Bruce R. Wall

Paul,
Thank you again for the insight. It would be interesting to see how the “Siemens One” project ended or if it is still around how it has changed things.
Bruce

Elaine,
Great post. I am glad to hear there is an organization or community of practice that assists with the transition. As a Navy guy I can understand the difficulties of moving around. Every new location brings its own challenges that must be met. Having a group around you that can provide tips based on experience or trial and error gives you…[Read more]

As a Naval Aircrewman for the US Navy I was a member of community of practice for tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s). This community of practice were referred to as Seahawk Weapons and Tactics Insturctors (SWTI). As a SWTI we would continue to test out new or old TTP’s for validity and effectiveness. Some of these TTP’s were thought up by…[Read more]

I believe the answer to this question lies with the value and costs of each option. The value of using professional management is the information about the system and the resources to back your product. The cost of a publisher is the upfront time required to convince a publisher to back your product (almost a good ole boy club) and the later…[Read more]

Paul,
I enjoyed your post and have many questions about EVA and the BU Scorecards. Although I will stick to the question the relates to our subject. How does Siemens account for all the time spent on projects by employees that are not directly associated with that project. For instance when an urgent request goes out and an employee answers this…[Read more]

Siemens should continue their current projects such as Technoweb 2.0, Urgent Requests, and External brokers. These projects have been proven to work when the goals have been made clear. To increase the effectiveness of the use of external sources the goals need to be further clarified as to the impact on the company and the employees personally.…[Read more]

Duke,
Good question about Lackner’s question of shutting open innovation down. To be honest I was somewhat confused by that question. I was wondering if what he meant by that is let us see how much we loose when we shut down open innovation. I think, maybe it was more rhetorical than an actual proposal. What do you think he meant by it?

The con for the use of open innovation is similar to using large groups of people in a conference room to discuss issues.The group of people need a clear goal that explains what is in it for them personally. If not they will move the subject towards a new goal that is more important to them. This was seen during Siemens attempt to use external…[Read more]

Sam,
Great point! The one thing I have noticed is that the more companies become global the less options available. I can buy the same products here that I can buy in any western country and even some eastern countries. For instance Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee are both available in the UAE. Maybe people will grow tired of this fact and…[Read more]

Kumar,
Your point is very well taken. IT does make being global much easier, their is no denying that. Communication and the sharing of information simplifies the issue. McD entered their first country of New Zealand in 1975 and they used New Zealand made cheese instead of US made. They did this to keep the logistics costs down. The World Wide…[Read more]

Vinay,
The USB issue is well known through out government. Removable media has become such an issue that only one person in our office is allowed to even burn a CD. Their worry about security has made our job very similar to the 100 meter hurtle you see in the Olympics. I would imagine that some of the rules are solely in place due to laziness…[Read more]

ERP and Global Data Warehouse had to deal with many different issues which required specific solutions. For instance when dealing with Rx in the global data warehouse they need a large “X-Ref” (cross reference file). The X-Ref allowed them to correlate product and supplies that have different number coding schemes in different locations and…[Read more]

Kumar,
Thank you for the great post. I noticed that your examples of global brands are all IT companies. What about companies such as McDonald’s that was at least multinational if not global before IT became so pervasive in our lives. I am sure we sat down and thought about other large companies we would find than many companies were global…[Read more]

The emergence of information technology has made globalization easier but been the sole enabler. If you look at companies such as the British East India Company in the 17th-19th century. Companies like this were global companies that became their own entity free of governmental control. They would conduct business in multiple countries towards one…[Read more]

Mike,
What a hassle. It sounds like your IT issues are not so much the hardware but rather a lack of service options. Would I be correct to state that if the phones had data or e-mail capability many of the issues would go away? You would think their should be some way to make the case for an ROI of paying for the data plans. I find it very…[Read more]

Just call me jealous of any one that has BYOD in their workplace. As a government contract working for the DOD in a secure office I don’t get to many choices for hardware. In fact my office does not even allow for cell phones. The IT department is very limiting for the Navy. We are limited by the contract awarded for the Navy and Marine Corps…[Read more]

Paul,
Once again your posts bring incredible insight. Your discussion of the cons for AWS are great. My initial thought was about the potential for a lack of control of your information. Security of that information would always be a worry based on the fact you never really know what is going on in another persons house. They can tell you and…[Read more]

Amazon created the four major services under their Amazon Web Services (AWS). These services allowed developers to get up to speed quickly. The developers that use AWS do not have to deal with all the backend technology issues and can focus on the business. Backend technology issues such as buying and selling servers, maintaining those servers,…[Read more]

Wow no good, thank you.

Thanks Stephen, I concur their was a much higher probability the SAP initiative would have been funded. Although depending on the people in the ELT maybe they would act more like our Congress and fund those things that make them money. Maybe this is why Matulovic didn’t give them the decision in the first place, maybe he didn’t trust them. The…[Read more]