Wyeth transformed itself from a holding company to a global company using information technology (IT) as an important enabler. The case details the importance of global integration and how globalization was initiated at Wyeth. The original role of IT is introduced along with the challenges and barriers of starting a globalization strategy. An ambitious IT globalization plan is outlined as well as the role of IT started changing at Wyeth. The case also illustrates the implementation of the IT globalization plan. The implementation started slowly, faced many challenges, and took longer than expected. The original plan was modified several times to address funding and management challenges.  One of the key takeaways form this case is that decentralization model was planned to be changed into centralized model but hybrid model appears to have ultimately evolved and resulted into successful implementation of global IT plan and made Wyeth a true Global company.

IT Governance: Stop the Pendulum!

The primary goals for information technology governance are to (1) assure that the investments in IT generate business value, and (2) mitigate the risks that are associated with IT. This can be done by implementing an organizational structure with well-defined roles for the responsibility of information, business processes, applications, infrastructure, etc. Decision rights are a key concern of IT governance. The well defined control of IT is the key to success.

In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits.

This article tells the story of the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper (an idea that Ford stole – he ultimately was awarded nearly $30 million). Today, he could have turned the idea into product on his “own,” much more quickly.

These are some lessons I feel about the new future that has arrived/is arriving

1) Collaboration has always been about collaborating with the best/smartest/cutting edge people. Now, the tools of the era allow us to collaborate with those people regardless of where they work or live. It will be collaborate with the best, or die.

2) The future will be owned by individuals. Your ideas, your innovations, your concepts, will increasingly be owned by the individual who came up with them. And that individual will find the workers to turn the ideas into products on his or her own. The idea person will not have to build a factory.

3) The changes will keep coming. This new chapter in the industrial revolution is only that – the new chapter, the latest chapter. There will be others to follow.

Business intelligence (BI) refers to the use of technology to collect and effectively use information to improve business effectiveness. Different information systems may be successful at helping users accomplish specific tasks, but they’re typically not well suited at providing information to end users. With business intelligence, users will be able to turn this information into knowledge, and knowledge into profit.

BI enables an organization to track, understand, and manage its business in order to maximize enterprise performance. With BI, organizations are able to improve operational efficiency, build profitable customer relationships, and develop differentiated product offerings.

The widespread use of information technology can generate tremendous amounts of data within an organization. This data contains information that is invaluable to the organization’s decision makers.

The issue for most organizations is that the data is inaccessible to all but the IT department. While IT can run queries and produce reports at the request of business users, a self-service approach to information provides the greatest benefits. With direct, easy access to information, users can find answers to all the questions that are raised by their activities. Armed with precise, up-to-the-minute information, users can develop effective responses that help their organization attain its goals. BI is the key to leveraging this wealth of data that accumulates in an enterprise.

With BI, non-technical users can pinpoint what drives their business activity. BI can help reduce costs, increase revenues, and improve customer satisfaction. While many of these benefits are clearly quantifiable, some of the more intangible ones, such as improved communication throughout the enterprise, improved job satisfaction of empowered users, or sharing of intellectual capital, can give your business the greatest edge over its competitors.

Katzenbach Partners LLC is a management consulting firm. The firm’s competitive advantage is its people, their knowledge and experience. The firm’s growth presented Katzenbach with both organizational and technical challenges to their knowledge management approach.

In order to tackle those challenges, Katzenbach came up with a knowledge management solution using Enterprise 2.0 technologies integrated into their, The HUB, intranet site.  A hybrid approach of formal and informal document classification was used. The formal approach involved classifying documents in a predefined way.  The informal approach involved using tags where anyone in the firm could tag a document in a way that was most useful to them.  All tags were public to the firm so one document could be tagged by multiple users allowing for a much more complete picture of the document’s  contents than if its tags were only generated by the author.

Community of Practice

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly either in formal or informal way. In order to get a successful community of practice, there are factors needed to be concerned. Since Members of communities of practice are thought to be more efficient and effective conduits of information and experiences, Individuals in communities of practice play an essential role in sharing information. Communicating with others in a community of practice involves creating social presence – It is believed that social presence affects how likely an individual is of participating in a community of practice (especially in online environments). Motivation to share knowledge is critical to success in communities of practice. Also, motivation to share knowledge and collaboration are critical to success in communities of practice.

The fundamental conflict of the article lies in the comparison of the advertising products offered by the two companies.  Google’s product, targeted text ads, is the single most successful product on the Internet.  The tiny, unobstructive ads have fueled Google’s dominance in multiple markets; today, 90% of Google’s revenue comes from Adsense.  Facebook’s product is nascent – it is the concept that advertising works better when it is socially mediated.  That is, we are more likely to click on ads, content, and links when the content is funneled through our friends.  This theory is sensible, but to date, Facebook’s concept remains vaporware, with a majority of their revenue coming through traditional targeted text and banner campaigns.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing

This article provided an introduction to crowdsourcing through definitions established by its pioneers and illustrated through a collection of case examples. Crowdsourcing can be explained through a theory of crowd wisdom, an exercise of collective intelligence, but we should remain critical of the model for what it might do to people and how it may reinstitute long-standing mechanisms of oppression through new discourses. Crowdsourcing is not just another buzzword, not another meme. It is not just a repackaging of open source philosophy for capitalist ends either. It is a model capable of aggregating talent, leveraging ingenuity while reducing the costs and time formerly needed to solve problems. Finally, crowdsourcing is enabled only through the technology of the web, which is a creative mode of user interactivity, not merely a medium between messages and people. Because of this, it is now the challenge of communication studies, science and technology studies, and other scholars to take up this new, hearty agenda for research.

Connecting for Success

The presentation showed lessons learned from a heritage of deploying collaboration solutions within the enterprise. For centralized destination, it’s found that users resists mandates, customization is important, and less is more. For lightweight document sharing, email and PowerPoint are dominant working tools – online is an added step. Enterprise search is not the same as internet search, and teams did not collaborate across boundaries due to silos. In self publishing, sensitive information sharing is a challenge. Culture is more important than technology.

Rebooting the Antisocial Network

The research shows that business-oriented social networking platforms aren’t living up to their promise of better communication, collaboration and productivity, even though IT has these tools in place. For example, 61% have run team or company wikis for over a year; 29% have had these systems in place for three years or more. Most, 65%, host these systems internally.

My questions to the class would focus on the relationship between innovation, change, and management: how can we utilize innovation sustainably?

As Google Inc. (Google) enjoys strong brand value, and it has been consistently generating higher revenue, the alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo! to take on Google’s search engine business may pose a serious challenge to its growth. What factors would enable company to seize market opportunities?