From "Kodak Moment" to Teaching Moment

From "Kodak Moment" to Teaching Moment

Much ink has been spilled over the last few weeks with countless pages being written about the misfortunes plaguing Kodak and the likely impact on the local community. One wonders and worries what all this means to our kids. The steady stream of disturbing news about lost jobs and economic despair.

However, I feel, as the Kodak moments fade away, several teaching moments emerge to help our kids make sense and learn from the Kodak related news they are confronted with on a daily basis.

One can start off with "never rest on your laurels" or "do not keep all your eggs in one basket". Kodak was so entrenched in its leadership of film and print photography that it was never able to make the transition to digital as that new world emerged. There could not be a better lesson for kids- scholars or athletes or artists, that as they strive to attain perfection in their pursuit of choice, it would be appropriate to develop some all-round skills that may come in handy for the challenges that life may throw at them in the future. Better be a jack of all trades, than a master of "one".

Another pithy aphorism that comes to mind is "a stitch in time saves nine", kids can be made to fathom from the Kodak experience that timely responses to issues is critical as else the issues will spiral out of control. It is important to confront the issues directly and vigorously ("grapple the bull by the horns") or else they will be left to "cry over spilt milk" or "closing the stable door after the horse has bolted". Kodak's late foray into consumer digital photography is a case study in doing too little too late.

Forever a fan of the "Happy Ending", I hope as Kodak makes a recovery from the bankruptcy, kids will learn a lesson, "The game is not over till it is over"; through perseverance, commitment and resolve one can rise like a "Phoenix from the ashes".

The Business Intelligence Chronicles Part 24: The difference a year makes! Gartner's 2012 Magic Quadrant for BI



Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms 2011 vs. 2012

It has been a year since I posted : The Business Intelligence Chronicles Part 20: The Battlelines are drawn: Traditional Enterprise BI Platforms vs. Data Discovery Platforms
Gartner has now come out with the 2012 version of its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms.

The difference a year makes! Or does it?

Nothing much seems to have changed. The leaders  are essentially the same and more or less in the same positions. The same 2 players are the challengers, they have not been able to break through to the leaders quadrant. And, the niche players quadrant is as cluttered as ever.  What is a little disturbing though is that the visionary quadrant continues to be blank.

Where are the visionaries? The ones who are going to marry traditional platform BI, Data discovery/visualization, Google like search, Big Data, Data Mining, realtime Geo-location, Gamification, Twitter like notifications and deploy it via a socially pervasive framework like Facebook throughout the user community.

Btw, if this quadrant is based on surveys and data as part of a scientific process, why is it called "Magic"?

Ellison's Oracle vs. Plattner's SAP - Battle of "In-Memory"

The battle between Ellison’s Oracle and Plattner’s SAP seems to be heating up with Plattner having fired a salvo across Ellison’s bow with “HANA” (Hasso Plattner’s New Architecture – neither of these gentlemen can ever be accused of humility/modesty).

Plattner seems to have upped the ante by taking the battle beyond the usual mooning each other at yacht races and billion dollar acquisitions as bolt-on’s for their core platforms to the core of Oracle’s key strength – its underlying data base. SAP claims HANA which allows companies to store data in servers' main memory, instead of using the relational databases that Oracle dominates is significantly faster than Oracle’s Exadata .

The Jury is still out. T-mobile has taken HANA out for a test drive and has been impressed.

Ellison’s response- “Whacko”, adding he wants the name of SAP’s “Pharmacist”.

Read more in this article from the WSJ (01/26): Inside SAP's Skunkworks as It Takes Aim at Oracle

Key question: which way are the database technology winds going to blow – in-memory or relational?

In the BI space an in-memory application like Qliktech’s Qlikview emerged as a serious contender to traditional BI vendors (strengthening Data Discovery vis-a-vis traditional enterprise BI).

If SAP’s HANA pans out, I think the database market will see a new segment emerge for applications focused on “Big Data” (McKinsey’s definition: Datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze) , with Oracle too strengthening its offerings in that area ( Oracle has bought an in-memory database company called TimesTen ).

It may be a few years before data in-memory database architecture really matures and comes center-stage. Process may be speeded up with a behemoth like SAP putting its financial muscle behind it. The strong demand for tools with ability to manage/ mine “big data” which companies are accumulating as a result of tapping into their customers web-usage, geo-location etc. is another driver.

