Cutter Consortium: Innovation

Unlearning and Learning in the Innovation Economy

1 Apr 2008 15:12:31 GMT

Austin, Rob; Nolan, Richard L.; O'Donnell, Shannon; Mason, Robert M.; Clemons, Eric K.; Devin, Lee; Sullivan, Erin; Hanke, Peter; Verganti, Roberto; MacCormack, Alan | Executive Reports | 01 April 2008 | Innovation

In this first Innovation Forum, Cutter Fellow Rob Austin kicks off the discussion by asserting that firms must unlearn old principles and embrace new ones if they are to succeed in today's innovation economy. Cutter Innovation team members then contribute their views in an interactive exchange, rich in examples that range from Boeing's transformed view of "failure" to the role of "emergent features" in pharmaceutical industry innovation. They point out the value of a "no way back" strategy, the danger of being "best at what you do," the qualities essential in innovative leaders, and the creation of radical innovation through processes that are anything but "user-centered" improvements.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/reports/2008/01/index.html

The Pleasure of Added Resistance: Working at the Edge of Your Ability

1 May 2008 22:25:11 GMT

O'Donnell, Shannon | E-Mail Advisors | 01 May 2008 | Innovation

An old boyfriend of mine, while a young adult, once spent a Saturday with his best friend taking apart and reassembling his car's engine. The intent wasn't to make improvements. They were simply curious about the engine's assembly and about their own ability to do something that was more ambitious than other such experiments they had tried. Apparently not ambitious enough, however, as they decided to increase the challenge by carrying out the entire activity, start to finish, wearing roller skates.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080501.html

New Survey: Enterprise Innovation 2008

18 Apr 2008 15:40:23 GMT

Respond to our survey on Enterprise Innovation 2008 and receive a free copy of "The Psychology and Motivation of Creativity and Innovation."

http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/199197/aaef/

A Closer Look at Leadership Versus Management

17 Apr 2008 18:12:27 GMT

Hanke, Peter | E-Mail Advisors | 17 April 2008 | Innovation

The expectations for our leaders have never been larger. More than ever before, the essentials of leadership include the courageous use of human experience and the individual desire to create a difference and succeed in a world of rising complexity. The possibilities for development and the ability to engage in new, interesting projects, as well as to realize potential, are almost infinite. In addition, individual existential choices have become more important and are more closely connected with the emotional forces of employees and managers. Gut feeling has risen in the ranks as a tool for decision making, and the leader's search for credibility and authenticity has become a major issue. At the same time, the organization's ability to set and reach strategic goals can no longer be differentiated from the manager as a human being. This is true for top leadership as well as for informal and formal management because the personalization of goal-setting and the capability of coaching both employees and stakeholders have become universal aspects of the role. I am not talking only about pragmatic branding exercises or media visibility and nicely phrased value-based management; the leader is in focus just as a performing artist is -- and people will be just as critical of the exposed aspects of the leadership performer's contribution as they are of the opera star tenor in an opening night at the Metropolitan Opera or a popular rock band at Wembley Stadium.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080417.html

A Solid Innovation in Laptop Storage Begins to Emerge

3 Apr 2008 15:22:14 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 03 April 2008 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation

As is the case with many technology innovations compared to existing solutions, the market price starts high and the benefits taken in the context of the costs involved start low. Price and benefits move toward each other until joining at that inflection point of value where the innovation presents an affordable alternative to the existing technology. We might be quickly approaching the affordability inflection point in solid-state storage.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2008/btt080403.html

Innovation of the Second Kind: Cultivating a Frame of Mind, Part 2

3 Apr 2008 15:20:24 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 03 April 2008 | Innovation

Looking to the future, we see a new revolution looming. The Industrial Revolution transformed life in the developed economies and is beginning to do the same for the rest of the world. However, the Industrial Revolution depends on limitless amounts of energy and supplies -- which we're (finally!) discovering that we don't have. Just as Eli Whitney reconceived how to make things (interchangeable parts) and Henry Ford how to assemble (the moving line) and sell them (economies of scale), we now need to reconceive what we mean by value and profit.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080403.html

What Was Microsoft Thinking? Part 2

20 Mar 2008 20:24:26 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 20 March 2008 | Innovation; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In my last Trends Advisor (see "What Was Microsoft Thinking?" 6 March 2008), I took Microsoft to task for its latest set of mainline products, particularly Word 2007. One of the e-mails I got back said that Microsoft had done extensive requirements gathering and that the latest version of Word 2007 had 90% coverage of all of the major functions people requested. I suspect that is right. Indeed, the problem with most word-processing, presentation, and spreadsheet programs is that they are indeed "feature rich."

