The SME CIO: The Innovative Heart

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The SME CIO The Innovative Heart Soul of the
IT Industry

• Thornton May
• Futurist

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(No Transcript)
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What are People Really Thinking?
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CIO Habitat Report Three Year, On-Going, Global
Research Project Bi-monthly Interviews with 30
Über-C-lvel thinkers In 15 Vertical Markets On
Three alpha-Questons CIO Solutions
Gallery Quarterly Day-and-a-half Roll Up Your
Sleeves Collaborative problem Solving
Sessions CIO Practicum Dinner Series Tri-Monthly
Multi-City Meetings With CIOs IT Leadership
Academy Florida Community College at Jacksonville

20 Years Spent Tracking Studying How Homo
Technologicus The CIO Makes Decisions
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Mental model the particular way in which a
person perceives, codes, retains and accesses
information.
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Why We Care About Mental Models

• In-place mental models
• drive behaviors. 
• If we can better understand
• those models,
• we have a better chance of changing behavior and
  or manipulating behavior to get what we want.

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Understanding Mental Models Gives You Leverage

• During the days of rage in the 60s,
• the Weathermen drew psychic sustenance from the
  press publicizing their raids/attacks/kidnappings/
  bombings. 
• The FBI figured out that what the Weathermen
  wanted was publicity their mental model/reward
  system. 
• The FBI stopped giving the Weathermen credit for
  the attacks and the Weatherman stopped making
  attacks.

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Improve Your OODA Loops

• The four steps required for outmaneuvering a
  competitor
• Observe
• Orient
• Decide and
• Act
• Complete the loop faster than your competitor
• and you win.

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Mid-Size Businesses Are Better Able to
Synchronize Their Metabolic Rate With That of
Technology Change
Arrival of New Technology
Demographic Explosion
Humans Human Institutions
J.F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems / 20
Years to Solve Them (NY Basic Books), 2002, 39.
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We are able to compete with much larger
competitors because

• We understand our customers better
• We can react quicker to market opportunities
• We care more /are more emotionally involved in
• the game
• All of the above
• Other

Cross-Tab Label
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Three Kinds of Mental Models
The One Clanking Inside The Brain of Customers

• The One
• Whirring
• Inside Our
• Brain

The Nefarious Model Zipping Inside the Minds of
Our Competitors
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The Mental High GroundUnderstand
Tech-Linearities
Where we have been?Where we are today?Where
we are going?
Piet MondrianRhythm of Black Linesc. 1935/42
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Story
May-san, Ware-ware mondai ga arimasu yo!
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Linearities Head-Set Exercise
In your groups, please divide the years 1987
through 2017 into computational eras.no
less than 2, no more than 6
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Head Set Exercise
What Patterns/Trends if anydo you
thinkmanifested themselves in the responses
of hundreds of executives?
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Head Set Exercise
Do you suppose the hundreds of senior executives
participating in this exercise tended to spend
more time talking aboutThe Past or the
Future?The Gadget or the Behaviors
enabled/required by the Gadget? The Cost or
the Value? What was happening inside the
enterprise or outside the enterprise?
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Base Case Outputs Computational Eras Exercise
???A.M.O.
NOW!
InternetEnterprise Software
Client Server
Personal Computing
Source Thornton May, The New Mental Landscape A
Forensic Analysis of C Level Thinking About
Information Technology
Mainframe
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We discovered a lack of foresight regarding what
comes next imagination/inspiration But and far
more significantly The historical acceptance of
other-generated off-the-shelf visions of what
needed to by deployed approach
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Where Do Big IT Ideas Come From?
Journalists___ IT Staff___ Peer
Practitioners___ Venture Capitalists___
Other B___
Academics___ Vendors___ Consultants___ Su
bscription Researchers___ Other A___
Thornton May Primary Research The New Mental
Landscape A Forensic Analysis of C-level
Technology Thinking
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The Mixed Marbles Exercise
1000 Red Marbles
1000 Blue Marbles
Red Bin
Blue Bin
20 from Blue Bin to Red Bin- then 20 from Red Bin
to Blue Bin. At the end of 3 Round Trips, which
container has more of the alien color in it?
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• 61 of US workers say they received no meaningful
  rewards or recognition for their efforts in 2003.
  
• 71 of workers consider themselves disengaged
  clockwatchers who cant wait to go home.
• Wall Street Journal/ Gallup Poll

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Technology Time Lines
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History of Technology 101
2003
2005 - 2007
2010
Infrastructure owned by nobody Internetcarryin
g pieces of programs following no architectural
design client server running across flaky LAN
protocolsconnecting powerful systems run by
amateurs.
Processing Power Doubles Every 18 months Storage
Capacity Doubles Every 12 monthsBandwidth
Throughput Doubles Every 9 months
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History of Technology 101

• The technology era we are just about to enter
  will feature intelligent, semi-aware, always-on
  devices made by other intelligent, semi-aware
  devices driven by ubiquitous, nano-scale, data
  collecting sensors.
• In 10 years, every molecule on the planet will be
  IP Addressable. RF-ID and GPS on key fobs are
  just the tip of the iceberg.

