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Optimization for Innovation Conference – Call for Participation

I’m working with the Business Ecology Initiative (BEI) on a new Optimization for Innovation Conference series.  The inaugural conference is “Optimization for Innovation: Reset; Joint Business & Technology Actions for the New Normal”:

As the world economy emerges from a painful recession, organizations are confronted with the challenge of retaining bottom-line diligence, while pursuing market sustaining and gaining innovation, in an environment riddled with uncertainty, increased regulation, consumer reluctance and tighter credit. This is the “new normal.” To execute in the “new normal,” organizations are seeking new ideas and techniques to optimize business operations and foster business innovation.

At the inaugural Optimization for Innovation conference, executives, senior-level practitioners, experts and thought leaders will share real-world experiences and pragmatic 90-day action items to harvest savings and trapped value from existing processes, resources and capabilities. The conference will consist of a combination of invited guest speakers, keynotes, case studies, presentations and tutorials.

By attending this conference, direct reports and senior staff of the COO, CFO and CIO will learn:

• How leading organizations are optimizing for innovation
• Business Optimization Techniques and Practices
• Business & Technology Partnership Models
• Business Performance Analysis and Measurement Practices
• Business Risk Identification & Mitigation in a Connected World
• Business-Technology Enablers

The conference is December 6 – 8, 2010, in Santa Clara, CA USA.  December 6 is tutorials.  December 7 & 8 are full conference days. 

This morning, we issued a call for participation.  We are seeking proposals for presentations including (but not limited to) the following topics:

Program Topics

• Optimization for Innovation Success Stories
• Business-Technology Reset: Optimization for Innovation
• Governance Models for the New Normal
• Business Analytics as Optimization Foundation
• New Normal Linchpins: Business-Tech Savvy Professionals
• Business-IT Alignment is a Dead-End
• Business Optimization Techniques

Tutorials Topics

• Instituting a Business Performance Measurement Framework
• Cyber Risk Analysis: Assessment, Policy, & Economics
• Business Process Modeling and Business Instrumentation
• Lean / Six Sigma in the New Normal

Presentations and tutorials proposed should be geared toward an audience comprising direct reports and senior staff of the COO, CFO and CIO. All presentations and tutorials  must include a 90-day action plan for attendees to pursue post-conference.

The submission deadline is August 13, 2010. Please note, submissions that are direct pitches for product or services will not be considered. Submissions should be prepared in English, containing the following information:

• Presenter name, title and affiliation
• Presenter Bio
• Session Title
• 2 - 3 paragraph description of proposed session
• 3 - 5 bullets on what attendees will learn
• Target audience characteristics: role, skill and industry
• 90-day action plan items

Submit abstracts as described above to Program Chair Brenda M. Michelson (me) via e-mail.

[Disclosure: The Business Ecology Initiative is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]

BPM / SOA Community News: Case Study Contest Deadline Extended to July 30, 2010

Yes, it’s true!  The BPM / SOA Community of Practice has extended the deadline on the Business Agility and Process Optimization enabled by BPM and SOA Case Study Competition.  Entries are due July 30, 2010. 

Beware, this is the *final* final deadline.  Start your submission here.  To learn about the purpose, rules and such, go here.

 

[Disclosure: The BPM / SOA Community of Practice is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]

Next for EA2010? Exploring the Business of Successful Enterprise Architecture Practices

The BPM/SOA Community of Practice’s EA2010 Group is returning to the discussion forum.  Starting next week, EA2010 will pursue a new line of discussion and research focusing on the business aspects of successful enterprise architecture practices.  Items for discussion include:

• Establishing and sustaining credibility with business and IT constituents
• Business Outcome rather than Business Model alignment
• Injecting financial measurement and decision-making acumen into EA
• Catalyzing a business architecture practice

All members of the BPM/SOA Community of Practice are welcome to participate in the EA2010 Working Group.  For more information, see the EA2010 working group page.

Did you miss the group’s prior work?  Last year, the EA2010 team pursued a line of discussion and research on the purpose, practices and realities of expanding, or in some cases starting, business architecture practices.  This work stream culminated in the publication of an EA2010 Business Architecture whitepaper. 

And yes, the BPM/SOA Community of Practice is the renamed, post-merger, combination of the SOA Consortium and BPM Consortium.