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2008/btt080320.html

Innovation of the Second Kind: Cultivating a Frame of Mind

20 Mar 2008 20:23:46 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 20 March 2008 | Innovation

As always, I'm riding a bunch of hobby horses, but none so often as the difference I think I see between innovation as it relates to particular products, services, or ideas, and innovation as it relates to the great changes that are shuffling their feet in the wings, ready to come on stage and change our lives. To assure long life as a company making goods to sell at a profit, we need a lot of the first kind of innovation; we need, in other words, continually to improve the way we develop and exploit our industrial methods. To assure life at all as a developed economy -- a planet even -- we need a whole lot of the second kind; we need, in other words, to break with the past and move on.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080320.html

Going for Agility? Start with a Management Framework

15 Feb 2008 19:53:56 GMT

Berry, John | Executive Updates | 15 February 2008 | Innovation

The word "agile" is equipped with an easily understood definition and a lot of street buzz in management circles today. There's no company that would not want this adjective affixed to its reputation. What a definition does not provide is a process roadmap for that successful leap from ponderous to agile. A simple framework can serve as the starting point for that jump.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2008/ieau0803.html

Leadership for Creativity: About Difference and Heterogeneity

6 Mar 2008 15:35:48 GMT

Hjorth, Daniel | E-Mail Advisors | 06 March 2008 | Innovation

Diversity management is a double mistake. Instead, the art to master is difference and leadership. Difference leadership is based in an ethic that recognizes the other as other and accepts (if not welcomes/embraces) her or his otherness as fully valid and equal. Apart from being based in the ethics of difference, it is also a leadership guided by a politics of curiosity before the capability of people. The full force of "difference leadership" -- i.e., what I suggest should replace the misfiring concept of "diversity management" -- is actualized in the intensification of images of the people-to-come. Such intensification is accomplished in potentializing contexts, by adding eventness to them. Leadership is about this relational skill, present in the practices of writers, to make manifest images of "what could become" through exercising a visionary faculty that we call "fabulation" but should more correctly describe as invention -- i.e., to "make up."

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080306.html

Working Together: How You Know When You're Done

21 Feb 2008 14:49:48 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 21 February 2008 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

How do you know when the thing is done? For industrial tasks, we know it's done when it meets the specs. However, for knowledge work -- more like art than industry -- different standards apply. A painter we interviewed once (for Artful Making) said, "I know the picture is done when I catch myself thinking about what the next brush stroke should be." In other words, when it's done, I know it's done. Several others explained that the work itself tells them when it's done, and that over the years, as they've become more skilled, they've learned how to hear that.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080221.html

The Implications of Blue Cloud

1 Jan 2008 20:17:42 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 01 January 2008 | Innovation

IBM has raised the possibility that the mainframe of the future might well be a cloud. This is likely to have considerable long-term implications for vendors and IT departments alike. On 11 November 2008, IBM announced its Blue Cloud program to offer a cluster-computing cloud infrastructure for sale in the spring of 2008, based on a mixture of open source and proprietary software and powered by a BladeCenter-based data center using x86 and Power processors. The product itself is still being refined, and IBM intends to modify its offering depending upon the results of a number of pilot projects -- the largest of which is with the Vietnamese government, which is developing a platform to foster collaborative innovation among major universities and research institutes in Vietnam.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2008/ieau0801.html

Working Together: Iteration

7 Jan 2008 20:07:48 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 07 February 2008 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

At last, putting all these methods, skills, and attitudes together, collaborators work toward innovation, not planning each detail of a step-by-step march toward a preconceived or boss-assigned goal, but preparing as best they can (their 100% all-nighter best) to achieve results by jumping into the deep end of the pool right at the start. They begin by making a version of the assignment. Never mind that this isn't the last word; everybody knows it's only the first. An ensemble, working collaboratively, needs to get something on the table; something they can see and hear, react to, root around in, play around with, and use as material for another version that they'll make as soon as they've used up this one. Above all, they don't call it a failure.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080207.html

Creative Revolution or the Assault on Culture?

