New Florence. New Renaissance.

IFS Unleashed event

IFS called its event last week Unleashed - very appropriate given the immense energy of the event in the city of Miami Beach which throbs with Latin energy.

I have another name for the event - “Serendipity”- for the unplanned opportunity to meet people from countless countries and industries.

They had so many sub-themes converge. The main event ran from Tuesday to Thursday, but they had a partner day, a customer advisory board meeting and a Board of Directors Meeting around it. They had so many opportunities to mingle – in the Expo Hall, in various evening activities, and at breaks. The compact Miami Beach convention center made it so much easier to network. I must have detected at least 25 accents from my meetings (ten from around the UK!)

I ran into and had lunch with Craig Conway. I have not seen him since PoepleSoft days. Great to reminisce about past and talk about the present. He sits on several boards including that of IFS.

Nick Ward of Rolls-Royce was brilliant on stage. He covered outcome-based business models like their pioneering “Power by the Hour”. Even more fascinating was his description of material science and how it is pushing aviation boundaries and making it more sustainable. I have interviewed him over Zoom, but it was nice to spend a couple of minutes in person.

I have long admired the Norwegian company, Juton. Known as a paint company, they are actually a technology company with all kinds of unique skills and tools for maritime, oil and gas, skyscraper construction sectors. It was nice to spend a few minutes with the CEO, Morten Fon. I asked him what he thought of the Miami heat. He said he quite liked it – he had enjoyed a stint in tropical Malaysia.

I missed meeting him in person – have done so on Zoom but it was awe-inspiring to hear Mark Adams of Lockheed-Martin on stage. He described one of the most complex asset management and maintenance projects ever - modernization of US Navy. Aircraft carriers on down. Need to work anywhere in globe. Paper manuals to digital twins.

We heard inspirational talks from Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever with 23 Gold medals; from Tia Clair-Toomey, the fittest lady in the world having won 6 CrossFit tournaments, and from our friend, Ray Wang who in his own energetic way described what staying fit means for corporations in today’s digital world.

I met journalists who cover energy and aerospace and defense. Nice to not just hang around IT types. There were plenty of sustainability and partner awards. CEO Darren Roos handed out advance copies of his book “Moment of Service”. I got a personal tour of the Expo Hall from Bas de Vos who heads IFS Labs.

There was music everywhere – a sax soloist in the analyst track, bands at every outing, a DJ continually playing music outside the expo hall. There was time to explore South Beach and Miami’s museum/aquarium district.

In keeping with the Miami theme, I must have tried salmon, mahi-mahi, lobster and plenty of other seafood over the 3 days. I delivered my gift of Tampa cigars to Oliver Pilgerstorfer and he generously shared the box with others.

I am just scratching the surface on all the venues where other attendees had serendipitous meetings of their own.

I have requested to record a video episode with the IFS team which planned and executed such an amazingly diverse event – once they have had a chance to catch their breath. One regret - I missed spending more time with I have come to know over the last couple of years like Marne Martin, Mark Brewer and Alex Ivkovic. Hope to at next year's Unleashed, er. Serendipity event

In the meantime, enjoy this 3-minute recap of the event and some of the music.

 

Will the Future be Abundant?

I was invited yesterday to a live taping of an hour-long debate and audience Q&A on the topic “Will the Future Be Abundant?”. The debate will be released in December via public radio, video and the Open to Debate podcast.

Arguing “YES” was X Prize Foundation founder and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis, co-author of the best-seller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and a forthcoming sequel Scaling Abundance. Arguing “NO” was geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, author of the best-seller The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Xenia Wickett moderated.

If you follow my books and the New Florence blog, I tend to be an optimist about how technology continues to improve how we work, live and play. So, I am usually more aligned with Peter D, but Peter Z made some great points why we should not continue to project based on the prosperity of the last few decades. Below are some of my rough notes from Peter Z’s points

• At the end of WWII, our bribe to the world was globalization. We used our Navy to open the seas so that anyone could go anywhere and interface with any partner and access any commodity. Selling to any market if In exchange you would join us against the Soviets and it worked, and it generated the greatest prosperity and security the world has ever seen. But the Cold War ended in 92.
• We're now aging whether it's Spain, or Italy or Germany or Japan or Korea or Taiwan or China or Thailand. We now have mass retirement and we have to come up with something that works without investment or consumption or production.
• China is a country that exists because of globalization and demographic change. It's utterly dependent upon globalization for access to raw materials, and access to markets, but it's also the fastest urbanizing country in history, which means it's the fastest aging population in history. They've already aged so quickly and so far that consumption led growth or cost competitive production has already faded into memory.

I expected each to fall into neat optimist v pessimist camps but actually both of them in different ways came across as STEM-driven innovation optimists. Unlike so many of us who just focus on information technology (and especially AI), the two touched on health, energy, agriculture, education, transport, access to water among other challenges. They mentioned nuclear fusion, mental acuity, large scale desalination, GMO and hacking genomes, flying cars, next-gen education and more. They also talked about silicon and AI, and Peter D actually used a bot to summarize his positions.

