Category: business
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Software innovation management: reboot required?
Why is innovation so difficult in the software industry? In an interesting take on Google and its innovation, or lack of it, Robert Scoble provides an insight into Google’s manifestation of a very important issue for all organisations: their management of innovation. Much of his explanation and diagnosis rings true. However, many of the proposed remedies,…
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UK success
… and let’s stop shooting ourselves in the foot! The attitude that the UK Prime Minister specifies in this recent speech to the UK CBI is exactly what is needed. This is stirring stuff which will motivate the people in the UK who can do something about it. The challenge for the government is to…
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Sell the opportunity
Treat every problem as an opportunity, we are told. At first sight it is an attractive idea, but further investigation reveals that it is a little too glib. Problems and opportunities are similar but different things; in a sense they are the opposite of one another. Edward de Bono, I think it was, who captured…
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Helping other people to get what you want
“We are not a cruise ship. We are an explorer ship!” This is one of the key messages in the passenger briefing on the ships of the Hurtigruten service which runs daily northbound and southbound along the coast of Norway. For nearly 500 passengers recently boarded at Bergen, almost all of them on a cruise…
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Is “IT” “in denial”?!
This is probably true, but who really cares?
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Let’s stop messing with the clocks!
The whole concept of adjusting the clocks with the seasons, “Daylight Saving” as the Americans call it, seems increasingly ludicrous the more that one thinks about it. In the UK, it is called British Summer Time and is abbreviated to BST; I call it British Silly Time. The expensive consequences for computer systems, airlines, railways and…
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Less is more manufacturing productivity
Recollections of an memorable project Thinking about the concept of “less is more”, takes me back to a small and initially unpromising project that a maverick boss of mine persuaded me to get involved in many years ago. It provides an interesting example of counter-intuitive optimisation. The scene… There was a manufacturing plant which produced…
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Less is more!
There seems to be an upsurge of interest in the philosophy of “less is more”. A couple of recent articles about product design, in general and in a specific case, address relevant aspects of this phenomenon. What do we know? On one level, we tend to question: how can “less” be “more”? We know it…
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A better Java programming course?
Questions, questions! What would a better training course be like? In what ways would it differ? For whom would it be better? How would we know that it is better? What would we measure? Better for learners and providers In general, whatever you are learning, all of these questions might be important to you. To…
John W Lewis 
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