Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
The consumerization of IT has been occurring for a number of years now, and it is one of the most disruptive tends the CIO faces; yet it offers amazing business benefits. Will the consumerization trend continue? The answer is yes! Consumerization is a hard trend that will not only continue, but it will accelerate. So…
Apple didn’t invent the personal computer. Instead, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak borrowed and adapted innovative concepts from others and mashed them up with ideas from within. Everything Apple did, from its auspicious beginnings in the late 1970s pairing a ho-hum Apple II computer with a third-party spreadsheet application called VisiCalc has been successful because…
A recent Forbes article listed some of the most profitable businesses in America and, to my surprise, many of them were restaurants. In fact, two of restaurants noted had four year growth rates of over 120%. The four year growth rate is important, because it includes the recession, meaning that these restaurants are growing even…
As a CIO, you are keenly aware that rapid change in business and technology is the “new normal.” However, in the 21st Century, “change” is actually too weak a descriptor. Today, it’s all about transformation. This means you can’t go backward, and you can’t stand still. You can’t rest on your laurels and you can’t…
As a member of the C-suite, you now have an urgent question in front of you: Are your customers changing faster than you are? Are they learning faster than you are? Because they are changing and learning fast, if you are not already designing and providing the solutions to the problem they are going to…
HP is a massive company that has been around for a very long time. Over the years, it has acquired a vast number of companies including such IT players as Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp, EDS 3Com, Palm and 3PAR. Those acquisitions continue today at a rapid pace. In that light, it’s perhaps not surprising that…
America has led the world in technology innovation for almost two centuries. While Europe kick-started the industrial revolution, America took it into high gear: Mississippi steamboats, giant steam shovels, the telephone, the assembly line, the light bulb, typewriter, sewing machine and so more came out of the USA. That trend continued in the 20th Century…
In the quest to compete in a “new and improved” world, innovation became a catch-all term for anything that is different from that which came before. But change for change’s sake is not innovation and innovation, as new and shiny as it may be, is not the same thing as invention and invention is not…
Building a company that is structured and organized to continuously transform itself as opportunities and threats appear is somewhat of an urban legend these days. This nirvana-like company repeatedly maintains three characteristics: 1. Ongoing assessment of activities: eliminating those that don’t serve the core business strategy; 2. Continual refinement of activities for greater efficiency and…
Despite the apparent economic recovery, many companies continue to focus on cost-reduction and, in the process, persist in demanding reduction of already-stressed IT budgets. In this environment, creative approaches are required to ensure availability of funding for critical IT services and initiatives. One way IT executives can safeguard their IT budgets and preserve funding for…