson, which included most of the senior management of Nortel (at the time.)

And actually, it ended up being one of the major trends discussed at length in my What I Learned From Frogs in Texas book. It’s a phrase that I’ve used on stage, with tens of thousands of people listening, ranging from the US Army Corps of Engineers to Disney, Motorola, SAP, and hundreds of other organizations.

And it’s not even like I made the phrase up; it existed in various telephony magazines as far back as 1995.

What’s interesting is this: at the end of March, there was a flurry of activity on my web site, as people from Nortel.com googled the phrase “hyperconnectivity.” Many found my video clip; many watched it. At the end of March, they registered the domain name. Then their CEO announces a bold, exciting new strategy!

Except — well, it’s not bold. It’s not terribly exciting. Everyone else is already doing it. Cisco, Motorola, and just about every other organization out there knows we are headed rapidly into a world in which countless devices plug into countless other devices. They might use other phrases, but everyone else seems to be already well ahead in the game.

It’s almost as if this is a bad joke. In the Globe article, the CTO claims “it’s kind of like we went to sleep, woke up, and found the world had kind of circled around where we were.”

Actually, I think most of the rest of the tech world has alread moved well beyond Nortel, and Nortel is obviously still in some soft of semi-awake state.

I’m not into domain name speculation, though it would have been fun if I owned hyperconnectivity.com.

What’s galling — perhaps more so, indicative of yet another fumbling of strategy at Nortel — is how they now claim to have “invented something new” that lots of people have been talking about and thinking about for a long time.

What can we learn from such a series of CEO mis-steps? Several things:

innovation isn’t about dreaming up some cool new catch phrase, and building a cool new marketing campaign around the phrase (particularly when the phrase isn’t, well, new….)
innovation isn’t about suddenly claiming to the world that you have something unique, when everyone is already talking about it and doing it
innovation is about walking into your customer base with a credible architecture, a credible sales team, and a credible vision that will help a company get involved faster in the high-velocity world of telecom, rather than a simplistic marketing phrase

I’m saddened most of all by this Nortel thing because, well, once they seemed to be a cool company. Now, they just seem to be tired, in a marketplace in which everyone is charging ahead at light speed.

I just feel like scolding Nortel, but sadly, this latest bit of silliness just seems to be yet another step in a lot series of fumbling missteps.

Update: for those who are asking about “prior art,” another posting details a bit of that. Find it here.

Rethinking quality in the high-velocity economy

May 9, 2007 by JimCarroll

It’s been a whirldwind two weeks, with keynotes in Orlando x 2, Boca Raton, Vancouver, and a few other places…..

My 2nd Orlando event was the Day 2 Keynote for about 2,000 people at the 7th Annual World Congress on Quality and Improvement. I focused on the issue, “how do we ensure we can maintain quality, and the very concept of quality, in the high-velocity world we now find ourselves within?”

One of my opening slides led with this observation: “Velocity drives rapid (consumer / customer / business) change, increases their expectations, which requires faster innovation and a faster more complex economy – which perhaps requires a rethink of quality methodology.”

Some of my major observations through the talk:

The entire China / pet food /melamine issue is showing the impact that a vast, complex, global economy can have on the issue of quality; I think we are in for a complete rethink and refocus on the issue of quality as a result of events like this.
In the era of idea instantaneity, quality challenges can go supernova just like that…
accelerated innovation drives faster time to market, more rapid development time, and less available time to assess potential quality challenges
the high velocity economy requires more rapid implementation of business processes …with ever increasing complexity and scope … which introduces quality challenges in terms of organizational excellence
exponentiating connectivity risk with supply chains, business processes, and infrastructure, means that we have to rethink all quality issues as we redefine the nature of the very nature of STUFF…..
the skills crisis combined with rapid evolution of knowledge means that organizations will have fewer resources available to pay attention to quality, and that quality experts will be niche-orientated
clearly, volatility is the new normal, and presents even greater challenges to our concepts and expectations with quality

Suffice it to say, there’s going to be plenty of opportunity in the whole field of quality given velocity — the faster things get, the more challenging it becomes to maintain quality!

JimCarroll

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.