Sounds like more abundance if we can only keep politicians at bay. In fact, my favorite line from the debate came from Peter D when asked about the political mood in the country

“I count on entrepreneurship and capitalism to solve problems. I never depend on the government. Period. End of Statement.”

Amen.

Please make a point of watching the show when it is publicly available next month.

"The most innovative period mankind has experienced"

McKinsey recently wrote:

“For many companies—and many industries—the COVID-19 pandemic set off a period of head-spinning change. They realized they were capable of moving faster than they ever thought possible. They went digital in a matter of days, not years. They offered new services almost overnight. If companies sustain this newfound speed and agility, it’s conceivable that more innovation will happen in the next ten years than in any previous decade in modern history.”

In a recent Burning Platform episode about tech industry events, I presented a few slides (see starting 24.05 in the first video. Jon Reed and Brian Sommer go ahead of me) on how the world has been turned upside down in 3 other ways beyond the COVID impact

• Ukraine war and need for energy independence in addition to a focus on emissions
• Climate change urgency and the move to low-carbon in every industry
• Big D - building on early Digital transformations at so many enterprises

At Deal Architect, we have seen what McKinsey is talking about the accelerating pace of innovation from three projects:

Our video series

We have recorded hundreds of video episodes in our Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and New Normal series. Even as tech vendor events and travel have been disrupted, we have had a front row seat on how business is evolving industry by industry.  In reverse, we have also seen how many companies and tech vendors continue with business as usual, trying to sell what they had in their bags in 2019 and wishing they could roll back time. Others have spray painted a bit of innovation when the opportunity allowed for significantly more.

Support for IFS Moment of Service book

IFS does very well in physical asset and field service intensive industries. That is allowing them to play in a new world where digital and labor services are converging. In the industrial world, products, spare parts, financing, break/fix, monitoring and other services are being bundled in a trend called “servitization” and these companies are increasingly maturing outcome- based contracts. 

CEO Darren Roos and his team of executives including Marne Martin, Antony Bourne and Mark Brewer are all impressive story tellers (each has been profiled in our video episodes). IFS has complex customers like Rolls-Royce Aviation,  the US Navy, Juton (one of the world’s largest maker of paints and coatings) and others which have been pioneering the use of digital twins, IoT, mixed reality and next-gen contract management and field service.

Our team had a chance to interview many IFS, customer and partner executives and Darren’s team turned that into an engaging 200-page book, Moment of Service.

IFS handed out advance copies of the book at their Unleashed event last month. 

SAP’s Business as Unusual project

While IFS’s book is focused on trends around the morphing world of products and services, SAP challenged a team we were part of to catalog trends across 8 themes. One of the deliverables from the project is an upcoming book, available from Amazon next month.

I would say it has been the most intense project my team has ever worked on (the publisher, Rheinwerk has been similarly pushed) and it has exposed us to new energy, new medicine, new mobility, new capital markets, new networks and new business models, and yes, lots of recycled stuff using circular economy thinking.

It gave us a chance to work with some the foremost domain experts across various industries such as Benjamin Beberness, Hagen Heubach, Torsten Welte and many others. I am not exaggerating – as you will see in the book, each of them could easily be a leading industry analyst in their area of focus. They just happen to be part of SAP. It allowed us to spend time with innovative customers who are driving decentralized grids, molecular recycling, pharma cold-chain logistics, next wave of financial instruments and more. It allowed us to learn from SAP’s expanding ecosystem – not just SIs, but strategy firms, Industry 4.0 enablers, micro-fulfillment supply chain players, digital agencies and a wide range of vertical research firms.

Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier, two senior SAP executives and authors of the book, have built an incredible team and a truly enviable range of vertical products and customers. You can see it in the heat map of industries these 8 themes cut across.

If you can believe, we started with 20 themes and narrowed it down to 8. Which means there is plenty of change we did not catalog. Every one of the 300 pages in the book drips with innovation. There is little evidence of business as usual in the book.

So, yes sure some will keep pining to go back to 2019. As for us, we plan to keep fighting for a front row seat and look forward to a small role in this coming tsunami of innovation.

Consumer Reports – what an awesome resource

As a technology analyst I have always been impressed with the wide coverage and rigor Consumer Reports brings to its analysis of autos, home appliances and consumer tech. I scan through every monthly issue and especially the annual Top Picks and Auto issues.

It has stayed true for 75 years to its motto of being a “force for honesty and integrity in the marketplace” and is broadening its horizons. They shared their vision in their strategic plan here. 

It is one of the best nonprofits we support and would encourage others to do the same.

 

CES 2022

While many participants will still participate in person, the show is unlikely to be the kind of massive tech extravaganza that you’d find prior to the pandemic.

Still, there will be an impressive array of new and interesting products on display during the COVID-shortened show, which various companies are streaming for the public. From self-driving cars and massive new TVs to smart home gadgets, the metaverse, and NFTs, CES 2022 will feature all of the latest tech has to offer.

