|
Saturday, April 29, 2006 |
|
|
Final Links To Rome
|
|
|
Thursday, April 27, 2006 |
|
|
Innovation That Matters (From Rome)
|
|
|
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 |
|
|
The Big Picture From Rome
Mario Monti, President of Bocconi University and commissioner in the European Union for ten years, was quite optimistic about the EU -- a market of 480 million people -- and said that the EU itself is an innovation. He said that Europe is much more like the U.S. than it was. It is now a single market, has a single currency, and has been expanding market reach around the world. The shortcoming is that Europe, unlike America, does not yet have a constitution. This results in an economic disadvantage because the European community can not make a decision for the total. The European economy is not innovating quickly enough and in fact some countries are protecting the past at the expense of the future. Mario says it is time for "naming and shaming" the laggards through peer reviews. Then he got more specific -- "Germany, France, and Italy are behind on liberalization of service markets and have resisted initiatives to increase competition". These three countries will have a negative impact on the Euro which in turn will hurt the rest of Europe. Mr. Monti's presentation was sobering but hopeful. He said the EU has a lot of good features, that it can protect intellectual property but also move against monopolies such as Microsoft. The key to get innovation going in Europe is for the EU to innovate itself by completing it's constitution. Irving Wladawsky-Berger kicked off the final segment of the forum, which focused on the future. IBM supports Linux because it is a great operating system for computers. Irving introduced Linus Torvalds the developer of Linux which he published as a student in 1991. Don Tapscott, a widely acclaimed author, who invented the term "paradigm shift", then moderated the final panel which included Linus, Nick Donofrio, executive vice president for innovation and technology at IBM, and Ann Mettler, executive director and co-founder of The Lisbon Council. It was a wide-ranging discussion. Linus is an incredibly humble guy. He said he has no vision, just looks 5 cm ahead before each step, and loves to solve technical problems. Linux is successful, he says, because both the development and the decision making are distributed -- a "built-in meritocracy". Don asked why volunteers worked on Linux for no economic return. Linus said, "if you were all engineers, you would not be asking that question". Open source software is viable in most all software areas, with the only exception being niche markets which are too small to get adequate collaboration. "Open source will take over most all infrastructure". Ann said there is a huge gap between businesses which are moving ahead rapidly and societies which feel left behind. The key problem is that the economy is 70% services but the regulations and governance are still based on an industrial model. She believes that government should learn how to innovate from businesses. "Politicians are clueless about the discussion of the past day and a half". She says that businesses need to share their leanings with society. The labor market in Europe is flat because companies do not want to hire and that is because the laws are so onerous. "You can hire but you can't fire". Labor reform is needed desperately. Nick says' It' s all about change". IBM is doing a balancing act by supporting both open things and proprietary things. The company is generating a lot of patents but also giving away a lot of patents to move the ball forward in key markets such as healthcare and education. "The world can move ahead faster if the OS is Linux -- it is good enough and a "blow for freedom". A California venture capitalist asked about business ethics and Nick was very aggressive in his response saying it was not optional for companies to be totally and completely ethical in every respect. (Having been at IBM for 38 years, I can say I never ever had a concern about ethics at the company). Nick summarized that anyone can innovate if they are willing to change. "If nothing changes, nothing changes". Sam wrapped up the conference by saying corporations need to be transparent. Their ultimate responsibility is to create value for the constituencies: stockholders, customers, employees. He walks the talk.