Creating "Rypples" - Social Technologies and Performance Management

It all started with the McKinsey Quarterly article on "How social technologies are extending the organization". I liked the article but for me it raised a few questions which were published as a comment on the McKinsey Quarterly website:

• The growth of social technologies within organizations creates an interesting conundrum: how to reward employees for contributions they are making or changes they are driving across the organization by using thsee boundary-less social technologies? Many current performance-management processes focus on evaluating contributions to the “silo,” as judged by the supervisor or, in some cases, other stakeholders. However, social technologies can significantly increase the breadth and scope of an employee’s contributions. How are companies preparing their performance management processes to reflect the emergence of social technologies, and how do these tools enable those processes?
  

  Sooner or later, as social technologies become an integral part of the organization’s fabric, there will be a need to integrate them into the reward and recognition process for employees.

More details on an earlier blogpost:  How social technologies are extending the organization: My comments on McKinsey Article

Most of us have been in situations where the boss either has no clue or cannot fathom as to what we have been doing during the year ; a scenario which bites us in the back during the Annual Performance Review (or when "they" make lists on who to fire during downsizing). A problem likely to be compounded when with the new emerging social technologies an employee can be making contributions far beyond the span of the classical "silo" which a typical boss oversees.

Interesting dilemma, but seems like I an not quite the visionary I think myself to be :-) . The smart guys and gals at Rypple have already seized the bull by the horns ("The social way to improve performance at work : Build a results-driven culture and make reviews meaningful with Rypple’s social performance management platform").

Here's a look at how Facebook is using Rypple to manage the Facebook generation (How Facebook manages the Facebook generation. People at Facebook talk about how they use Rypple's social performance platform to support their social, collaborative, fast-moving culture.)

And looks like the mighty salesforce.com has now decided to ride and steer the bull (Salesforce.com Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Rypple – First Step Toward Human Capital Management for the Social Enterprise). They plan to rebrand/relaunch it as SuccessForce. 

The action has just started in this space and I can only see it hotting up as social technologies become part of the "life and blood" of more organizations; which will then need them to figure out ways to integrate them with performance appraisal; and the technology companies (SAP, Oracle, IBM) which will also need to figure out ways to incorporate these capabilities in their own offerings (What with  ZDNet blogger Dennis Howlett headlining it as:   Salesforce snubs SAP with Rypple flip )

Stay Tuned.

How social technologies are extending the organization: My comments on McKinsey Article

My comments:

Finding the right place to start change : My comments on McKinsey Article

My comments: 

Death of Email?

Interesting article: Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy 

You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.

Atos is evaluating a number of new tools to replace internal email including collaborative and social media tools. Those include the Atos Wiki, which allows all employees to communicate by contributing or modifying online content, and Office Communicator, the company’s online chat system which allows video conferencing, and file and application sharing. 

Is this beginning of the end for email? Will social networking and IM strike a death-knell for email like the automobile did to the horse and buggy (or more recently, what digital photography did to print)


Not surprisingly the first blow is being struck by a French company. A decade ago the French had launched a war against the word "email" which they considered as a brutal Anglo incursion on their chaste French environment (first McDonald's and then email, what was the world coming to) 

Goodbye "e-mail," the French government says, and hello "courriel" — the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents.

The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or websites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon.

And also not surprisingly, the CEO of Atos, Thierry Breton is no fan of email, he has not sent one in the last 3 years.  

Evolution of the Digital Work Environment

We are all aware of the Evolution of Man:

Here are 2 videos which outline the evolution of the Digital Work environment from  Xerox's vision in the 1990s to Microsoft's vision for the 2020s.

It is interesting to observe which elements of the future have clearly morphed from the original vision, which ones got dropped by the wayside and the ones which are totally new. Here goes:

XEROX (vision framed in 1990s: Digital Desk by Pierre Wellner)





MICROSOFT (vision framed in 2011: Productivity Future Vision )




Addendum (12/7/2011)

On the same topic here’s an interesting article from Businessweek ca. 1975 predicting how the “office” will look in 1995 – “The Office of the Future".