Yahoo

More from Digital Trends

 

2021 – Best Inventions

One in a series of Best of 2021 posts, this one about inventions from Time magazine

“To assemble our list of 2021’s Best Inventions, we solicited nominations across a variety of categories from TIME’s editors and correspondents around the world, and through an online application process. We then evaluated each contender on a number of key factors, including originality, creativity, efficacy, ambition and impact.

The result is a list of 100 groundbreaking inventions—including vaccines for COVID-19 and malaria, an emotional support robot for hospitalized children, an environmentally friendly dye for jeans and a brand new pasta shape—that are changing how we live, work, play and think about what’s possible.”

2021 – The Year in Search

One in a series of Best of 2021 posts, this one about trends from Google Search

Competency-based education

So, after months of discussion, the district switched to competency-based education, a form of personalized learning that emphasizes mastery of skills over time spent in class. At Northern Cass, that means that grade point averages no longer exist. In two years, neither will grade levels. Instead, K-12 students get rated on a four-point scale for each skill, receiving about two new ratings per week. In seventh-grade English, that may mean the ability to hold collaborative conversation. Those who are prepared with questions and open to other viewpoints might receive a three. Leading the conversation and keeping it from stalling out would garner a four.

“We kept coming back to the idea that you couldn’t get world class because the system itself wasn’t designed for that. The system itself was designed to sort kids, to rank kids,” says Dr. Steiner.

WSJ (sub required)

"Deal of the Century"

The results have been remarkable. Automobiles, telecommunications, energy grids, hospitals and logistics networks have all become digital businesses, producing ever-increasing reams of data that need to be managed and stored. Dell now sits at the helm of the world’s largest infrastructure provider for this activity. “The amount of data being created in the world is just astounding,” he says. “It’s doubling every seven or eight months.”

In turn, Dell Technologies, at $75 billion, is worth more than four times what it was before it went private. Because of all that leverage, Dell, Durban’s Silver Lake and co-investors have done far better, with total gains of more than $40 billion, according to Forbes’ calculations. Dell’s personal net worth has risen to $50 billion. In many ways, he was the architect of the biggest buyout coup of all time.

Forbes

Here's a recent interview with Michael Dell

Innovations highlighted in Satya Nadella's annual shareholder letter

In the Microsoft annual report, Satya Nadella identifies a handful of examples of innovation he is obviously proud of. I also found videos which provide additional perspective on each.

• NASA’s Mars mission achieved a milestone in space exploration when the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity completed the first powered flight on another planet—a feat that would not have been possible without 12,000 developers on GitHub who contributed code to the open source software that powered the flight.
  

• When a 1,300-foot ship blocked the Suez Canal and disrupted global shipping, our partner Blue Yonder used Microsoft AI technologies to help its customers find alternate sources for more than $500 million worth of products and parts affected by the delay.
  

• Team Rubicon—a nonprofit organization that responds to humanitarian crises around the world—set up 169 COVID-19 response sites across the United States in just 30 days, using Dynamics 365 to manage the deployment of thousands of volunteers.
  

• Surgeons at Mt. Sinai Health System in New York and Kyabirwa Surgical Centre in Uganda have together performed more than 500 surgeries using mixed reality technology that enables doctors in New York to provide annotated recommendations that appear in the field of vision of their Ugandan colleagues—even though they are thousands of miles apart.
  

• Anheuser-Busch InBev—the world’s largest brewer—used Azure Digital Twins to create a comprehensive digital model of its breweries and supply chain. Synchronized with its physical environment, this model replicates the complex relationships between natural ingredients and the brewing process, enabling brewmasters to make adjustments based on real-time conditions.
  

20 from 20: Mega Trends affecting IT

This is part of a series of 20 highlights from the Acrobatics during the crisis, Analyst Cam, Burning Platform and other series I launched last year.

For most of 2020, CIOs and IT teams performed heroics moving millions to work from home, scaling up or down massive volumes, helping their companies pivot to new business models. In background, massive changes have been affecting the IT landscape. Here's what I heard from multiple conversations:

Leading off is Bob Evans who authors the Cloud Wars site. He talks about every company is becoming more of a software company and what that means to tech industry. The SaaS, IaaS etc definitions of the last few years look increasingly dated as we discuss in the extended session here 

Next at 3.23 is Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. He points out that hyperscalers are pulling away with their platforms and why application vendors should refocus on next-gen business processes which take advantage of contemporary ML, IoT and other capabilities. The longer conversation is here. 

At 7.01 it is Tamas Hevizi who talks about the growth of citizen programmers and why "shadow IT" is not unhealthy, it is inevitable, especially in small businesses. The longer conversation with him about Digital Acceleration is here 

At 10.17, Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group talks complex systems thinking he explores in his new book and looks at the recent crisis from that lens. The longer session is here 

At 12.37, Brett Hurt, who is the CEO and co-founder of data.world says "data is one of the least networked resources" as we explore "single source of truth" in the explosion of data streams we saw around COVID-19, polling, the census. The longer conversation is here 

At 18.30, it is Grant Halloran, CEO of Planful which describes its Continuous Planning platform as "marrying finance’s need for structured planning with the business’ need for dynamic planning," We discuss what it would take to make pandemic modeling less chaotic than what we saw in 2020.