Just an observation from the past week; I had a meeting with an IBM Sales Team, reviewing a range of products as they work to understand where IBM might help my business. I appreciate the fact that IBM has a wide selection of offerings, and we were doing an OK job of reviewing various families / groups of products ... until we got to something labeled Smarter Cities. This one piqued my interest - something potentially related to the products…
Like most organizations, we are talking a lot internally about Innovation - the Great Ideas that will transform the company and deliver top-line revenue and high-value earnings growth. The trick, of course, if figuring out how to make that Innovation happen - as if you could plan it out in advance, on schedule to make your quarter-end. It's not that easy - but then again, maybe it's not that hard. Check out this video from Steven Johnson - another terrific…
One of the benefits of ditching cable and going to internet streaming TV is that I'm watching more TED talks for a mental stretch break. True, I'm missing half of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but I catch stuff like this from Paola Antonelli, on bringing video games to New York's Museum of Modern Art ... [ted id=1752] It caught my attention because it's all about the importance of Design, and specifically Interaction Design. Antonelli moved from architecture to a focus…
During a process review session this week, I got involved in a terrific conversation about Smart Part Numbers. You know what I'm talking about - those cryptic SKU identifiers so popular with the folks in the warehouse, on the shop floor, in production planning. There is logic and structure to the characters and the numbers, structure that codes identification and classification details onto those bin labels. We are having problems with item WC1-644-A019910 Oh, that's because the trim press is…
Another month, another presentation - something I am trying to do more of this year, somewhat to the detriment of my blog post frequency. However, I may have one or two new posts to put together based on the content of this deck. Here's a link to the slides I am presenting this week (Thursday 14 Mar 2013) in Rolling Meadows, IL and next week (Thursday 21 Mar 2013) in Chicago. The title is The Internet of Things - part…
This evening (Monday, 11 Feb 2013) , I did a presentation on Developing IT Strategy in a "Consumer IT" Environment - an expansion on some of the ideas that I have written about previously. I’ve posted my slides here – I realize that they do not “stand on their own”, and need some explanation, but if you weren’t in attendance and are interested in hearing more, let me know in the comments - happy to review with anyone interested. Developing IT Strategy that Connects…
You are only as good as what you know, and half of what you know comes from books Truth be told, it's not an original thought - I heard it many years ago, but it rang true for me personally. I still have many of my old college textbooks - engineering volumes bound in impressive faux leather, including a massive, near-mint copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics - 60th edition (note: collectors, make me an offer!). Over the years,…