FIND InnoNuggets

 

My Book on Strategic Decision Making

My Book on Strategic Decision Making
Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Thursday, July 30, 2009

How much work to do – Only as much as Visibility Necessiates

A Quote from “The Organizational Sweet Spot – Engaging the Innovative Dynamics of Your Social networks” Charles Ehin

“Research by ScanIan has demonstrated that some individuals can work only at 20-30% of their ability and still retain their jobs. I suggest they retain their positions by making sure that they only follow official directives and policies as much as “visibility necessitates” yet ignore most everything else at work that may need their attention”

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Designing Ultra Large Scale Systems

Last year we presented in a design conference in India a paper on overall suitability of Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST) which is our synergistic framework combining TRIZ, Lean and Systems thinking for Designing Ultra Large Scale Systems (ULSS). You can download the presentation and the complete paper from our website

http://www.crafitti.com/site/index.php/2008/10/17/crafitti-at-the-design-first-conference-2008-designing-ultra-large-scale-systems/

I am putting below a brief

Ultra-large scale systems are characterized by:

1. Extraordinary decentralization
2. Inherently conflicting, unknowable and diverse requirements
3. Continuous evolution and deployment
4. Heterogeneous, inconsistent, and changing elements
5. Erosion of people/system boundary
6. Normal failures
7. New paradigms for acquisition and policy

Our businesses, our technical systems and our organizations (and the environments in which they operate) are continuously increasing in scale and complexity. They are characterized by increasing interactions, dependencies, couplings or connections in not only the depth of existing dimensions but in increasing the number of connection dimensions manifold.

Thus far our methods to confront scale and complexity have been based on reductionism or analysis, determinism, dualism, correspondence theory of knowledge and rationality – analytical and logical thinking as we know it. They have worked well for us in the past and continue to drive our approaches to problem solving, change creation and innovation.

However, the new age of innovation warrants newer methods to deal with complexity. These new methods are likely to be based on a deeper understanding of indeterminacy, non-linearity, chaos, adaptation, self-organization and distributed intelligence.

Scale in my opinion is a big challenge - as we become more networked in everything than hierarchical.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Three Quotes from US Army Magazine Parameters in 2002

-------------------

[Ref] Adams T.K. (2001), Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decision Making, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Winter 2001-02, 57-71.

In future, tactical warfare will be given completely to automated systems. Human beings will just retain control at the highest level, making strategic decisions about where and when to strike and/or overall objective of the conflict.

-----------------------------

[Ref] Nygren K.P., Emerging Technologies and Exponential Change: Implications for Army Transformation, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 2002, 86-99.

Despite the fact that out technologies, economy and society have become extremely complex to be comprehensible by an individual, the leaders of the military, government and business can still effectively function, compete and improve their abilities to achieve objectives. This is possible due to organizational networks that can blend the distinct knowledge of their individual members into solutions and continuously adapt to changing knowledge requirements. This results in self-organizing systems that both defy centralized management and have changed the meaning of individual accountability.

“Delivering synergism” is the new mantra of the modern innovative enterprises. Only networks can provide this ability, rigid hierarchies are replacing.

--------------------------------------

[Ref] Liotta P.H., Chaos as Strategy, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly – Summer 2002, 47-56.

Attacking dominant players with rational decision making processes – balancing resources and constraints, means and ends, chaos strategist will induce decision paralysis.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Learning

LEARNING is PATH DEPENDENT
BUT
NON-DETERMINISTIC

50th Post of Year 2009

I am surprised that this is just the 50th post in almost 7 months in 2009.

Recently I was asked to write my experiences as a defense scientist as part of golden jubilee celebrations of my Lab DRDO. I wrote my achievements (or what I consider to be my achievements) during a decade of work at the lab. However, what connected me to what I wrote was the impact of recent history on my life. I thought it is appropriate to recount some specific moments in my life for 50th post of the year.