Conferences , IBM , Internet Technology , Travels April 26, 2006 05:44 PM |
|
|
Tuesday, April 25, 2006 |
|
|
Demos and Podcast From Rome April 8, 2006
Conferences , Healthcare , IBM , Internet Technology , Travels April 25, 2006 12:49 PM |
|
|
Monday, April 24, 2006 |
|
|
Business Leadership Forum - Day 2 (part 2)
Mr. Yang Mingsheng, President and CEO of the Agricultural Bank of China, was the only speaker who did use English but the simultaneous translation to Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, and English allowed all of us to hear what he had to say -- which was a lot. The bank has 500,000 employees and 28,000 branch offices. Although I could not understand a word of what he was saying without the headphones, I could tell that the speaker was very articulate, enthusiastic, and confident. 95% of all bank services are available online. The bank has 400 million depositors, 12.4 million outstanding loans, and 220 million credit cards issued. They have introduced many e-banking and mobile products to their customers. This is being done by centralizing IT infrastructure. Mr. Mingsheng is both a ceo and a member of government. For hobbies he writes poetry and plays the violin. His speech covered every aspect of consumer and business banking services. I don't think a similar presentation by Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase would much if anything that ABC isn't also doing. Pierluigi Bernasconi, CEO of an Italian electronics retailer called MediaMarket. The company is the No. 1 consumer electronics retailer in Europe with 66 stores in Italy, more than 500 stores in more than a dozen European countries, and a new web-based business in Germany. One of their stores is the largest in the world -- it has six floors of consumer electronics products. Steady growth over the past decade has taken them from $4 to $16 billion. They have taken an innovative business model approach whereby they have two different store brands (MediaMarket and Saturn) that compete with each other. They believe that "self competition" results in better service and price to the consumer. Fifty million people per month spend time in one of their stores. Mr. Bernasconi described an intensely competitive environment in Italy from 4,000 photography shops, 6,000 telephone stores, e-retail sites, hyperStores, and in the future new channels such as Digital Terrestrial TV. In spite of this the company continuously outperforms the competition and gains market share. They have been using the web for sales and communications since 1995. Utilizing advanced IT the company has integrated all their distribution channels. They believe that communication is key and will result in customers thinking of MediaMarket or Saturn as the first choice as a place to get information and subsequently purchase. Their strategy is to exploit multi-channel strategies -- tying together so a person can call from land line or mobile, surf via the web connect via digital terrestrial set top box, or visit in person and all the experiences are recognized and tracked.
|
|
|
Sunday, April 23, 2006 |
|
|
Business Leadership Forum - Day 2
1989 marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Windows. This was followed by Netscape going public in August 1995 which triggered the dot-com boom which triggered massive over-investment in fiber optic cable which enabled extremely low cost transfer of information on a global basis. A revolution in web applications enabled collaboration using interoperable standards-based protocols. These three things flattened the world and brought us from the industrial age to the information age. The end result, Tom says, is that when the world is flat, whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is "will it be done by you or to you". He says it takes an innovative flare, not vanilla ice cream -- which everybody can make -- but "whipped cream with a cherry on top". Kunio Nakamura, President of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (otherwise known to most of us as Panasonic) with classic Asian sincerity, paid great homage to IBM for all that his company had learned and how it was supported during a significant transformation. Matsushita was founded in 1918 and now has sales of $75 billion with $3.4 billion in profit and 335,000 employees. Their management philosophy is that the company is a public entity, that the customer comes first, and to start each day anew.
Their largest single product is TV's but it is only 8% of revenue. The company was in crisis condition in 2000, reached the survival level in 2006, and plans to achieve global excellence by 2010. A key element of this comeback is management innovation, a key part of which is using IT to drive productivity. This may seem obvious but Nakamura-san pointed out that culturally productivity was thought of as something that can be nudged by maybe 10%, whereas American companies think of doubling and tripling of productivity. He said Matsushita wants to change from a lead ball to a soccer ball. I have heard many CEO's describe corporate strategies over the years but never have I seen a CEO use the terms "IT" and infrastructure as extensively as Nakamura-san. He outlined how the company plans to invest $1.5B in IT over five years to integrate their procurement, production, distribution, sales & services from material & component suppliers all the way through to customers. He plans to use IBM as the company's innovation partner. |
