Doing the right disruptive things

What would be the governance framework for disruptive innovation?

By definition disruptive and governance don't match.

So how do you know you doing the right thing vs doing things right.

This is what I use, to probe if I'm onto something and if I'm on the right track.

1. You are ridiculed (start)

You'll be called an idiot, people will start laughing and pointing at you

- Peers will start ducking for cover or rush-out because they don't want to be associated with you

- The more brave will worn you you are playing with your reputation

- The experienced authority will give fatherly advice and try to steer you gently toward best practices

2. You are violently opposed (Initial successes)

You'll be threatened with sacking, demotion. People will be mad at you , start boycotting you and blame you

3. It's all self-evident (success)

You'll be happy , enthusiastically telling everybody how it works , how simple and elegant the design is etc.

The reply will be "What fuzz all about I could have done it myself if I hadn't more important things to do"

Just before it becomes a hit. People (managers) will step up push you aside because "it has to be managed properly", They'll make presentations as if the whole idea was theirs, They will tell people "yes He was involved, but I had to manage him hard otherwise this thing would have gone nowhere"

e.g.

- No one will ridicule you if you conform to the old model

- No one will threaten you if you are not a threat to the old model

- It's a hit if the old model champions down-play the novelty but eagerly want to jump on to the new band wagon.

Happy hunting !

The 4 forces of disruptive innovation

"There is nothing more surprising then the human imagination"

There are 4 forces of disruptive innovation

1. Scaling in the industrial age 1910-1970- scaling stock by efficiencies (atoms)
e.g. scaling production - efficiencies based repetition & commodities .. GM, kodak, coca cola, Gillette

2. Scaling in the information age 1980 -2000- scaling flow by combining (bits)
e.g. scaling speed by uniformity - like ERP single platform and the young internet .

3. Scaling in a knowledge age 2000-2012 - scaling novelty by distribution (brains)
e.g. scaling by diversity - wisdom of crowds -more is different - facilitating distributed brains around a good concept ...google, twitter

4. Scaling in a creativity age 2012-2020 - scaling disruption by mashing (imagination)
e.g. scaling innovation by mashing 1,2 and 3

You'll need all 4 to realize an idea (imagination) by the speeds of light (bits) against a price close to zero (atoms)

You want to see it action ? http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid56328629001?bclid=10175001001&bctid=63270385001

Science is becoming subjective

We can't escape the net, the new icon, archetype
The net, the web is messy, fuzzy, flaky and virtual. The web is a network of relations. Everything is in relation with everything, influence is both ways or "multi-ways" where simple cause and effect seize to exist.

Simple case and effect seize to be, single, double blind tests or other Scientific methods won't hold any longer. Even science can't escape the net.

Watch the video of Kevin Kelly on "The next 50 year of Science" 48 min. or listen to his podcast "The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method."

Beyond Folksonomy

What is the problem with Taxonomies, classifications or meta-data?
The creation and maintenance of it is to slow. The world is changing, views are changing and views on views are changing. There is also a mass of data and information created each day even in a confined space like a company. So what to do ?

About 5 years ago, as being the Enterprise Application Architect, I was asked to make the Enterprise Architecture rules and guidelines. More specifically the business, application and data rules and guidelines. I ran to an argument with my boss and collegues on one of the data architectural guidelines. My boss had initially written the data architectural guidelines and guideline number 1 stated "single point of truth"and 2 on meta-data the phrase "unambiguous".
I wasn't happy with these guidelines. "Who is going to determine what is unambiguous and where should the single point of truth of all data be stored in a large international corporation?", I asked . "We, the architects, will was the answer."
"Impossible" I said, to much information and increasing fast. Too many view points and ever increasing complexity.

My suggestion was "Marketsonomy", a sound-bite I invented on the spot to express what I was thinking of. Let a market mechanism decide what decide which source is the best. Let a market mechanism define the meta-data. My collegues always found me a bit curious but this time they though I was off my rockers.
But I was serious, let action and the bulk of the action define what was wrong or right at a certain point in time. Yes, data interpretation would be in flux and not fixed. But I grantee you it would be closer to the "truth" and faster then categories defined by architects sitting in a isolated head office !