31 Jan 2008 19:43:15 GMT

Stokalski, Borys | E-Mail Advisors | 31 January 2008 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation

Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur pours buckets of cold water onto the heads of Web 2.0 enthusiasts, accusing them of "worshipping the creative amateur" -- regardless of how poorly educated and inarticulate they may be. Keen contends that the vast majority of content delivered by such creative amateurs is of desperately low quality -- and, at the same time, of overwhelmingly large quantity. Keen's lament on this "assault on culture" seems justified, as far as the facts he uses are concerned. But there may be more to this flood of semiartistic content than what Keen pictures as some kind of "culture-cide."

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2008/btt080131.html

Working Together: Talking, Part 2

24 Jan 2008 16:14:38 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 24 January 2008 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

The first two modes of talking -- presenting and reacting to the idea (see "Working Together: Talking, Part 1," 10 January 2008) -- bring us to a third mode, which is the heart of collaboration: talking and listening at the same time. Discussion. In a discussion, you explore; you don't argue. It's not rhetoric. No one persuades anyone else: all help each other discover the topic's useful features and their potential. The primary task of discussion is not to refine or refute an idea, but to chase its implications wherever they go -- even way past the desirable, the presentable, or the possible. A manager may sometimes know early on that a particular path leads to a dead end, but he or she will be very careful about cutting off discussion even then. So what if there's a cul de sac at the end; the journey there may well have features worth looking into.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080124.html

On Large Projects, Velocity Matters, Part 2

17 Jan 2008 13:40:54 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 17 January 2008 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Agile Project Management; Innovation

If you get a chance, you ought to tune in to Cutter Senior Consultant Michael Mah's Cutter Webinar titled "Case Study: The Impact of Agile on Productivity at Five Companies." [This morning, January 17, at 11:30 EST -- you can still register now or watch the recording at a later date.] I've been working with Michael recently, and he has been giving me a prebriefing on the findings. I don't want to give too much away, but Michael's research has uncovered a number of organizations that are doing very well on large, agile projects. This is really encouraging, since one of the criticisms of agile development has always been that it wouldn't work on really large projects.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2008/btt080117.html

Working Together: Talking, Part 1

10 Jan 2008 13:29:17 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 10 January 2008 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

After listening, naturally comes talking. (Alas, it's all too often the other way around.) Collaboration requires four broad categories of talking. I'll take up two of them today, two more next time.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2008/iea080110.html

Working Together: Deep Listening

2 Jan 2008 19:53:57 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 27 December 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

What do we do when we listen carefully? I expect we're all different. I tend to play the speaker's content against the potential answers I might make. This means that I often don't really hear what's being said. When I was acting, I was a pretty good listener. (Most actors will tell you that listening is more important than speaking.) Stage listening was quite different to the listening I do in real life. For one thing, I knew perfectly well what the speaker was going to say. I knew what I would say in response. We'd had this conversation many, many times. Therefore, I could release into sympathy and empathy. However, when I began to study collaboration, I realized that good collaboration requires listening very like that onstage listening.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2007/iea071227.html

Velocity Matters: Google, Microsoft, and Hyper-Agility, Part 1

20 Dec 2007 19:47:17 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 20 December 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Agile Project Management; Innovation

A recent New York Times article "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" (16 December 2007) talks about the growing perception that Google is set on attacking Microsoft's base with a whole set of Web- and mobile-based software applications. While the article touches on the historical battles between the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, and Microsoft leaders Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (when Schmidt was with Sun Microsystems and Novell), it is mostly about the contrast between how Google and Microsoft develop software.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2007/btt071220.html

