Jun 28, 2011

Zenjidoka and Ford intersecting Boston E2.0 Big Data - Unified Communications perhaps

Globalisation has been a force of disruptive change over the last 10 years or so. Just look at smart phones & iPhones. And there's never been more pressure on the automotive industry - global disruptive changes - a quick read of my local Sydney newspaper revealing an astonishing infographic  last Saturday (more here). heading for 60 million cars manufactured worldwide each year.
The previous year it was nudging over 50 million. And China, long the home of the Pigeon bicycle, now makes 25% of the global car total, ie  more than Japan & Korea combined. I recall holidaying in China in 2005 with the family, then there were only 2 million cars in Beijing but I noticed a lot of foreign car companies had set up factories there - playing for the future. And the USA in the global car manufacturing scene? Dropping below India with just under 5% of world total.
And then the pace of technology introduction into cars seems to be accelerating - a couple of years ago when my significant other bought his last car, the thought of USB, Bluetooth & mp3 in your standard car was not on the horizon. Recently when I bought a budget subcompact - they all there.
But with technology comes complexity & the risks of more headaches - just ask Toyota. I must admit to being astonished that they only set up their global quality initiative after the controversy over the suddent acceleration problems. Solutions perhaps from Norman Bodek's - few months I ago I posted on his Zenjidoka  concept of engaging front line service people in feeding back to design & manufacturing engineers about customer complaints.
So ASQ's Paul Borawski's interview on Ford with Bennie Fowler  is interesting,  as are the recent ASQ RSS news feed on Mark Field and more from Bennie Fowler on the GQRS, Global Quality Research System, on improving customer satisfaction by addressing things gone wrong.
Interestingly in the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference held in Boston in June 2011, Sameer Patel spoke of the change in putting the Big R into Customer Relationship Management & Market Dynamics. As Toyota found, with all the exploding social media technologies, like Facebook & Twitter it is no longer possible to isolate or ignore bad news. Just as Clay Shirky spoke of in his "Here Comes Everybody" - it's ridiculously easy to form groups - so we rapidly reach Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.
However these technologies can provide the key to frontline research and can be utilised to rapidly address problems - however there's a deluge of data needing the ability to manage Unified Communications across the social media channels.  The computer geeks like David Carr have an answer to that too - they call it Big Data & Analytics - again a theme at the Boston E2.0 conference.
So like Crisis being Danger & Opportunity - perhaps there exists the same in the car manufacturing industry - Opportunities to use Social Media, Big Data & Unified Communications in listening to & acting upon emerging issues before they become the crisis.





Jun 26, 2011

Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2011 - Key Themes biz value of social - collaboration - tools #e2conf

I'd love to have attended Enterprise 2.0 in Boston in June 2011 - but had to be content with the #e2conf tweet streams, videos, slide decks at Slideshare & of course - the fantastic blogging by Mary Abraham, Bill Ives & Emanuele Quintarelli.
Having scanned their blog posts on this recent 2011 E2.0 Conference (and  create a post for my org's newly revamped KM COP on Sharepoint)  - the compelling question is :
What are the key themes to emerge out of this year's E 2.0 Conference ? For me - these resonated : 
  • this year it wasn't Culture vs Technology Tools like in the past (See - Notes on the 2010 E.0 Boston Conference & others on the search for the killer app (application for business.)
  • Collaboration inside & outside silo's & the firewalls & enabled by Technology seemed big
  • COP's aka Communities or Communities of Practice were very popular & technology to enable COP's to create  Business Value in solving real problems - see Community Maturity Model
  • Organizational Network Analysis as a tool wasn't mentioned as much as I expected but still important to CIO's eg Hidden Power of Social Networks
  • Nevertheless Expertise Location seems to have been important
  • Also Connectors in networks aka Mavens did get mentioned as helping to promote & foster community
  • RSS, Wiki's & Collaborative Bookmarks still in favour
  • Interesting that Cloud & SaaS mentioned - but appeared not to feature hugely in the articles by Abraham, Ives & Quintarelli on the conference presentations ?
  • Cloud seemed to get more coverage in the 2010 E 2.0 Boston conference
  • Sharepoint & IBM products featured although some critique of Sharepoint - can't do it effectively out of the box & often need other products to get the best out of it - Newsgator seemed to be the favoured product 
  • Templates were favoured for Sharepoint COP's - different templates for Communities of Interest & for Organizational Communities - just as our IT geek found when she was setting up our COP's at their new home on Sharepoint
  • Interesting comments from Jacob Morgan that not much to take back to use at the workplace from E2.0 2011 - even IBM's Luis Suarez "we want more HOW!
  • Anarchy is not recommended nor autocratic control of COP's
  • What will Mobile & Social Computing mean for the Enterprise ?
  • Lots of talk about Activity Streams to reduce information overload & integrate information from different sources - ie think LinkedIn news feeds etc
  • And what will Unified Communications across the Activity Streams ie integrating LinkedIn, Blogs, RSS, microblog streams ?
  • Many employees self-provision & use non-approved applications to get their work done - this can mean big risks
  • Implications of Big Data & its Analytics - huge scale of internet related data that doesn't fit in traditional database - may be unstructured & trying to fit this in with structured data
  • So is Big Data headed for Information Overload - then there's the Datasets ...
  • focus on Collaboration & ROI Analytics - Return on Investment Metrics matter
  • Business Value crucial - Knowledge Management in itself is not the primary aim but creating value for the business & knowledge sharing is what is done along the way