|
|
Saturday, April 22, 2006 |
|
|
Dinner at the Vatican
The Vatican is a landlocked enclave in Rome, but it is actually the world's smallest sovereign state (country). Beyond the territorial boundary of Vatican City, the Holy See has authority over twenty-three sites in Rome and five outside of Rome, including the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. The Vatican was closed to the public when we arrived. I had been there some years ago along with many thousands of other visitors. It was a unique feeling to be there with a small crowd of five-hundred. Being divided into small groups of a dozen or so made the experience very special -- a lifetime memory for all of us. The Vatican Library is home for many of the world's rarest books and documents.The library has more than 150,000 manuscripts, including the four oldest surviving manuscripts of the Roman poet Virgil dating from the fourth and fifth century AD; and the oldest known manuscript of the Bible, written in 350 AD. There are also more than a million books, including 8,000 published during the first 50 years of the printing press. Virtually all civilizations and cultures in the history of humanity are represented somewhere in the Vatican Library. The wealth of content is phenomenal and scholars from all over the world are deeply interested in studying it in detail. The result will be an advancement in the general understanding of the history of the world. That is the good news. The bad news is that due to the cost of travel and the physical limitations of the Library to accommodate visiting scholars, only about 2,000 scholars per year can actually visit. Fortunately, a number of technical collaborations have focused on how to both preserve the treasures of the Library and make them more accessible to scholars. IBM developed a digital library service to extend access to portions of the Library's collections to scholars worldwide. (more on the project here). Walking into an empty Sistine Chapel is hard to describe. The chapel is 135 feet long and 44 feet wide. The paintings are awe inspiring. It took Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564) four years to create the 68 foot high fresco ceiling. Our tour guide happened to be an artist and she herself was in awe of the art and knew an amazing number of details about every aspect of the incredible room. We spent nearly an hour listening and craning our necks to try to absorb what we were seeing. One part of the "creation" panel contains an image that depicts the various parts of the human brain. It has been only recently that the image has been validated as being an accurate depiction. When Michelangelo painted the ceiling in 1512 he certainly had no MRI's or medical texts to refer to. Cocktails in the courtyard outside of St. Peter's Basilica and dinner in the Braccio Nuovo Gallery at the Vatican were beyond outstanding. The blessing was offered by the president of Vatican City, who is also a cardinal. His eminence then thanked IBM for the digital library project and said it was that generosity that inspired them to make an exception and allow a formal dinner in the Vatican for IBM and the BLF guests. He also reminded Sam that there were still many thousands of manuscripts left to digitize. The outstanding food and wine were accompanied by a string quartet which played a selection of works from the great masters: Bach, Pergolesi, Boccherini, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. It was an evening to remember forever. |
|
|
Friday, April 21, 2006 |
|
|
Business Leadership Forum - 1
The shuttle buses dropped us off and we walked a few hundred feet through a large courtyard to the Auditorium Parco della Musica. It is quite an impressive place and of the thousands of "auditoriums" in the world, only this one has the url of http://www.auditorium.com. The "city of music" lies outside of Rome's densely-packed historic center where such a facility could never have been built. Four hundred trees surround the beautiful buildings where 3,000 spectators can enjoy concerts of all kinds -- from classical to jazz and rock. IBM hosted it's fourth Business Leadership Forum at "the auditorium" earlier this month, and it was attended by several hundred of "the world's leading thinkers from across business, industry, government and academia", representing more than 50 countries. The forum facilitated two days of discussion about innovation and the challenges facing businesses in the 21st century. IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano kicked off the meeting by saying that innovation is not optional for the leading institutions of the world -- businesses, schools, hospitals, and governments. "The bottom line of all this is that innovation is really a 'must do' unless we want to live in an environment that's commoditized and not unique, not differentiated". Sam's point was that if organizations focus only on taking out costs, they will be doomed with very low profits if not extinction. Everyone agrees that Innovation starts at the top and Sam practices what he preaches -- not just by innovating in technologies (IBM turning out more patents year after year than any company