Inside Is Out and Outside Is In

13 Dec 2007 19:52:59 GMT

Berry, John | E-Mail Advisors | 13 December 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation

Some organizations are literally turning themselves inside out and outside in as a means of adapting to new ways of doing business brought about by technology. As 2008 looms, this trend should accelerate as more organizations see the potential in the application of these clever arrangements.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2007/btt071213.html

Working Together: Histrionic Sensibility

13 Dec 2007 19:51:03 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 13 December 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

Our ears hear an orchestra make noises, and our intellects conceive the patterns that make those noises into music; our eyes and ears see and hear human movement and speech, and our histrionic sensibility conceives the patterns that make them into action.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2007/iea071213.html

The Agility Factor in Agile

1 Dec 2007 19:36:51 GMT

Caruso, David R. | Executive Updates | 1 December 2007 | Innovation

What does it mean to be agile? How do we describe an agile manager or an agile enterprise? What characteristics set apart the agile from the nonagile? Are there people who are more, or less, suited for agile techniques and management? Psychologists have settled -- more or less -- on five basic traits that encompass much of our personality. These five traits are often referred to, somewhat concretely, as the "Big Five," and they are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. While all of the Big Five traits are important to understand, and all have been examined in terms of their importance to workplace effectiveness, management, and leadership, we'll focus on the biggest of the Big Five for agile management -- openness. This Executive Update explores the personality trait of openness to experience, describes what it is, and why it can be used to partly explain the qualities of agility in IT.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2007/ieau0705.html

Working Together: Ensemble

29 Nov 2007 14:47:07 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 29 November 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

One of the major disadvantages to "team" as a term of art for innovation in business is its unavoidable association with athletics and the consequent invocation of competition. Teams compete with each other; teammates compete for a starting job; applicants compete in order to make the team. In all these competitions, winning -- often at all costs -- takes precedence.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2007/iea071129.html

Working Together: A Safe Work Space

15 Nov 2007 19:36:28 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 15 November 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

The designers and managers of most workplaces exhibit some concern for the physical safety of workers. Of course, some places of work are inherently dangerous: coal mines, for example. However, no one puts much attention on psychic safety. Mostly, workers must protect themselves as best they can from the difficulties of work and interaction with others.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2007/iea071115.html

Tools for Innovation

1 Nov 2007 21:18:15 GMT

Dooley, Brian J. | Executive Updates | 01 November 2007 | Innovation

Supporting innovation is difficult because it cannot be controlled like other business processes. Innovation also values collaboration over competition and is derived from creative individuals whose actions and expectations tend to differ from the corporate norm. Innovation demands an environment that rewards new concepts, permits failure, and provides means and methods for collaboration -- a culture of innovation. It is found in R&D labs, but not exclusively, and some of its most important benefits can be made available only if it becomes part of standard operating practice.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2007/ieau0703.html

Working Together: Trust

1 Nov 2007 15:54:17 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 01 November 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

Declare trust? Come on, get serious! I can't declare that you'll be trustworthy. You have to show me that.

True. And before I can show you that, you have to show me that you can be trusted with my trust. And so on, and on.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/advisor/2007/iea071101.html

Upcoming Webinar: Transitioning to Agile Project Management: Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water

13 Dec 2007 19:39:25 GMT

13 December 2007, 11:30 - 12:30 pm EDT, Featuring Sanjiv Augustine, Senior Consultant, Agile Project Management practice

In this hour-long Webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Sanjiv Augustine will divulge how your PMBOK-style management expertise can be best leveraged when managing Agile projects. Sanjiv, a well-known Agile practitioner, has personally managed agile projects varying in size from five to over one hundred people and coached numerous project teams; in this webinar, he shares that hands-on experience with you.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/transitioning.html

Upcoming Event: Compared to What? A Look at Application Development Benchmarks

15 Nov 2007 19:38:57 GMT

15 November 2007, 11:30 - 12:30 pm EDT, Featuring Michael Mah, Senior Consultant, Cutter Business Technology Trends & Impacts, Measurement and Benchmarking, Agile Project Management, and Sourcing & Vendor Relationships practices