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The Next Stage of Technology

• Linear expansion of existing information
  management models
• Consumers will have vast computational and
  informational resources available to them.
  Activists have distributed freeware for PDAs that
  allow you to go into a store, swipe UPC codes, do
  a web search to determine who the real company is
  making the product, what their human rights
  position is sweatshop labor or not, what their
  environmental track record is
• The age of the Super Empowered Consumer is upon
  us.

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The Next Stage of Technology
B.Smartifacts Giving pre-to-fore inanimate
objects the rudimentary ability to account for
themselves, saying what they are and where they
are creates a new class of device e.g., the
Roomba
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The Next Stage of Technology

• C. Transitioning from Interface Design humans
  looking at computer stuff to computers looking at
  human stuff
• When you hook computers up with sensors and ask
  them to observe the physical world, you take the
  first step toward completely eliminating the
  idea/notion of an interface.
• In the pre-digital world it was just us and the
  natural world.
• Then along comes cyberspace, a parallel universe.
  The two universes were barely connected via a
  glass partition called an interface.

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C. Transitioning from Two Worlds Outside the
Computer Inside the Computer to One
World Historically humans peered into cyberspace
wondering what the virtual world was like. I
doubt machines ever peered into the real world
and wondered what it was like. By giving
machines sensors and effectors we have
essentially destroyed interfaces and have brought
computers into the physical world.
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The systems are wrapping themselves around us and
invading our lives.
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D. Reality Crawlers The Roomba goes all around
your house and notices things lost socks, loose
change, a ring. The next time you want to find
your cell phone or a lost ring, you will go to
online and query your Roombas data base! We
are heading into a world full of reality
crawlers. Forget web crawlers. We are going to
ask devices with sensors, what do you see?
You think you have a lot of information classes
to manage today???? What will happen to your
organization when you have this kind of
information sloshing around ?
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D. Reality Crawlers Today tracking packages
shipped overnight is no big deal. What happens
when you will be able to do with every item in
the company? Every molecule on the planet?
Really anal types will want to stick RF-ID tags
for everything in the company. Take an office
pencil home and security is going to show up at
your door. People will want to do something with
that information. Your job is about to get an
order of magnitude more difficult.
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Your Technology Might Rat You Out
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Which Vendor Do You Believe Has A Better
Handle on the Technology World to Come

• 1. HP
• 2. IBM
• 3. Sun
• 4. Microsoft
• 5. Other

Cross-Tab Label
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Who Will Be Better Able To Flourish in the
Omni-Infomated InfoSphere of the Future?

• Big Companies
• Small Companies

Cross-Tab Label
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Technology Imagination Defined
technology imagination Is a business process
that has to be managed, measured and very much
improved upon. Technology imagination is the
process that tells us what we want technology to
do for us.
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How Personally ResponsibleDo Line-of-Business
ExecsIn Your Organization Feel Regarding
Creating Value With IT

• 1. They feel very responsible
• 2. They feel middle of the road responsible
• 3. They dont feel responsible at all

Cross-Tab Label
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Mental Models for IT Investment
In 1999 Cisco set up something called the
Internet Capabilities Review. John Chambers
met with all the senior business leaders, his
direct reports, couldnt send underlings to hear
what they were doing investing in technology to
change their business. The first guy to
present was Rick Justice, the SVP of Global
sales. John asked him, How are you going to sell
more? How are you going to cover the world?
Ricks response was, I hire more people.
Chambers response was, Wrong answer.
Brad Boston, CTO at Cisco Keynote at Society for
Information Management Annual Meeting September
2002
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• On your first visit to the supermarket, you spent
  a long time searching for the things you wanted,
  and came out with things you never planned to
  buy. After a few more visits, you felt at home
  with the store and you stopped noticing the
  things you didnt go in to buy.
• Mankind journeys through life in a very similar
  way
• Young adult life is a kaleidoscope of new and
  unexpected experiences. But once an adult reaches
  35 and becomes comfortable with life, all sorts
  of things start to fade from their radar screen.
• Changing minds in the twenty-first century,
  dealing as it will largely with adults over 35,
  will be about putting important things back on
  that radar screen.

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Some Minds are Closed

• One agency analyst summarized years of dealing
  with some of Washingtons Vietnam policymakers
  with a single lament
• They simply didnt want to know
• what they didnt know.

Richard Helms with William Hood, A Look Over My
Shoulder A Life in the Central Intelligence
Agency (NY Random House), 2003.
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The Basics of Strategic IT

• Anything you do, any project should begin with
  the sentence
• We are doing X to make y better as measured by
  y1 which is worth z dollars.
• If you cant fill in the blanks you should not do
  it.

