Blog Posts From Podcasts Tagged With strategy

Jim Champy, Best-Selling Author and Technology Consultant, Talks About How Innovative Companies Inspire to Keep Customers Coming Back

tom@tomparish.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:37:19 GMT

(19:58)

In this podcast, Jim Champy, chair of Perot Systems Corporation and co-author of the best-selling management book, Reengineering the Corporation, talks about his latest book, Inspire: Why Customers Come Back. This is the second of Champy's three books in a Financial Times (FT) Press series about new business models. The resources section has a link to Enterpriseleadership.org's podcast with Champy about his second book, Outsmart: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't.

Jim Champy has a talent for seeing the writing on boardroom walls - companies have to change the way they work if they want to be effective. No wonder Champy's book, Reengineering the Corporation, became an immediate best seller throughout the early 1990s. Over the years, Champy's has continued to crank out books and consulted about how companies must redefine business processes and their strategies if they want to compete.

Several years ago, Champy embarked on a journey to find out how companies have devised new ways to do things, and what we can learn from them. Using a filter of double-digit growth and triple-digit growth, he came up with more than 1,000 companies - ranging from mostly emerging companies to some major corporations. Champy's research has turned into a FT Press three book series about new business models pioneered by these high-growth companies. His Outsmart book features case studies about nine companies, such as Partsearch, that are innovating about how to deliver a better customer experience by combining high tech with high touch. Inspire, his latest book, includes eight concise case studies about how businesses, such as Puma and Stonyfield Yogurt, have become successful by inspiring their customers to be loyal for the long term. Deliver, Champy's third book in the series, will focus on how successful companies execute on their strategies.

Champy says that innovation was the key to driving double-digit growth at many of the companies he has profiled. Talking about Inspire, he says a company's vision directly can affect its sales success. "The new generation of customers value transparency and authenticity above all. If you want to keep your customers coming back, you need to learn how to define a consistent value proposition - one that will make your customers stay passionate about doing business with you."

In this podcast about Inspire, Champy discusses the role innovation plays in the Inspire paradigm, the top five characteristics of customer-centric companies, and the ways CIOs and CTOs can use technology to get closer to both internal customers and external customers.

Bio
Jim Champy is chair of Perot Systems Corporation's consulting practice, and is also head of strategy for the company. He directs the company's team of business and management consultants. Before joining Perot Systems, Champy was chair and chief executive officer of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Sciences Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a $200 million consulting that CSC acquired in 1988.

He also co-authored Reengineering the Corporation, which appeared on the New York Times' best-seller list for more than a year. His follow-up books include Reengineering Management, The Arc of Ambition, Fast Forward, X-Engineering, and his two latest books, Outsmart, and Inspire.

Resources
Jim Champy Discusses Inspire, FT Press
http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1349306

How CIOs Can Help Their Companies Outsmart Their Competitors, Enterpriseleadership Podcast with Jim Champy
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/podcasts/2008/09/21/how-cios-can-help-their-companies-outsmart-their-competitors-jim-champy

Taking Care of the Company, The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914815543399105.html

Production Credits
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Suzanne Bates, best-selling book author, Talks About Communicating like a CEO -- Lessons for CIOs

tom@tomparish.com — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:34:16 GMT

(18:08)

What do President Obama and Jack Welch have in common? They're both excellent communicators. Although they have different communications styles, they both know how to command attention and to get results. They also both know how to inspire and to motivate others. In her second podcast with www.enterpriseleadership.org, Suzanne Bates, CEO of Bates Communications, provides CIOs with some communications tips from her books: Motivate Like a CEO and Speak Like a CEO.

If you want to move up the IT ladder, you, undoubtedly, need to have good technical skills and solid business experience. On the other hand, if you want to earn that CIO seat at the executive table, your better hone your communications skills. You might start by going to amazon.com and ordering either Motivate like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! or Speak Like a CEO: Secrets to Commanding Attention and Getting Results. Suzanne Bates, the author, is CEO of Bates Communications, an executive communications consultancy, and a former award-winning television anchor and reporter.

When Jose Alvarez, president and CEO of Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. wanted to improve his communications skills, he turned to Bates Communications, based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm offers everything from formal strategic communications consulting to executive presence seminars and workshops. Clients include Blue Cross Blue Shield, Dow Chemical, Fidelity, and Mellon/Bank of New York. Bates says that the company's mission is to transform leaders into powerful communicators who get business results.

She says that many leaders get promoted because of their business and technical skills. "When you reach the leadership of a C-level position, your primary role is to communicate the organization's vision, strategy, and values. You need good communication skills if want to inspire, to motivate, and to align the organization with the vision and strategy. Even middle managers need good communications skills. In many cases, communications is the missing link that holds people back from reaching their full potential."