Here's what another blogger says about it:

It predicts the paperless office. My favorite quote comes from the head of the (then) newly formed think-tank in Palo Alto known as PARC, George E. Pake, who says “… that in 1995 his office will be completely different; there will be a TV-display terminal with keyboard sitting on his desk. “I’ll be able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button,” he says. “I can get my mail or any messages. I don’t know how much hard copy [printed paper] I’ll want in this world.”

Full of quotes like this, the article may seem comical in retrospect – however, it’s worth a read.

Frugal Innovation/Jugaad #5: Reebok goes Frugal

Check this out. Reebok plans to roll out a $1 shoe for the "bottom of the pyramid":

Reebok Cobbles a Plan for India's Rural Poor

Still in the planning stages, but is already being described as a "win-win situation for the poor." and  "the move is likely to be viewed as a social initiative that could positively influence the company's brand."

What would be interesting is to see if India's poor will really covet a $1 shoe or would shoes continue to be an aspirational purchase for which they are ready to save and pay more to flaunt their favorite brand. Maybe that's why it is being positioned for the "rural" poor rather than the urban poor. Urbanites I guess are more likely to equate lower price with lower status.

Tata has discovered the fickle mindedness of those at the bottom of the pyramid when to their surprise and chagrin the $2000 Nano car was not "flying off the shelf" at the pace they thought it would.

Also, the $1 shoe will be going head-to-head (or will it be feet-to-feet) against a tough competitor - the $0 shoe ("bare feet").

While on the topic of shoes, attended an Entrepreneurship themed conference where a panelist, local self-made entrepreneur I.C. Shah recounted the old shoe company salesmen story in his own inimitable style. Here's the gist of it:

Multinational shoe corporation sends 3 hot-shot salesmen to India (in the 1950s) to scout the market and report back. The first one wires back " Nobody here wears shoes, No market opportunity". He was promptly called back and fired. He now mans the shoe sale counter at a departmental store. The second wired back "Nobody here wears shoes, immense market potential". The person retired as Head of the International Business Division for the corporation. The third wired back "Nobody here wears shoes. I have tied up with someone here to make them and can supply some back to the corporation at a fraction of the current purchase cost". The third one now has vacation homes in Bali, Aspen, Jamaica and St. Tropez. He has people making shoes for him in India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, China.......  He's the "Entrepreneur"

The Business Intelligence Chronicles Part 23: BI gets "Sixth Sense" Revisited

DeepakSethSpeak: The Business Intelligence Chronicles Part 17: BI gets "Sixth Sense"

Looks like it is time to revisit the above blogpost. See what a technology giant like Microsoft has up its sleeve as far as leveraging the user-interface technologies of the future. Came across this interesting video:

A phone nobody can buy.......yet

based on Nanotechnologies, the phone is flexible and bendable,  reacts to gestures or flex/bend, and provides electro-tactile feedback.

Frugal Innovation/Jugaad # 4

Today was a Jugaadoo delight day, as I came across not 1, not 2 but 3 fantastic tales of Frugal Innovation/Jugaad.

It all started off when a friend forwarded me a chain mail about the experiences of the renowned filmmaker Shekhar Kapur as he  finds a hole-in-the-wall shop to get his expensive Blackberry repaired. Not only did he save a ton of money he left with a new found sense of admiration for India's pioneering innovative and entrepreneurial spirit : A Blackberry addict discovers grassroots enterprise in India

Let's see if he makes this the theme of his next artistic endeavor, it's been some time since Kapur dazzled us with his portrayal of Elizabethian intrigue and splendor.

As I was meandering through the search results for my search of the authentic source of the Shekhar Kapur story came across the interesting story of "Nano Ganesh"  from The Economist , a frugal innovator's solution to a common problem plaguing Indian farmers - how to start and stop their irrigation pumps remotely, his solution " – a mobile-phone adaptation that triggers irrigation pumps remotely – is saving water in India and helping more than 10,000 farmers avoid several taxing, dangerous long walks a day."

The trifecta was when I came across "Gogola" :

   

So this innovator is using the brand recognition of Google to drive people towards his own product - Gola - an Indian shaved ice concoction leveraging his location in a tech park frequented by Google savvy techies. I wonder if the Google attorneys will go after him for Trademark infringement/violations.....

If you come across any more, please pass them along.........