21st Century Organization

CIOs as Change Predictors

"CIOs who predicted the return of key innovation are the ones who can link up assets in their ecosystem, create efficiencies and are able to provide more value to customers."

In an interview with futurist James Canton, "prediction" was the favored stance for CIOs yet he claims only 35 to 45 percent of organizations have transformed their current business processes.  Trying to adapt the present while morphing into the future requires a forward thinking culture.

Prediction has always been the elusive brass ring.  No longer.  As change and complexity increase those who have mastery over predictive or emergent collaborative models will be in the forefront. 

It has become apparent that predictive tools and approaches provide multiple perspectives on data patterns that single approaches often miss. However articles on IT are still focusing on the 'hidden potential of IT" and CIOs.

Enterprise 2.0 has thrown us into a technology driven change warp. Any organization not understanding the dynamics of systemic or "echosystemic" thinking is living in the past. All of the organizational roles are equally as important to making a 21st century business successful but some have the benefit of marketplace drivers like technology to boost their roles to the forefront.

Still not convinced - one of the must read magazines for the IT inclined, The Industry Standard announced its rebirth as a suite of "prediction markets" -

IS features news and analysis that covers emerging technologies and companies, venture funding, acquisitions, site launches, and other developments in the internet space. Additionally, The Standard aggregates community knowledge in a quantified fashion, thereby ranking both the knowledge of the individual community members themselves, as well as the value of the information the community provides as a whole. This system is built as a prediction market, intersected with a reputation-based social network.

They clearly get it - participation is the new mindset and a prediction market is the means to tap participation.  In our recently published  article  for Inside  Knowledge on prediction markets  we interviewed some of the best software providers and summarized what we have found to be the key factors for success. If you would like a copy of the article let us know as the full piece is subscription only from Inside Knowledge.

Technology not withstanding, organizations need to value predictive information, aggregated from their whole network, to validate strategies and goals.

CIO, C suite executive or as we have found anyone in the organization can drive innovation if they understand the value of prediction to the bottom line.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Creating VALUE from the INVISIBLE

Last week brought intriguing conversations at both the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Hannover and the University of Warwick's Knowledge Innovation Network Spring Workshop about organizations intersecting with new technology adoption.   

Watching the wing on the home flight I pondered how aircraft designers are challenged, as new technologies emerge, to invent new designs that maximize the INVISIBLE flow of air to fly faster, further, more efficiently. Similarly, the pressure on organizations is constantly adapting to support the INVISIBLE flow of ideas and INTERACTIONS that will create new business value as external forces, and increasing computer speeds and new technologies, move faster than humans can easily embrace.

Beyond Facebook I'm intrigued by the emerging enterprise "NET WORK"'ing* platforms like Trampoline Systems and IBM's Atlas and the potential to reveal what were previously invisible idea flows and connect the people who are the sources.    But what will the adoption curves look like and how will organizations adapt?

Already Gartner notes "Five Major Challenges Regarding Social Software" while Thomas Otter and ZDNet's Larry Dingman forecast the landscape and prospects.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

*NET WORK'ing- As per Patti Anklam's "Net Work".

                                                                      

                                                                   

Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hannover Report & References

Thanks to Bjoern Negellman, Kongress Media, (organizer) and Simon Wardley (event facilitator), I was a privileged presenter, in the inaugural European Enterprise 2.0 Summit convened as part of CEBIT, March 4 in Hannover.   (Given COMDEX no longer operates in the United States, experiencing the CEBIT scale and vendor commitment was eye opening.)

Blog reports from Emanuele Quintarelli, François Nonnenmacher, Martin Koser and Robbert Homburg tell the event story that began with Simon Wardley reminding us how technology forces drive change, followed by Dion Hinchcliffe's keynote and Euan Semple's BBC lessons. Scenes from the event are captured on Flickr.

For me the event nuggets came in descriptions of serious business wiki applications by:

• Kenneth Lavrsen, Motorola A/S, wiki-ing quality standards documentation
• Wieland Stützel, Fraport AG (Frankfurt Airport), cross organizational knowledge sharing
• Diego Gianetti, BTicino S.p.a. (an Italian producer of communication, distribution and energy control systems) describing "Sul Campo" a sales force community of practice
• Cedric Blum, Société Française de Radiotéléphone Service Client (a French mobile carrier) explaining how using a wiki helps customer service solve customer problems and get more from IT

For those who stayed late into the day here are the books mentioned in my session introduction:

• Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
• Rob Cross & Andrew Parker, Hidden Power of Social Networks
• Ron Burt, Structural Holes
• Lowell Bryan & Claudia Joyce, Mobilizing Minds
• Dan Tapscott, Wikinomics

Also referenced were:

• Patti Anklam, Net Work author
• Valdis Krebs, pioneering ONA practitioner
• InnoCentive and Harvard researcher Karim Lakhani et al's investigation of factors in problem resolution
• Procter & Gamble's Connect & Develop program

My presentation builds on a co-authored article "Learning through Participation and Connecting Intelligence". and two Inside Knowledge Magazine articles, Broadcasting innovation: organising to connect intelligence and Prediction Markets: Co-creating an organization's future (to be published).

    

     The Valdis Krebs admonition cited:

"You do understand Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks, right?“

came in response to reading our "Connecting Intelligence" article and Valdis's concern we had not made this point clear enough.  Metcalfe has openly asked us all to better understand the power of his law applied to social networks here . Colleagues and I have just completed an investigation of Facebook Groups in Business that points to the complexity of social network growth as Metcalfe discusses.

Thank you to everyone involved with Kongress Media's Enterprise 2.0 Summit for the rich conversations that I look forward to continuing, especially with Simon Wardley regarding his newly minted term:

"STRUCTURACTION"

Slides from my presentation are posted to Slideshare here.

   ~ Jenny Ambrozek