In this hour-long Webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Michael Mah, brings you some of the most interesting findings from the research he and his colleagues at QSM, Inc. did on more than 500 IT projects in 16 countries across 16 industries. Discover the story the data tells, and how you can apply this knowledge to improve your organization's software development effectiveness. You'll find out how your organization compares to those projects included in QSM’s research. You'll get insight into the question of how your projects behave in the context of the outside world.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/appdevbench.html

Sourcing Products in the Commons

15 Oct 2007 19:06:36 GMT

Feller, Joseph | Executive Updates | 15 October 2007 | Innovation

In this Executive Update, I'll take a quick look at five models that have emerged for evaluating the maturity and business readiness of open source software products: Capgemini's open source maturity model, the Navica Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM), Woods and Guliani's open source maturity model, The Qualification and Selection of Open Source Software (QSOS) method, and the Business Readiness Rating (BRR)

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2007/ieau0702.html

Just Added: Listening to Your Customer (Or Not)

24 Oct 2007 20:56:26 GMT

The Cutter Business Technology Council; Kellen, Vince | Executive Reports | 01 September 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation

If there's a mantra in IT, it's "Listen to your customer." We've had that preached at us -- and preached it ourselves at others -- almost from the beginning. In this month's Opinion, Council members, along with Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Vince Kellen, look at the wisdom of this advice. Not surprisingly, they detect ways it can skewer you -- and ways that not following it can hurt you as well. So you almost can't win. What else is new?

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/reports/2007/09/index.html

The Asian Megalopolis, Part 2: Opportunities for Information Technology Growth

27 Sep 2007 14:29:50 GMT

Schuster, Edmund W. | E-Mail Advisors | 27 September 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Innovation

China is a vast country with abundant human resources. Today, China is undergoing a rapid amount of change as its people build a modern, high-performance economy. Given continued rapid economic growth along with population concentration, China is moving into an age unprecedented in human history, the age of the Megalopolis.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2007/btt070927.html

Can Innovation Survive Virtual Teams and Outsourcing?

1 Sep 2007 14:13:06 GMT

Adams, Carl | Executive Updates | 01 September 2007 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Innovation

Innovation is important for economic development at a national level and for business survival at a corporate level. However, if the trend toward global virtual activity and outsourcing continues, then we are heading for an overall slowdown in innovation as the corporate problem space is outsourced and virtual working practices raise barriers to collaboration and problem sharing.

In this Executive Update, I suggest some ways corporations can support innovation in an outsourced virtual environment.

http://www.cutter.com/content/innovation/fulltext/updates/2007/ieau0701.html

New Survey: Open Innovation

28 Sep 2007 17:40:13 GMT

Respond to our survey on Open Innovation and receive a free copy of "Open Source Process Definition: Innovating the Innovation Process." http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/168848/1518/

Can Innovation Survive Virtual Teams and Outsourcing?

1 Sep 2007 17:33:06 GMT

Adams, Carl | Executive Updates | 01 September 2007 | Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Innovation

Innovation is important for economic development at a national level and for business survival at a corporate level. However, if the trend toward global virtual activity and outsourcing continues, then we are heading for an overall slowdown in innovation as the corporate problem space is outsourced and virtual working practices raise barriers to collaboration and problem sharing. In this Executive Update, I suggest some ways corporations can support innovation in an outsourced virtual environment.

http://www.cutter.com/innovation/fulltext/updates/2007/ieau0701.html

No More Self-Organizing Teams

13 Sep 2007 17:13:01 GMT

Highsmith, Jim | E-Mail Advisors | 13 September 2007 | Agile Project Management; Business-IT Strategies; Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance

I've been thinking recently that the term "self-organizing" has outlived its usefulness in the agile community and needs to be replaced. While self-organizing is a good term, it has, unfortunately, become confused with anarchy in the minds of many. Why has this occurred? Because there is a contingent within the agile community that is fundamentally anarchist at heart and it has latched onto the term self-organizing because it sounds better than anarchy. However, putting a duck suit on a chicken doesn't make a chicken a duck. As larger and larger organizations are implementing agile methods and practices, the core of what it means to be agile -- an empowering organizational culture -- will be lost because large organizations will reject the cultural piece of agile because they know a chicken when they see one.