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Zero Tolerance for Technology That Does Not
Change Behavior

• we have to focus on adoption. We were building
  a lot of things that just werent being used. We
  lacked the appropriate training and deployment
  plans. In November of 2001 we deployed 30 new
  applications. Of those 30, ten of them got used
  less than five times a day. Top five got used
  20,000 times a day. Middle fifteen got used 20-30
  times a day. Not certain these were appropriate
  investments. We spent a lot of time building them
  and they were not being used. We have to make
  sure that the ideas we have are being applied in
  the business.
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• Two years ago, 70 of the people in the part of
  the IT organization supporting sales were
  thinking about new things to do and 30 figuring
  out how to roll out those new things out to the
  business. Today it is reversed. We have also gone
  from rolling out new stuff every week to
  quarterly release cycles. We now have a formal
  plan to teach people how to use the new
  functionality, roll that out and then measure the
  adoption. Our metrics now put much greater
  emphasis on focusing on business process change.
  
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• If you dont focus on adoption, you end up with a
  lot of stuff that is meaningless.

Brad Boston, CTO _at_ Cisco speaking at the 2002
Annual SIM Meeting
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Thought Processes of World Beating CIOs
Tracing Tech-LinearitiesBringing the Future to
the PresentDeja ViewingEdgeCraftingExperienc
e Hitch-Hiking
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• EdgeCraft is a methodical process that allows
  individuals and teams to identify soft
  innovations that live on the edges of what
  already exists.

How EdgeCraft Works Find an edge the
differentiator/free prize that makes a product or
service remarkable. Decide which edge you are
going to lean over Go all the way to the edge
Free Prize Inside, 126.
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Edgecraft
How Edgecraft Works Find a product or service
thats completely unrelated to your
industry. Figure out whos winning by being
remarkable. Discover which edge they went
to. Do that in your own industry.
Free Prize Inside, 126.
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Differentiate on the Basis of Our People
Running a restaurant differentiated on the basis
of wait staff having slightly attractive wait
staff does not go far enough. It is not
EdgeCraft. Theyve got to be supermodels or
weight lifters or identical twins. You dont
create a better restaurant by serving better
food. You can do it by serving remarkable food,
or having a remarkable location or a remarkably
famous chef.
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Barber Shop Example
QBNet is the fastest-growing barbershop chain in
Japan. Before they came along, the average
haircut in Japan took about an hour. Kuniyoshi
Konishi figured that there had to be a faster
and cheaper way. He went to the edge of
speed. After seven years, his chain now has 200
outlets, and has cut the time for a haircut down
to ten minutes and the price from 50 to 8. The
key was to focus exclusively on time.
Free Prize Inside, 152-153.
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Barbershop Example
Edgecraft
The chairs have sensors in them so QB can post an
easily noticed color-coded sign outside the shop,
showing how long the wait is. QBNet is the
fastest-growing barbershop chain in Japan. Before
they came along, the average haircut in Japan
took about an hour. Kuniyoshi Konishi figured
that there had to be a faster and cheaper way.
He went to the edge of speed. You dont even pay
the barber customers must use an automated
token booth exact change only to buy a ticket,
which they use to pay for the haircut.
Free Prize Inside, 142.
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Deja Viewing, a technique frequently used to
craft insight-producing, behavior-changing
scenarios of what lies ahead and what actions
should be taken, involves looking intensely at
the attributes of the current period and asking,
Have we experienced anything like this before?
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Experience Hitch Hiking
Have You Ever Heard ofVue Ja De?

• The most notorious bombing mistake of the war in
  the Balkans occurred over Belgrade during the
  night of May 7-8, 1999.
• The target was a Miloseic logistical center,
  Target 493, the Federal procurement and Supply
  Directorate. But because of a mistake in
  labeling among the targeteers, the building, was
  in fact, the Chinese embassy. A B-2, using the
  bad information, struck the target.
• Four staff members were killed, and an immense
  diplomatic crisis exploded.

David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 460.
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Rapid Dog Vue Ja De-ing

• On May 20th we made news by some limited damage
  to the residence of the Swiss Ambassador.
• The Ukranians immediately sent a letter calling
  my attention to the new address of their embassy
  in Belgrade.

Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War, 315.
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Bringing the Future to the Present
Go to a future point in time and paint a picture
of what you want to happen.
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Bringing the Future to the Present
Famous Example ofBringing the Future to the
Present During a joint session of Congress on
May 25, 1961, President Kennedy went out a decade
and saw an American on the moon.
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Mental Model change situations where
individuals or groups abandon the way in which
they have customarily thought about an issue of
importance and henceforth conceive of it in a new
way.
The phenomenon of changing minds is one of the
least examined and I would claim least
understood of familiar human experiences. Howard
Gardner
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We asked a set of Big Company executives Are
you innovative?
Empirical Data Innovation Self-Assessments
Typically 75-80 say Yes, I am innovative!
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Empirical Data Innovation Self-Assessments
We asked that same set of executives Is your
organization innovative?
Typically only 20-25 say Yes
Whats going on here?
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Thank You Questions