New Florence. New Renaissance.

Easier to Copy than Innovate

So says Rob Carter, CIO at Fedex in this Fortune interview. But Fedex would rather innovate and has an enviable track record of technology innovations that have made its supply chain efficient, tracking packages easier for customers and its drivers much more productive.

He also talks about how UPS has caught up in a number of technology areas. See my profile of UPS technology here.

Busyness = Bad Business Innovation

Annie Fisher at Fortune recommends we "slack off" more. We are multi-tasking too much and "the "time cost" of refocusing your attention may be only a few seconds with each switch, but the researchers found that, over time, it reduced people's total efficiency by 20% to 40%."

Cancel as many meetings as possible. Throw away that Blackberry. Free up time for creative, innovative thinking.

Of course she has to include mandatory mention of innovations at Google

"We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people's lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity," says Stacy Sullivan, the company's HR director. "And everybody's on flextime here, so we don't reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results."

But overall a good read...

37 ways to leave your software vendor

"...the answer is easy if you take it logically..."

with apologies to Paul Simon

37Signals is a neat little SaaS company. Neat because they build web based apps and development tools like Ruby on Rails and proudly say they are "products that do less". Neat because they are based in Chicago away from the hype. Neat because they only have 7 employees. And yet get product out at what BusinessWeek calls warp speed.

They question even Google's definition of constraint based development. I hate to think what they think of Oracle or Microsoft's R&D.  A clue - their site says "Join us and say goodbye to bloated software"

Technology Innovation and Highways

Technology Review talks about wireless highways and related communication technologies on cars.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research describes its research around weather impact on roads.

What I want to know is why we cannot improve speeds of road construction and maintenance. Why not three construction shifts? More efficiencies? From that perspective, this caution about Smart Highways from the Whole Earth Review is also worth reading.

Emerging Technologies 2006 - MIT Technology Review

The MIT Technology Review lists its top 10 emerging technologies. The May 2005 list was here.

Epigenetics -detecting cancer early by monitoring subtle changes in DNA
Cognitive Radio - exploiting unused radio spectrum
Nuclear Reprogramming - a more ethical way to derive stem cells
Diffusion Tensor Imaging - for brain imaging
Universal Authentication - for a safer Internet
Nanobiomechanics - measuring tiny forces acting on cells
Comparative Interactomics - maps of body's molecular interactions
Nanomedicine -to guide drugs directly into cancer cells
Pervasive Wireless - making all wireless gadgets get along
Stretchable Silicon - teaching silicon new tricks

Speed Demons

BusinessWeek talks about the speed of new product introduction. In industries like publishing. And with neat little tech companies like 37signals.

In tech in general though, we like to think we are agile and innovative. Not by some of the new benchmarks that are emerging.  Let's look at enterprise SOA as currently being defined against this lens. And what we are getting for the $ 90+ billion we spend with IBM. And Oracle, and EDS and...

Next generation enterprise applications

"I believe that it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfilment and conversation."

" How we can prevent the unintended consequences of walled-garden approaches to content. How we can avoid DRM holding up innovation. Why identity and presence and authentication and permissioning are important. Why emergence theories and “democratized innovation” matter. How we can take advantage of the opportunities that mobile devices offer us."

This from the new (personal) blog of JP Rangaswami, CIO of the bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. I saw it courtesy of Ross Mayfield and have previously commented about his vision here.

Five comments:

Great to see a CIO blog

Refreshing to see a taxonomy at much higher level abstraction than current noise around Web 2.0, SOA, SaaS ...

To banks, information is lifeblood and they spend upwards of 10% of revenues on IT. In other sectors, the CIO is lucky to have 1 or 2%. So, he gets to "play" and innovate a lot more. Hopefully, other CIOs will get jealous and find the innovation money by squeezing their utility spend.

In addition to the usual barrage of cold calls, emails, snail mail, golf invitations - he has bravely opened himself to another channel of selling - or at least attempts at selling. I am already scheming!

Great to see a CIO blog.

IBM's Global Innovation Outlook

Courstesy of Sadagopan I saw IBM's Global Innovation Outlook (GIO) Report.

"In 2005 and 2006, the GIO 2.0 gathered 248 thought leaders from nearly three dozen countries and regions, representing 178 organizations across four continents for 15 “deep dive” sessions to discuss three focus areas and the emerging trends, challenges and opportunities that affect business and society:

• The future of the enterprise
• Energy and the environment
• Transportation and mobility"

Lots of neat insights in each of those areas.

In 2004, IBM had released GIO 1.0 which had covered

• The future of healthcare
• The relationship between government and its citizens
• The intersection of work and life."

The GIO 2.0 is a nice summary of the opportunities for innovation in technology, process, networks, everything. IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger blogs about it here.

My question for IBM - how are enterprises going to fund innovation? Today my advice is it has to come out of utility spend enterprises make with IBM, EDS, Oracle etc. Does IBM have alternative funding advice or is it going to slash its utility pricing?

The Power to Predict

The CEO of Tibco, Vivek Ranadive has put together a book of case studies on how innovative companies are leveraging technologies to advantage. Readers of this blog know I love to write about "applied" technology - what CIOs do with technology building blocks. They are the unsung heroes even as we like to celebrate high-tech entrepreneurs and vendors.

Dennis Howlett and Tom Forenski provide their endorsements.

Technology Innovation and St. Patrick's Day

Lost in the noise about BRICK is the remarkable story of Ireland's software, bio-tech and other technology successes over the last decade.

But today we should celebrate more traditional Irish exports - Guinness, Bushmill, Potteen. Shaw, Joyce, Wilde. Leprechauns, Riverdance, Waterford. Ned Devine, Bono, Liam. Immigrants who built the US, Australia, the world.

And hundreds of expressions that my Irish wife (County Longford) continues to  bring  out every time I think  there cannot possibly be any more . It must be true the Blarney Stone does give the country  the gift of the gab. Explains why Ireland is the Call center and shared services capital of Europe.

So, friends...may you get the gift of the blog in heaven way before the devil knows you are dead! In shamrock green...