Strategy

Bobby Cameron came up next and begun by highlighting how little IT sometimes matters to business innovation – even innovative companies and CEOs don’t think of their IT in this way. So why is this a problem? Executives say one thing but do another: Innovation is a “priority” but not on the executive team’s agenda. [...]

Interesting session on the Mortgage Crisis next, subtitled “Implications for a Global Economy”. Joe Breeden of Strategic Analytics and Daniel Melo of Fair Isaac. Joe started by saying that this is the 3rd time this has happened in the last 16 years. And, as before, it’s not just about mortgage and it’s not just about [...]

After the keynote it is back to the other end of the MGM Grand to attend a customer panel on business/IT alignment. Amy Wohl is the host and she blogs here. BTW I may not finish the whole session as I have to go sign the book at the bookstore at the show. I am [...]

[amazonify]0470018534:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0470018534::text::::The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership[/amazonify]I recently finished Ade McCormack’s book, The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership. The book is aimed at a fairly high-level audience and makes a case for better integration, or “entwinement”, of technology into businesses. Ade can come across somewhat opinionated but he [...]

Pip Coburn gave the closing keynote on Naked Without My Data. Pip made the point that lots of people actually don’t want to get quality data – they want to hear what they expect. People are not acting like quality of data matters. They want the data that supports their point of view or conforms [...]

Allan Alter over at CIO Insight had this article on CIOs Rank Their Top Priorities for 2008. Across all categories of company it was interesting that the top items were: Delivering better service to customers Improving business processes Contributing to the creation of new business strategies Cutting costs I don’t know about you but I [...]

Charlie Bess had an interesting post over on the EDS blog that led me to this article in the November IEEE journal titled: Toward the Realization of Policy-Oriented Enterprise Management (fee charged). The article is by Matthias Kaiser from SAP labs here in my home town. He is doing some research with a group at [...]

I got an interesting email from Dan Appleton this week. Dan is a principal of The Capabilities Center and his email prompted me to blog today on this topic. Dan’s email introduced his perspective on how business rules, especially in the context of enterprise decision management or EDM. He and I are broadly in agreement [...]

Timo Elliott of the BI questions blog had a “prediction” about 2008 this month – 2008: From Business Automation to Business Optimization?. Timo makes some great points and I agree with his premise that past is about automating business processes and the future is going to be about optimizing the business, in part by ensuring [...]

I always enjoy reading David Raab’s work and his recent post on marketing software was no exception. In The Next Big Leap for Marketing Software he makes a number of great points and I particularly like the steps he lays out for getting people on board. I have blogged before about the value of using [...]

Dave Dixon wrote a nice post a little while ago – Why You Should Care About Shareholder Value – and I have been mulling writing a response. Dave works at Provisdom and has recently started a blog there (despite being a fairly new blog, he has already written some interesting posts so check it out [...]

[amazonify]1422106667:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1422106667::text::::IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage[/amazonify] I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage by George Westerman and Richard Hunter. The book approaches IT risk not as a technical issue but as a business and management one with potentially serious consequences. As businesses increasingly are [...]

[amazonify]1591398622:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1591398622::text::::Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management[/amazonify] On the plane over I finished Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. This excellent book lays out why and how companies fail to drive their business based on evidence, and instead “miracle cure” [...]

[amazonify]0609610570:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0609610570::text::::Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done[/amazonify] Over the weekend I finished “Execution. The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. This book is a succinct summary of all that is wrong in many companies. Larry and Ram analyze many of the most dysfunctional behaviors seen in large corporations and lay [...]

[amazonify]0374292795:right[/amazonify][amazonify]0374292795::text::::The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century[/amazonify] I have just finished reading “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Firstly a health warning – it’s a REALLY long book. Even skimming some sections it took me a long while to read it. Overall it is a good if somewhat long winded [...]

[amazonify]1591397200:right[/amazonify][amazonify]1591397200::text::::The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization[/amazonify] In this book John and John discuss how recent changes in the world will force, indeed are forcing, companies to change how they think about offshoring and outsourcing, innovation and even their core business processes. They describe how a combination of [...]