My Years with LIFE

YEAR 1990: I consider 1990 as the earth-shattering year on planet Earth (no pun-intended). The world was about to change – permanently some may argue. One of the world’s two super powers, USSR and an established alternative form of governance, the communism, was about to lose traction. The cold war was about to end. Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost were too rapid transformations that instead of stopping accelerated the break-up of USSR. Berlin wall had already fallen and suddenly many new countries were coming out of former USSR and USSR Block. India had a Prime Minister, Mr. V.P. Singh, who came to power on the promise of clean government in 1989 and stayed in only for a year till November 1990. The world was changing fundamentally. In August 1990, may be due to break down of cold war equilibrium, Saddam’s Iraq annexed Kuwait. Throughout the rest of the year 1990, there were regular reports of US attacking Iraq to free Kuwait. The attack came on 16th January 1991. This was really for me the start a new world – we call the globalizing world. This was the year (23rd March 1990) I joined my first job as a Scientist in DRDO.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Saturday, July 11, 2009

LIFE

 

Life in Six Words, " Inside Soundless Peace, Chaotic Thunder Outside"

Life in three words, "Take inside outside"

Life in two

words," I am"

Life in one

word,

"Manifestation"

Thursday, July 09, 2009

WOMM

HOW GOOD IS THE IDEA - DOES IT MATTER AT ALL?

OR IS IT JUST Word Of Mouth Marketing?

If it does matter, then what is the contribution of WOMM in spreading the idea and what is the contribution of inherent goodness of the idea!

Does Business Understand Business Anymore?

The article in FT Does business understand technology any more?

says, quoting a book,

"The authors’ conclusions were far-reaching, claiming businesses would shift from the vertical model of “make, sell and maintain” to a horizontal business model based, in this case, on advising clients about reducing energy costs, maintaining reliable supplies, and more."

The article quotes a Gartner Analyst
“Company boards don’t recognise what IT is or does any more,” he says. “It used to be a thing that you used to increase productivity or automate processes, but that’s been done. Even chief information officers, who thoroughly understand enterprise IT, have been left behind by social IT – which they can’t control.”

The social computing is the change that world all over is engrossed in! Yet businesses all over are not getting it.

In my opinion, the question is, "Does Businesses Understand Business Anymore"?

The nature of business is becoming as the quote at the beginning said Horizontal. More importantly it is happening at a rapid pace.

Only way ahead is flat businesses across! It is Horizontal, decentralized, decoupled, experimental, experiential, learning based structures across boundaries , fluid structures that are shaped by each and every one!

Indeed!

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

The Age of Attention Explosion

Attention Economy

Is becoming an

ATTENTION EXPLOSION



Every One wants to say, " I AM THE NEW THOUGHT" "YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME ATTENTION"

General Motors Market share

Received the following chart of General Motors market share in a group email ...




Sunday, July 05, 2009

Software, Business Method and Traditional Patents

THE PROBLEMS WITH SOFTWARE AND BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS

Why Software and Business Methods are different?

Software innovations typically have extremely fine granularity of code-level subroutines while business methods have a coarse level granularity. Although software patents and business method patents overlap and are often difficult to distinguish, they actually represent problems associated with opposite ends of the granularity spectrum. Table above depicts the differences between software inventions, Business Method inventions and other discrete technological inventions such as Chemical and Pharmaceuticals , where patent systems have stood perfectly well so far.

Business method patents as seen from the above analysis, are not only difficult to define, they are usually over broad. BMP also are not really known to foster innovation and creativity as they are not usually known or accessed by innovators in the field – thereby defeating the very purpose of Intellectual property rights. The fact that innovation in software is voluminous and incremental raises profound practical problems in administering the patent system. The ease of creating functionality in software means that there is a huge amount of prior art at all levels of granularity, much of it dating from the period before patents were routinely granted and much of it undocumented. The documentation in source code disappears when the program is compiled. Software is commonly designed to be intuitive and user friendly, so that it can be used without reference to documentation.

Friday, July 03, 2009

Human Capabilities for Value Creation - Survey

Taking a cue from Gary Hamel's book we thought about human capabilities that contribute to value creation. The result is the following survey.



As part of our continuous explorations in organizational innovation space at Crafitti Consulting, we are conducting a invite-only survey to find out relative importance of various human capabilities in large and small organizations or even at individual level, in creating value and competitive advantage.

In this regard, we have designed a survey instrument which is based on Crafitti’s way of capturing specific relative preferences. The MS Excel file’s first sheet invites pairwise relative comparisons on seven key human capabilities that we have included for this study. These are – Passion, Creativity, Initiative, Intellect, Diligence, Obedience, and Adaptability.

If you want to participate in this survey, kindly send an email to me at navneet.bhushan@crafitti.com. I will send you the survey instrument. The results will be shared as a detailed report.


As of now we have the following results










Look forward to your inputs




Navneet

My Book @Goodread