http://www.cutter.com/content/project/fulltext/advisor/2007/apm070913.html

The Asian Megalopolis, Part 1: Opportunities for Information Technology Growth

5 Sep 2007 19:25:45 GMT

Schuster, Edmund W. | E-Mail Advisors | 06 September 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Sourcing & Vendor Relationships; Innovation

Given the dramatic impact the city has had on American and European society, the world economy is on the verge of an even greater development in urbanization. Exploring this trend, Muzhi Zhou of Tokyo Keizai University, Japan, and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written a book titled The Chinese Economy: Mechanism of its Rapid Growth. Published in April 2007, the book is written in Japanese and has been distributed throughout Asia. Professor Zhou is from a prominent literary family in China and brings a unique perspective to his writing and research through having successful academic, governmental, and engineering careers in both Japan and China.

http://www.cutter.com/content/trends/fulltext/advisor/2007/btt070906.html

Just Added

24 Jul 2007 22:06:23 GMT

IT: Determining Competitive Advantage by Christine Davis and the Cutter Business Technology Council
Unleashing Innovation: The Power of Collaborative Leadership by Pollyanna Pixton and Kent McDonald
Strategies and Tactics Around "New": Time for a Reality Check by Steve Andriole
How to Become a Collaborative Leader by Pollyanna Pixton

Strategies and Tactics Around "New": Time for a Reality Check

1 Jul 2007 21:45:16 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | Executive Updates | 01 July 2007 | Innovation; Business-IT Strategies

It's safe to say that our invention --> innovation --> commercialization process is far from perfect. In fact, there are too many examples of (1) how the invention --> innovation --> commercialization value chain has betrayed those who have invented new digital technology; and (2) how the values of those inventions were actually diluted across the segments of the value chain. What comes to mind? How about the many technology inventions that came from Xerox PARC that were commercialized by others? Or the inventions from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in artificial intelligence, simulators, and communications standards (like TCP/IP) that were commercialized by US and non-US companies?

http://www.cutter.com/alignment/fulltext/updates/2007/bitu0713.html

Unleashing Innovation: The Power of Collaborative Leadership

1 Jul 2007 21:43:16 GMT

Pixton, Pollyanna; McDonald, Kent | Executive Updates | 01 July 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Innovation

The way you will thrive in this environment is by innovating -- innovating in technologies, innovating in strategies, innovating in business models.

http://www.cutter.com/trends/fulltext/updates/2007/bttu0713.html

IT: Determining Competitive Advantage

1 Jun 2007 21:39:43 GMT

Davis, Christine; The Cutter Business Technology Council | Executive Reports | 01 June 2007 | Innovation; Business Technology Trends & Impacts

IT has been found to be an accelerator in a company's market share formula, controlling the speed of process innovation and the effectiveness of deployment. This reality is increasing the pressure on businesses to engage IT as an equal business partner in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage.

http://www.cutter.com/trends/fulltext/reports/2007/06/index.html

Working Together, Part 11: Work on the Edge

18 Jul 2007 20:58:28 GMT

Devin, Lee | E-Mail Advisors | 18 July 2007 | Business-IT Strategies; Innovation

Collaboration, the kind of group work I very briefly described in the first of these meditations (see "Working Together," 27 September 2006), requires that members of the team trust each other. Work that leaves behind predictable convention puts us on our edge; peeking into the unknown, finding things in ourselves and each other we did not know were there; doing things as a group no one person could imagine, let alone do. To bring those new things to the meeting and chase them to their conclusions can be, no, will be scary -- very scary.

Can Innovation Be Certified?

13 Jul 2007 19:39:30 GMT

Ana Valente Pereira | E-Mail Advisors | 11 July 2007 | Cutter IT Journal; Innovation

The title of this article sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? But it is becoming a reality in some countries in the EU: research, development, and innovation (RDI) standards defined for innovation management systems and innovation projects {1}. The question is: will an RDI certification stimulate and support organizations in achieving systematic and sustained innovation? Or will the routines that they promote be another obstacle to innovation if bureaucratic and "audit-type" controls are introduced?

