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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.]

New Business Ecology Initiative Podcast: Aleks Buterman on Decoding Business/IT Unity

This morning, the Business Ecology Initiative released a new podcast of Aleks Buterman (@aleksb6) speaking on Decoding Business and IT Unity.  From my BEI post:

“Utilizing a case study approach, Buterman spoke of classic and newly identified failure patterns associated with enterprise technology investment. Interestingly, Buterman's case studies extend beyond initial delivery, to focus on real-world challenges of product, program and business sustainment brought on by unanticipated customer and business unit demand, organizational change and insufficient architectural investment.

For preventive and corrective measures, Buterman advocates a capability portfolio approach to bring complexity to a manageable level. The capability portfolio approach considers four dimensions: business, technology, organization and risk. Buterman emphasized the need to apply business discipline, particularly risk assessment and management, throughout business-technology lifecycles.

Amplifying Buterman's findings was a special video conference guest appearance from a vice president at a large Fortune 500 Financial Services firm.”

To listen to an audio recording of Aleks’ presentation go here.

 

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

New BEI Podcast: Faisal Hoque on the Power of Business-IT Convergence

Faisal Hoque, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BTM Corporation, spoke on The Power of Convergence: Why Bringing Business and Technology Together Matters, at the March 2010 Business Ecology Initiative Symposium in Jacksonville FL.   

Hoque set the stage with the startling fact that only 74 of the original 500 firms remain in the S&P index just 40 years later.  The frenetic pace of business has reduced the enterprise life expectancy.  The response has been a call for agility.  Referencing research of the BTM Institute, Hoque stated that agility is achieved through repeatable management processes.

The components of agility are flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, standards for enterprise architecture, including business architecture, a portfolio investment approach that is structured to balance between stability and agility, and a governance model that facilitates horizontal and collaborative decision making processes.

Of the flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, Hoque focused on business-technology convergence.  Unlike business-IT alignment, which is essentially communicating silos, business-technology convergence features intertwined business and technology activities, dedicated to driving superior financial performance.

With the agility and business-technology convergence context set, Hoque walked through the BTM management practice framework, including the 17 capabilities required to achieve convergence. 

In addition to discussing the practices, Hoque shared metrics and trends from the hundreds of organizations who have utilized the BTM measurement tools over the past 7 years.  A critical finding is a correlation of management practice maturity and corporate growth and financial returns – stock price, earnings and margins.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of Hoque’s presentation and view the slides.

 

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

Forrester: Don’t be an IT-hater, be a Business-IT Integrator

I’m cross-posting my latest from the new Business Ecology Initiative blog.  As you know, “Business-IT Integration” is one of my soapbox items. 

In a recent post on the Forrester Blog for CIOs, Sharyn Leaver writes an inspired response to Susan Cramm’s 8 Things We Hate About IT.  As outlined in CIO Insight, Cramm’s “8 Things” focus on the following business-IT relationship issues:

1. Service or Control?
2. Results or Relationships?
3. Tactics or Strategies?
4. Expense or Investment?
5. Quickness or Quality?
6. Customization or Standardization?
7. Innovation or Bureaucracy?
8. Greatness of Goodness?

In her post, Leaver refers to the above as ““8 Beaten-to-Death Clichés” about IT-business relationships”.  However, her point isn’t directed at Cramm, but rather the situation that business and IT executives and professionals continue to inhabit.  As a way out, Leaver offers some good observations and actionable advice.  Her first two points relate to organizational design:

• “Tension between IT and line businesses is designed into organizational structures. Hard-wiring organizational lines into centralized IT “shops” assigned to business units or combinations puts IT unwittingly into a self-perceived servant relationship with business units. No doubt in recent economic downturn years, increasing centralization of IT has resulted in a cementing of “us” versus “them” — where as federated and decentralized structures preserve some of “us” within “them” and align attitudes and goals accordingly. HR, Accounting, Facilities, and other centralized services all struggle with balancing acts of meeting the needs of those they service.
•  Preserving a request-fulfill relationship institutionalizes disappointment all around. Missed expectations and unhappiness result from a “take a number” approach to queuing up service requests, ranking them according to some criteria, estimating fulfillment time, and attempting to deliver in the face of numerous “Look over there!” distractions. Again, breaking up some of the IT resources into the business units for dedicated and local work would help. CIOs should read and absorb Forrester’s BT model for operating IT.”

From a Business Ecology perspective, we refer to these design shifts as Business-IT Integration:

“Business-IT Integration is the organizational model for business and information technology convergence.  This model promotes collaborative strategy, planning, architecture and execution; shared decision-making, business-tech savvy personnel and service delivery at the point of value generation.”

Similar to Leaver, we are not saying immediately or completely decentralize IT, nor are we calling for an end to enterprise-level strategies and resources, but rather, that a new model is required.  A model that supports near-term needs as well as business vitality over time, balancing current conditions, optimization and innovation focus areas, resource allocations, and longer-term business motivations, capabilities and outcomes.

As Leaver points out, the time of lamenting needs to end, it is time to take action. 

To gather other actionable ideas, I plan to read Cramm’s book.  A related read I highly recommend is Weill and Ross’ IT Saavy.  For the all important peer interaction regarding Business-IT Integration, consider joining us in Jacksonville FL, March 23-24. 

If you can’t join us in March, but have some ideas, success stories, or warnings you would like to share, please leave a comment, or drop an email.

 

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