in the world), but by innovating in strategies and business models. For example, it was Sam who led the charge to transform IBM from a hardware company to a hardware, software and services company. Especially the latter, when he acquired Price Waterhouse Consulting and smoothly integrated it into the IBM portfolio of services. He also led the sale of the PC business. Some people viewed it as simply a "sale" but in reality it was a highly innovative change to the IBM business model -- selling off a low margin business but retaining the services aspect of it and at the same time gaining a stronger foothold in the Chinese market opportunity. Note: See BusinessWeek's story about The World's Most Innovative Companies. Sam then introduced Lord Brown, group chief executive at bp. The company had more than $20billion in profits for 2005 and is moving to even bigger numbers in 2006. Lord Brown described many innovative aspects of the company but I was most impressed with how they are using computer simulation to continuously increase the amount of oil they are able to extract from their drillings. He also described ambitious goals to put the hydrocarbon pollutants that come out with the oil back into where the oil was extracted, thereby reducing global pollution. At the end of day we all got back in the shuttles to head to the Vatican. |
|
|
Tuesday, April 18, 2006 |
|
|
Roman Geocaching
I was anxious to get going so I quickly selected three geocaches that were closest to the hotel -- Forum's Revival, Coliseum, and Circus Maximus -- downloaded the latitudes and longitudes into the Magellan eXplorist GPS and hit the street. It would have been much better if I had done some better planning, reviewed the logs of others who had found the caches, and selected caches that had maximum odds of me finding them. As they say, haste makes waste. No map in hand, I headed down the Via Veneto toward the Forum following the arrow on the GPS. I was so confident there would be plenty of time that I stopped along the way at a small sidewalk cafe called Berzitello's and enjoyed a plate of spaghetti. From there I meandered from street to street following the arrow until I reached the Forum. The IBM Business Leadership Forum focused on "Innovation that Matters". The Roman Forum obvioiusly focused on innovative structures -- especially impressive considering that many of them are nearly two thousand years old. It is a marvel that they were constructed. After taking a few false entries I finally got to the spot -- or so said the GPS. There were a number of logical hiding places within twenty feet of the waypoint and I searched many of them. After more than a half-hour I gave up and headed for the Coliseum. At least I would find the other two caches. The Coliseum is an enormous place and there were thousands of people touring the ruins. The eXplorist said the cache was just 300 feet away. Sounds simple, but with the huge circumference and multiple levels of the Coliseum, it was not at all clear where the cache might be. If you are an experienced geocacher, you know what I mean. Sometimes you are a few hundred feet away but there is a river with no bridge in between. After an unplanned tour of most of the Coliseum, I found the spot, but not the cache. The latitude/longitude) was near a meadow and a wall just a couple of hundred feet from the main entrance to the Coliseum. After a half hour, I reluctantly gave up. Sound familiar? Well, at least I will find one of the three. Off to walk to the Circus Maximus. This one should be easy, I told myself. Out in the open, nothing tricky about it. I got to the exact spot and searched high and low. Empty handed again. The good news is that I logged quite a few miles of walking on a sunny day. The weather was perfect. After meandering through the streets of Rome back to the Via Veneto and the hotel, I went straight to geocaching.com and read the logs of people who had found (or attempted to find) the three caches. If only I had done that *before* the search. It was tempting to head out again but the day was late and the miles of walking were enough -- and I had a plan for the morning. Since I knew exactly where to go I knew I could hire a taxi for an hour, get to all three cache locations, and still get back in time for the opening of the Business Leadership Forum. Forum's Revival was still no piece of cake but I was able to find it in less than ten minutes. I signed the logbook, removed a travel bug, hid the tupperware container back in it's place, and headed back to the taxi. At the Coliseum, I went to the exact same spot as the afternoon before and recognized all the clues from the logs -- but still could not find it -- a big dissappointment. On to Circus Maximus to look for the microcache. Traditional caches are in tupperware containers or ammo cans. Microcaches are much harder to find -- they are usually black 35mm film containers -- easy to hide in a very small place, in this case in a three-foot high wall behind a loose stone. With two out of three finds, I declared victory, headed for the hotel, put on a tie and took a shuttle to the Auditorium Parco della Musica where Sam Palmisano kicked off the day. Conferences , Hiking , IBM , Travels April 18, 2006 05:56 PM |
|
Behind on the Blog
|
|
|
Sunday, April 16, 2006 |
|
|
Bargemusic