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2007/itj070711.html

Recent Additions to Cutter Innovation

6 Jun 2007 19:57:53 GMT

The Long Tail: The Changing Role of Strategy, Systems, and Operations in the Era of the Informed Customer by Eric K. Clemons
Turning the Long Tail on Its Head: Consumer Evolution and Informedness by Steve Barnett
Carrying the Long Tail: Elevating Staff Ability to Manage Complexity at the Point of Sale by Rick Spitler and Alan Mattei
Fattening the Long Tail Through Progressive User Adoption by Michael Hughes
Fighting Back with the Long Tail: Linking Product and Distribution by Bill Brunger, Eric K. Clemons, and D. Jim Young
Marketing Science and Technology: Part I -- Unique Identification by Edmund W. Schuster, Stuart J. Allen, and David L. Brock
Marketing Science and Technology: Part II -- Spatial Diffusion by Edmund W. Schuster, Stuart J. Allen, and David L. Brock
The Enterprise Innovation Revolution: Part II by Borys Stokalski
Bye-Bye Browsers, Goodbye GUIs -- Hello ??? by Ed Yourdon and The Cutter Business Technology Council
Innovation in an Experience Economy by Daniel Hjorth

Linking Innovation to Intuition and Invention

6 Jun 2007 19:26:42 GMT

Hazra, Tushar K. | E-Mail Advisors | 06 June 2007 | Cutter IT Journal; Innovation

It is true: necessity is the mother of invention. Invention is indeed evident in the behavior of today's global workforce. I assert that the results produced by invention can be quantified or measured, and connected to necessity. Another concept related to the behavior of our workforce is intuition or creative thinking. Intuition, however, is not necessarily driven by necessity. From my recent observations of the psychological behaviors of the global workforce, I have found that in specific situations, people either have intuition or they don't. However, when this creative ability does exist, it can propel the passion of a visionary to apply his or her instincts to invention or innovation.

EPCglobal Network and RFID: Harvesting the Possibilities

24 May 2007 16:38:07 GMT

Schuster, Edmund W. | E-Mail Advisors | 24 May 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Business Intelligence; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Innovation

Auto-ID technology began in 1999 with the formation of a consortium that sponsored research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. After several years of development and testing, MIT licensed Auto-ID technology to GS1, the nonprofit standards organization responsible for the implementation of bar code standards during the 1970s. Since 2003, GS1 has been developing a commercial application of the technology under a unit called EPCglobal. There have been several changes to Auto-ID Release 1.0 since 2003, including a rename of the information architecture to EPCglobal Network and an increasing emphasis on the electronic product code (EPC).

New Survey:IT Budgeting 2007

24 May 2007 16:18:15 GMT

Respond to our survey on IT Budgeting 2007 and receive a free copy of "Today's CIO = The CEO of IT."

Collaborating for Innovation

23 May 2007 20:40:36 GMT

Konkol, Sebastian | E-Mail Advisors | 23 May 2007 | Business-IT Strategies

The term "innovation" has become quite fashionable these days. Every company or organization aspiring to gain or hold some meaningful position in the market is forced to "be innovative" -- if it is not, it is out. As with any term that is mainly a tool for marketing campaigns, the meaning of "innovation" has evolved during the last few years and become very ambiguous. Currently, it means so many things that talking about innovation in IT makes quite limited sense unless we get to a more precise definition of the subject under discussion.

Innovation in IT

18 May 2007 21:26:42 GMT

Rosen, Michael | E-Mail Advisors | 16 May 2007 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts; Enterprise Risk Management & Governance; Innovation; Agile Project Management; Enterprise Architecture

It's time for my annual report on the Cutter Summit, which took place 29 April - 2 May 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Each year the Summit has a specific theme, which for 2007 was innovation. Keynotes included learning from innovative companies, Web 2.0 technologies and their impact on innovation, innovation and risk, case studies on innovation, leadership's role in innovation, and innovation in IT.