Wikipedia states, "Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging, and other names) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is not only generated by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.[1]"

At that time folksonomy wasn't very well known, and certainly not recognized as a successful way to classify data. With Folksonomy the keywords are "collaborative" and "social" which is close to a Market Mechanism.
Marketsonomy adds to that a weighing element in the form of competition. It's different then a tag cloud but more like a bidding system, stock market, Googles search philosophy or game with stakes. "Let the crowd decide I say !"

New C-Levels

We all learned the economic value chain at school. From raw materials to goods to services.
According to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in in their 1999 book after services comes experiences.
Today I was reading "enfant terrible", Tom Peters's, blog where it is taken a couple a steps further. The chain becomes;

• Lovemark
• Dreams Come True
• Spellbinding Experiences
• Gamechanging Solutions
• Services
• Goods
• Raw Materials

So beyond experiences we get dreams and lovemark. Lovemark was introduced by Kevin Roberts in his book Lovemarks. With these new levels Tom comes up with new c-levels. The old c-levels, CEO, CFO, COO etc. are obsolete.
I found them quite amusing. Did he forget any ?

The new C-Levels

• CXO Chief eXperience Officer
• CDM Chief Dream Merchant
• CLO Chief Lovemark Officer
• CWO Chief WOW Officer
• CSTO Chief Storytelling Officer
• CRO Chief Revenue Officer

Chunking is the only way to go

Change comes swiftly, it is fast paced and reveals itself in bursts of innovations. There are 3 distinctive trends which drive this wave of change.

Distributed world, the world is becoming more and more a distributed working environment due to;

• globalization (space)
  
• specialization of products and professionals (granularity)
• 24 X 7 economy (time)
• outsourcing of non-core activities (de-centralized)
  

Collapsing lead times, yesterday’s value-added products and service are becoming today’s commodities due to;

• global competitive pressures
• shift from atoms to bits
• shortened product cycles
• shift from business chain to business webs

Customer driven & service focused, customers are expecting

• customized products
• commodity prices
• excellent service

This poses severe pressures on Business Services & Processes as well as on IT Services.
Agile Business and IT development strategies are crucial.
The best approach is by chunking. Chunking is the composing and decomposing of small chunks, self contained services, which relate to each other in a loosely coupled way. Loosely coupled means that you can take out an old chunk or add a new chunk without sending a tidal wave of change all others.
Chunks are like playing with lego blocks, combining and re-combing new services into adaptive or innovative IT services or business models.
Independend chunks makes it possible to have

• distributed development across geographic boundaries, time zones and around the clock
• re-use of existing chunks keeps prices at a minimum
  
• re-use of tried and tested chunks secure quality
• combining and re-combing chunks provides customized services with minimum maintenance

Ten chunks with six properties will give an opportunity space of 1.000.000 end products while maintenance is restricted to 10 chunks or 60 features. Right ?

The great failure of wikipedia

Wikipedia is becoming an icon. Ever more people are referring to it.
I use it a lot too. It's a great idea having just anyone posting a topic
describing and explaining what it is.
Even more amazing is that anyone can edit, delete or overwrite an existing entry.
Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and current president of the Wikimedia Foundation called it "availability of the sum of human knowledge to everyone on Earth for free" at least that's the ultimate dream.
It's a true group effort. And as we know the group knows best. I indeed find excellent information at wikipedia. But as most successes it has it's downside too.
In a world of spammers and hackers it's hard to believe that such an open and co-operative playground will be an ongoing success.
Is this true for wikipedia ?
Recent incidents show that the true spirit, open to anyone, neutral and good information, is been violated. Why is that ? because one of the things Jimbo didn't really expect was the oncoming massive tidal wave of legality, legal threats and attacks.
Wikipedia has three events in the past year and a half that has totally changed the atmosphere of Wikipedia.
Jason Scott held a presentation/speech at Notacon 3, April 8, 2006 on the subject.
Jason Scott is somebody who has publish on his blog his criticisms before and maintains a site called textfiles.com
I still respect the idea and success of wikipedia, but Jason has a point.
I think we should listen. Read Jason's speech transcript or listen to the audio file.