After six movements of Chant sans Paroles (P. I. Tchaikovsky), Mr. Alexeev played four movements of Scriabin's Sonata No. 3. The Steinway piano filled the room and from the fourth row, the resonance and brilliance were stunning. After the intermission came Twelve Preludes of Shostakovich and three preludes of Rachmaninov. The standing ovation led to two encores. Dmitri Alexeev was truly incredible. The Russian pianist lived up to a well-deserved reputation. Ray Kurzweil may be right that man-made computers will overtake our biological computing abilities in the next dozen or so years but listening to the thousands of expressive notes played by Mr. Alexeev showed how unique the human mind is. I can not imagine a computer providing any experience like this performance any time soon. The unsung hero of the evening was Olga Bloom -- a very unpretentious 87 year-old former symphony violinist who greeted us as we boarded the barge and offered a glass of wine as. Ms. Bloom bought the barge thirty years ago and turned it into Bargemusic -- a concert hall of sorts. Olga manages four concerts per week. The supporters listed in the program numbered more than five-hundred. Olga told us at the break that she thought it was really important to provide a low cost way to enable artists to express themselves and share their musical talents in a public forum. Well said. There are many other unsung heroes in towns and cities around the world who keep the arts alive through the ups and downs of the economy. |
|
|
Sunday, April 9, 2006 |
|
|
Roman Rendezvous
Short stories are usually better than long stories but this past week contained so much to share that it can not be told in one short story. The highlight was when five-hundred of us entered the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel in a rare way -- the buildings had been closed to the public and were empty -- and then even more rare was having dinner in the Braccio Nuovo Gallery of the Vatican Museum. The Business Leadership Forum was led by Sam Palmissano, chairman of IBM and it focused on "Innovation That Matters". Just about every company these days talks about innovation but IBM is actually walking the talk -- and innovating in innovative ways and on a global basis. CEO's at the forum from around the world talked about how their companies were breaking new ground and setting new records by innovating with IBM. During coffee and lunch breaks at the rapid-fire day-and-a-half forum there were demonstrations of technology that can make the world a better place by using RFID (radio frequency identification tags) to track the movement of cargo containers and hospital patients. With incredible humility, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux talked about the past and future of open source software development. The week even allowed a few geocaching trips on arrival day. The link below provides an index to the stories about what I learned this week. |
|
|
Wednesday, April 5, 2006 |
|
|
IBM Happenings: March 2006
|
|
|
Monday, April 3, 2006 |
|
|
Conducting Beethoven
It was indeed a challenge, but at the same time an exhilarating experience that is hard to describe in words. The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra is always a privilege to hear but as three years ago, the difference between sitting in the audience and standing inches from the musicians -- was amazing. It was being right in their space, seeing them at work in great detail and hearing the unique character of each instrument like never before. I have always had great respect for orchestral musicians but once again even more so. I didn't count how many times I listened to mp3 recordings of the Prometheus and how many times I read the thirty-page score, but it reached the point where the notes were playing in my head nearly every waking hour. After all the hours of rehearsing, there were no more excuses -- it was time to raise the baton and conduct. I made two introductory beats and then away we went! To watch these professionals at work, to hear the actual instruments instead of an mp3, to see the musicians in front of me and occasional encouraging smiles from them -- I was on cloud nine. If the orchestra senses that you know the music, they will actually follow you! I made a few mistakes, but I don't believe the audience noticed. At the end, I congratulated them on their performance and was humbled as *they* applauded. Here are the reivews from the The Ridgefield Press and The Danbury News-Times. |
March 2006 | Main | May 2006 �
Thanks for all the nice feedback on the stories about the Business Leadership Forum in Rome. There are two final links that may be of interest. Chris Barger at IBM has posted the audio for the podcast about the demos, Internet technology, and healthcare. You can play it from 
The 
The final afternoon of the 
Following Nakamura-san at the 
The shuttle buses departing from the 
A colleague at a board meeting in NY this morning reminded me that I am behind in writing about what I learned in Rome. He is right, I am definitely behind but committed to write the stories previously 
The taxi ride from the hotel in 
In December 2002 I was fortunate to have a once in a lifetime opportunity -- conducting a symphony orchestra. Mozart's twenty-fifth symphony (first movement) was a very challenging yet rewarding