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4th International Conference on Knowledge Management - Reminder

Submission of full papers for International Conference on Knowledge Management is due on March 30 2007. This lively event that brings together developers, scholars, academics and users in different areas of KM and serves as a social and technological platform, is being held on Aug 27-28 in Vienna.

Being a member of the international program committe for this conference I kindly invite everyone interested in this highly challenging and multidisciplinary knowledge domain to submit previously unpublished papers and join us live in Europe. 

More info at www.ickm2007.org !

Gartner’s CIO 2007 results: CIOs will need to reprioritize the roles of IT!

Gartner’s annual CIO-survey results are out and they are surprisingly pleasant!

This is the first time that Gartner (renowned as “IT” and “tech” oriented analytic) explicitly warns that CIO’s will need to reprioritize their work to meet near term business expectations.  It is also the first time that “improving business processes with IT” is stated as number one priority by the business. Executives expect CIOs and IT to play a significant role in leveraging short-term performance and long-term competitiveness in 2007.

However as we see, CIO’s priorities are currently oriented more towards the tech than to the business.

Gartner warns: The difference between expectations and strategies creates tension and the potential threat to CIO credibility and standing:

2007 Business Near-Term Expectations of IT (priorities)
1. Improve business process
2. Control enterprise cost structure
3. Attracting, retaining and growing customers
4. Improve workforce effectiveness
5. Grow revenue

2007 CIO Near-Term Strategies for IT (priorities)
1. Improve the quality of IT services
2. Improving IT governance
3. Improve the link between business and IT
4. Demonstrating the business value of IT
5. Building business skills in IT 

Full report: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=501189

Inside Innovation - Forces Shaping our Future

There was an excellent Inside Innovation focus issue in June 19, 2006 BusinessWeek which featured an article that showed forces that are going to be shaping our (near) future. Some of the issues and numbers are quite fascinating — worth a look, definetly.

/Click the image to open it in full size/

Managing Risks for Rewards: The Case of Outsourcing Innovation

While in midst of the Demystifying the Link between Innovation and Business Value project, the research team led by Dr Kevin C Desouza of Information School at University of Washington, is entering a new project: Managing Risks for Rewards: The Case of Outsourcing Innovation. Here is a brief synopsis…

Organizations face a daunting challenge in managing the risks associated with the outsourcing of innovation. Most organizations have realized that they cannot reach business goals by conducting all activities internally. Cooperating with business partners and leveraging the know-how found in an organization’s midst is a salient determinant of competitive successes. Many organizations struggle to increase the intensity and success of partnerships.

When organizations outsourced only manufacturing, business partners simply assembled raw materials. Business partnerships then moved to simple knowledge work, as was the case when the outsourcing of software development and IS maintenance efforts became popular in the mid-1980s. Today, leading organizations rely on their business partners for innovation and process goals. The outsourcing of innovation involves engaging with business partners in ways that are significantly binding and have strategic implications.

In all the above cases, we notice several interesting things – (1) in innovation-based outsourcing programs both parties are engaged in developing novel products and services, (2) the chances of the two parties successfully meeting their objectives is very low as the project space is undefined and new, with a greater chance of failure, (3) these alliances are premised on the fact that both parties will gain, and if they gain will share the rents and royalties, and (4) the knowledge sharing and intellectual property issues within (and around) these alliances is emerging and sometimes indeterminate.

This research project aims to examine the issues surrounding the management of innovation outsourcing programs. In particular, we seek answers to the following questions:

1. How do organizations make decisions to engage in the outsourcing of innovation? To this end, we will seek to evaluate the various methods that are used by organizations to identify critical areas, capabilities, and spaces for outsourcing. Research into the goals and objectives of outsourcing for innovation can inform executives about potentials for alignment of goals and objectives with outsourcing partners.

2. How do organizations choose business partners for the outsourcing of innovation? This type of partnership is different from finding a business partner for traditional outsourcing efforts, e.g. the sourcing of manufacturing or well-defined knowledge work. Outsourcing of innovation requires finding business partners who have specialized knowledge in a given arena, and business partners who can work in concert with an organization to come up with new products and services. Being able to manage risks becomes critical here. A traditional, established organization might seem to be less risky, but the value of such an engagement may not be high. Larger firms may be predisposed towards economies of scale, and may not be interested in tailoring efforts to meet the specifics of the organization. On the other hand, an upcoming firm might be riskier, but the rewards might be higher.

3. How do organizations manage issues surrounding the governance of innovation? Issues here include the development of robust knowledge sharing programs that capture all of the information needed to implement and refine innovations that emerge from outside the organization. Furthermore, what are the procedures in place to secure intellectual property during these outsourcing transactions? Finally, what are the models used to share rewards, costs and incentives with business partners?

4. How do organizations manage their portfolio of relationships? Most organizations have multiple relationships and the management of these can be quite tricky. How do organizations develop models to manage these relationships? Some organizations have created an Office of Alliance Management (e.g. Eli Lilly), while others decentralize the management of relationships to functional groups.

5. How do organizations manage the risks associated with outsourcing of innovation? While the outsourcing of innovation has many benefits, it has an equal amount of risks. For instance, what happens if an organization realizes that the business partner has not lived up to expectations? How are issues surrounding new product development managed? What about the case where a business partner acts with guile and compromises the organization’s intellectual assets?

6. What are the critical success factors and drivers behind successful management of outsourcing programs? Are any of the five issues discussed above crucial to all outsourcing for innovation programs? What differences exist in successful outsourcing for innovation, and can we explain those differences based on the data? The ability to scale innovation projects and to sustain long-term business advantages through this kind of innovation requires an understanding of management processes for outsourcing for innovation.

More at http://ideas4innovation.blogspot.com/

Business decision modelling workshop

My colleague Peter Vre?ar and I will be holding a 1-day workshop entitled Business decision modelling using MS Excel at CISEF, Centre for Management Development and Training at Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana (FELU). It is intended for all business workers who wish to improve efficiency of their everyday decision-making with decision modeling, what-if analyses, and with help of Microsoft Excel.