Posts Tagged ‘ROI’

Making Complexity Your Friend

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

Our businesses are relentlessly becoming more complex. We are engaging with an expanding network of contractors and partners to get our work done. We are utilizing more diverse channels to reach more customers. We are operating in more countries and in more languages, while we wrestle with more regulations and market variables.

In one sense, this complexity is a dangerous enemy. Complexity can increase the probability that some process somewhere will break or that somebody will do something wrong. Orders get screwed up. Customers get ticked off. Revenue goes out the window.

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Vivisimo’s Federal Day 2010

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Awesome — only word to describe Vivisimo’s Federal Day 2010. So many great insights expressed, I would be remiss to not share. Yes, I’ll admit the Nationals Park Conference Center venue and Nationals vs. Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, featuring Stephen Strasburg’s major league debut, did not hurt!

Dr. Bob Mikelskas, recently retired CIO of MITRE Corp., started the day with an excellent presentation on “Information Advantage for the Enterprise CIO.” Dr. Mikelskas’ key point was that most of the layers of the IT “stack” such as storage, routers, operating systems, databases, ERP, etc., are mature enough to offer easy choices and low risk for the CIO. Two components that remain challenging, however, are cyber security and information access. Focusing on information access, Dr. Mikelskas laid down a challenge to the industry to meet the needs of knowledge workers while maintaining security and incorporating legacy systems and content.

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Wealth by Access

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Venice rose to power and great wealth in the Middle Ages not because of its own natural resources or productive capacity—but because it uniquely provided access to the silk, grain, and spices of other lands.

Many of America’s greatest family fortunes can likewise be traced to the railroads that accessed the collective agricultural and industrial productivity of a growing nation—rather than to the farms and factories themselves.

Google serves as a contemporary example of this same principle.  Google didn’t generate wealth by producing information, goods, or services.  It did so by providing access to those things.

These examples and others highlight a fundamental principle of commerce.  Often, the best way to create the most wealth isn’t to produce a limited number of things of value.  It’s to provide access to a great number of things of value.

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