Book Excerpts - Preface

Here is the first of the excerpts from the next book - this time from the preface. Still going through edits so subject to change. Look forward to your comments.

“This a song of hope”

That’s how the band Led Zeppelin led off many of their live performances of what many consider the best ever rock and roll hit, “Stairway to Heaven”.

Well, this is a book of hope.

I started my technology career in the 80s when there was palpable excitement about technology providing strategic advantage. Then technology – IT in most companies – went into the woodshed for the next two decades, focused on costs and controls and compliance. Not competitive advantage. In fact, its costs and overruns made many companies uncompetitive.

Starting a couple of years ago, that 2 decades old hope flickered again, as I wrote my last book, The New Polymath, I saw amazing amount of technology enabled innovation being planned.

This book builds on that hope. It comes from cataloging elite technology athletes I have included in the book and how they plan to improve how we live, work and play.

How this book came together deserves an explanation.

If you have ever seen a Gartner (the technology research firm) presentation, you know it is the antithesis of the old-school McKinsey (the strategy consulting firm) presentation which dictated “no more than 6 bullets per slide, 6 words per bullet”. Gartner slides have dense graphics, the handouts have speaker notes in small font, and the voice over allows you a chance to additional perspectives beyond the graphs and the notes. And you get to speak uninterrupted for 45 minutes before any questions. My 5 years there have influenced my presentation style ever since.

So imagine my challenge at the Ignite conference in Toronto, the night of September 2, 2010[1]. The format allowed each speaker just 5 minutes and you had to present 20 slides. No exceptions. So I had 5 minutes to summarize my theme – the 400 pages in the book, The New Polymath. The setting was even more challenging. It was at the historic Drake hotel, but in a comedy club format. The audience, many in their 20s, stood in the dark sipping on their drinks – the comedy part came from watching the speaker struggle as the projector relentlessly moved slides every 15 seconds.

Through the 20 slides, I tried to convey one basic message to the young crowd. That there was something very wrong when the Twitter stream of the GE Global Research Center (named EdisonsDesk after its famous founder, Thomas Edison and one of the case studies in the book) had only 704 followers (there are a couple more thousand since) when Britney Spears had over 5.7 million. While the young are enamored (as I see with my own teenagers) with their iPhones, their Facebook friends and Twitter streams, they should be aware there was plenty of “compound innovation” going on at GE, BASF, BMW, Hospira and other case studies in the book which are blending a wide range of infotech, biotech, cleantech, healthtech and nanotech.

Thinking about the presentation on the flight back and a few days afterwards (how can you forget an experience that unique?), something interesting happened. I found myself thinking a couple of decades younger and in the audience asking two questions. OK, so I would benefit from learning more about GE and BMW and Hospira, but flip it around – what are those big companies doing to learn about and develop products for the younger, tech savvy consumer like me and others in the audience? And if Twitter allows Britney and Ashton and a bunch of other popular folks to have millions of followers, just how massive is its technology infrastructure and that of Facebook and Google?

Those two questions became the seed for this book. They led me to focus on them in the research for my innovation blog[2] I write every day and in conversations with a number of my consulting clients and industry colleagues.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early 2011, I got a clear answer to the first question. While the big excitement during the show was around the tens of new tablets expected to be rolled out later in the year, I observed companies from just about every industry – from Walgreens, the pharmacy chain to Nike, the shoe company to Ford, the auto company all were showing off technology enabled “smart” products for the new tech savvy consumer.

It is a really exciting time for many of these companies. For too long IT has been an expensive and low payback back office investment. Now technology in their products is allowing them to generate revenue and growth. Technology is fun - and profitable again.

The answers to the second question came in the Apple disclosure it had sold 25 million iPads in its first year, that Google had signed over 20 million users for its + service in its first month and that Facebook had crossed the 750 million user threshold (that is more than the population of most countries in the world). The more I analyzed operations of Apple and Google and Facebook and Amazon and Twitter and eBay – their data centers, their distribution centers, their retail stores, the application ecosystems, their global supply chains, the more I was impressed with the “industrialization” of their technology. They are considered “consumer” tech, but they had better technology at greater scale than most enterprises.

Traditional technology users are embedding technology in their “smart” products and services and thus learning to become technology vendors. Technology vendors like Apple are, in reverse, running retail operations better than Nordstroms. eBay’s PayPal unit is running better operations than many banks. Amazon is running better logistics better than many distributors. Google is running data centers far more efficient than IBM’s or EDS’s. They are the new best practice leaders.

It hit me that the traditional distinction between technology user and vendor is outdated. The baseball term “switch-hitter” came to mind. Not just in baseball, in soccer athletes who can fire rockets with either leg are valued. Same with many other sports – ambidexterity is a much sought after attribute. Any more, you have to learn to be comfortable on both sides of the plate – be ambidextrous in the development and consumption of technology.

Beyond ambidexterity though, truly elite athletes contribute in other ways. Baseball switch-hitters are more valuable if they are also good fielders, base stealers, have strong, accurate throwing arms. The elite are multi-dimensional – they play good defense and offense.

This book is about elite companies – the technology version of Gold Glove fielders, stolen base leaders. And the great news is the more I researched the more I found many of them. Across industries. Across countries.

In this book I have tried to bring out that diversity. There are over 100 examples and interviews across the chapters from New Zealand to S. Korea, from farming to municipal services. The 17 case studies and 4 guest columns spread through the book bring the elite attributes out in detail.

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I could have profiled twice as many guest columns and detailed case studies. I could have written about all kinds of advances in biotech and nanotech since my last book. What about peers and competitors of companies profiled in this book — are they sitting still or innovating on their own?

It’s like making a Hollywood movie. Plenty gets left behind in the “director’s cut.” In my case, some of those “30 minutes” edited out can be found in online materials at (thenewtechnologyelite.com) and on my two blogs. These are living, breathing documents — compared to a printed book that can be only a snapshot.

Of course, I would welcome reader comments and conversations. I expect a few will disagree with my including the HP supply chain example when it has announced it is de-emphasizing its PC business. In my opinion it is a great example of the acrobatics needed in the dynamic technology marketplace. Others with my profiling RIM – but it is a work-in-progress ecosystem as it tries to catch up to Apple’s and Google’s. Or the much-delayed Boeing 787 – again the supply chain innovations and the passenger comfort innovations it incorporates deserve the ink I gave it. So, I look forward to the feedback and the discussions.

In the meantime let me invoke a snippet from the 8 minute long “Stairway”

“Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run

There’s still time to change the road you are on…”

It’s a great time to change the road you are on – it’s a great time to emulate the technology elite. Yes, this is a book of that hope.

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[1] http://www.slideshare.net/vmirchan/ignite-vinnie-mirchandani-sep-2010

[2] New Florence. New Renaissance. at www.florence20.typepad.com

Comments

[Karen Auby]

I cant wait to read it!!!! Looking forward to getting some copies for my coworkers too :)

[Ron Lunde]

The New Polymath was excellent. Vinnie is a very good writer, able to illuminate the otherwise opaque. The good news ... he is about to hit the 'on' switch again! The New Technology Elite is eagerly anticipated.