Software modeling is getting more fashionable, but it has a long way to go before it becomes as respectable as writing code. Which is funny in a way, because code is just one particular kind of model!

Over the past 30 years, more and more things have become digitized as very fast computers and very fast communication continuously change the world in which we live. However, digital riches are creating a new generation of digital problems, including digital asset management, which is the focus of this Executive Report.

Over the past 30 years, more and more things have become digitized as very fast computers and very fast communication continuously change the world in which we live. However, digital riches are creating a new generation of digital problems, including digital asset management, which is the focus of this Executive Report.

The capability to out-innovate the competition is becoming increasingly critical to business success. Taking innovation risks can lead to spectacular success, such as the Japanese DoCoMo mobile network, Google, and personal computers. But sometimes attempts at innovation become catastrophic failures and rise to the surface of public awareness. Examples of disastrous innovations include obsolete satellite networks and vastly overpaid-for new-generation mobile network licenses.

Understanding the potential of information technology and its management often marks the difference between a firm that leads and those that follow (and perhaps fall) behind.

— Donald Fisher

If innovation is to become the next core competency, it must become a truly collaborative discipline. Isolated R&D departments and ivory tower product strategies, unlinked from the market dynamics and abstracted from the actual capability to deliver, cannot handle the demand for innovations. To match the rising demand for growth, innovations have to become massive, cheap, and sustainable.

Increasingly, the work we do depends on new ideas, on creative responses to unforeseen developments, on coming up with a better way before our competitors do. We need to be able to produce those new ideas as needed, on demand. It's no use waiting around to get inspired or praying to catch a break. We need to get lucky, right now.