 

[Disclosure: The BPM/SOA Community of Practice is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]

Announcing 2010 Case Study Contest: Business Agility and Process Optimization enabled by BPM & SOA

The BPM/SOA Community of Practice (CoP), in partnership with BPTrends and TechTarget, is sponsoring the “Business Agility and Process Optimization enabled by Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)” Case Study Competition. The competition is open to organizations of all sizes, including government agencies, which have successfully delivered business or mission value using a BPM, SOA or combined BPM-SOA approach.

Similar to the SOA Consortium’s contests in 2008 -  2009, the goal of the BPM/SOA Case Study Competition is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing BPM, SOA or combined BPM-SOA adoption. To qualify for the competition, the project must be complete with demonstrated business results.

Entries will be judged on the complexity of the business problem addressed, the ROI/Business Value achieved (Agility/Innovation/Flexibility/Optimization/Resilience/Service Delivery), the level and sophistication of the cross-organizational collaboration (Business/Technical) and the usage of BPM/SOA approaches and supporting technology. In addition to one overall winner, organizations will be recognized by industry/government.

Case Study Competition winners will be announced at the BPM/SOA CoP meeting in Cambridge MA on September 21, 2010 and will be featured on the BPM/SOA CoP website and in October publications by BPTrends and TechTarget.

Visit the contest homepage to learn about the guidelines, peak at the application, and meet the judges.  Submissions will be accepted through June 29, 2010.

 

[Disclosure: The BPM/SOA Community of Practice is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]

Counterintuitive: Creative Agency + ISO 9000 = Creativity Increase

The Van Halen brown M&M anecdote wasn’t the only interesting piece in the March issue of Fast Company.  I also found a good example of "optimization for innovation”, which I first wrote about on the Business Ecology Initiative blog.  The article, entitled Partners in Time, describes how Partners & Napier, a Rochester, NY based creative agency, streamlined its processes at the request of Kodak, resulting in increased productivity, billings and creative time for the agency, as well as cost savings for its clients. 

How did they do this?  By mapping out processes, to identify and remove wasteful steps and interactions.  According to the article, Partners went “all in, applying for and earning certification in ISO 9000, a quality-management system akin to Six Sigma that's normally used by manufacturing companies.”

Initially, the idea of applying process rigor to a creative business was met with skepticism:

"A creative embracing quality management may be unusual, but it also may be the model for how to handle clients' increasingly stringent ROI demands.  When Kodak first asked us to do this, people worried that no one understood how long it takes to get to a great idea," concedes Partners' CEO Sharon Napier. Chief creative officer Jeff Gabel says the opposite has happened. More often than not, Gabel says, creative work resembles a "giant hair ball." And that's fine with him. "You don't want to straighten it out," he says. "It's nonlinear, illogical, and often occurs at unpredictable hours." But, he says, if the time allotted to a project could be rejiggered so more time went to creating great ideas -- and less against the job's ancillary grunt work -- then he was game to try.”

The certification process and initial results:

“The certification process took six months and required each step of an assignment, from developing a brief to reviewing final work with the client, to be documented. It cost roughly $20,000 out of Partners' pocket, but it revealed some surprising inefficiencies, including a lot of time wasted in back-and-forths for approvals of briefs, concepts, ideas, and directors. Partners was able to trim the time on a job from eight weeks to three, save the client approximately 40%, and boost productivity by 3.5%.”

The on-going impact:

“…its creative output seems to have blossomed as a result, as the agency is increasingly turning out higher-quality work, it says, in significantly less time.”

“Partners has been so happy with the results that it now uses the same approach with other clients. It's winning more business because it can jump on opportunities once dismissed due to time constraints. Its billings have grown 300% in the past five years.

Still, the process is not without its flaws. All that hyper-efficiency can be exhausting, Gabel admits: "You've removed your slop factor."”

As you consider optimization opportunities in your organization, don’t limit yourself to traditional operational areas and boundaries.  Nor, fall victim to the “optimization = automation trap”.  Think about your creative types, strategists, and knowledge workers.  How can their work time be “rejiggered” to focus on value creation activities?

 

[Disclosure: Cross-posted from the Business Ecology Initiative (BEI) blog.  The BEI is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]