During her 20-year year in television news reporting, Bates interviewed 1,000 of political leaders, CEOs, experts, authors, and celebrities. She says that some people were better speakers than others. After Suzanne started working with executives at Bates Communications, she realized that good communications skills aren't necessarily an innate ability. "It's something you can learn. Leaders, like Jack Welch and President Obama, have learned to develop their own compelling communications style. All writing and all speaking has to come from inside. Many executives struggle with bringing out their authentic voice. It takes practice."

In this podcast, Bates talks about what it means to speak like a CEO, what makes President Obama's communications style so effective, how CIOs can use good communications to maintain staff morale, and how gender differences in communications styles can affect your job performance.

Bio
For about 20 years, Suzanne Bates was an acclaimed news anchor and news reporter with major television stations: WBZ-TV Boston, WCAU-TV Philadelphia, and WFLA-TV Tampa-St. Petersburg. She won an AP News Award and was nominated for a Columbia DuPont Award.

In 2000, Bates started Bates Communications, an executive communications and executive coaching consultancy. In 2005, her book, Speak like a CEO: Secrets to Commanding Attention and Getting Results, topped the best-seller's list at amazon.com. The book is in its seventh printing and has been published in several languages. In February 2009, Bates came out with Motivate like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!

Bates has a B.S. in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois.

Resources
The Benefits of Executive Presence, Bates Communications
http://www.bates-communications.com/articles/the-benefits-of-executive-presence.php

How to be Yourself in Front of an Audience, EmploymentCrossing
http://www.consultingcrossing.com/article/290165/How-to-Be-Yourself-in-front-of-an-Audience/

Suzanne Bates Delivers Message on the Power of Communication, HarBus - Harvard Business School
http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2006/02/06/News/Suzanne.Bates.Delivers.Message.On.The.Power.Of.Communication-1598986.shtml

Production Credits
Tom Parish, Host and Executive Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Stepping Up Pitney Bowes' Innovation Efforts as a Technology Leader - Michael J. Critelli, Retired CEO of Pitney Bowes

tom@tomparish.com — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:51:47 GMT

(19:18)

In this podcast, Michael J. Critelli, the retired CEO of Pitney Bowes, discusses how a change of thinking about the marketplace and customers' needs helped to step up Pitney Bowes' efforts to become a technology leader.

Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Pitney Bowes began as an innovative company back in 1908 with the introduction of a hand-cranked, double-locking postage stamp machine. For decades, the company went on to deliver one milestone after another in the postage industry. In 1968, Pitney Bowes acquired the Monarch Marking System Company, which would produce the first barcode equipment for retail trade use. Less than a decade later, the company formed the Pitney Bowes Credit Corporation, providing customers with a range of financial payment solutions.

During the 1980s, Pitney Bowes intensified its marketing efforts to move beyond the mailroom and into the front office. The company introduced a line of copying machines, facsimile machines, and a suite of management services. In 1990s, however, Pitney Bowes demonstrated its ability to bring innovative technology to the marketplace, especially in the field of digital technologies and software. The company introduced the first in-line weighing and metering system, the first secure digital postage meter, the first inkjet postage meter, and the Digital Document Deliver platform, which provides message management via hardcopy Web, mail, and facsimile.

Under the leadership of Michael J. Critelli, Pitney Bowes's CEO, the company transformed itself into a $6 billion mail and document management solutions powerhouse. In fact, between 2000 and 2007, Pitney Bowes invested about $2.5 billion in 83 acquisitions, primarily in software and services businesses, such as MapInfo, Group 1 Software, PSI Group, and Imagitas. The company's intellectual property includes more than 3,500 patents in areas such as ticketing, cellular phone payment, shipping, laser printing, encryption, and mail production and processing. Critelli holds six of these patents. Today Pitney Bowes's products and services range from managing corporate mailrooms to supply providing mapping software for applications such as MapQuest.

So, what did it take for Pitney Bowes to undergo this type of an innovative transformation? Critelli says that the most important change was to think differently about the business it was in. "Back in the 1990s, our chief technology officer said. 'When you move a piece of mail on a postal system, three things flow: the material, the money, and the information.' All of a sudden, the light bulb went on for me. We had the opportunity to provide solutions for all three flows, as well as the entire end-to-end processes for those flows. That gave us the framework to think about new opportunities."

In this podcast, Critelli talks about the changes that occurred for the company to undergo the transformation; the business process to integrate technology from the myriad of acquisitions into the Pitney Bowes' brand; the purpose of Pitney Bowes' customer-centered innovation; and the strategic role IT has played in the innovation transformation.

Bio

In 2007, Michael J. Critelli retired as chair and chief executive officer of Pitney Bowes Inc., a $6 billion mail and document management solutions company. He joined Pitney Bowes as a corporate attorney in 1979 where he quickly moved up the ranks to become CEO in 1996 and chairs of the board in 1997. Critelli completed his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin and was awarded a J.D., cum laude at Harvard Law School. He is currently advising Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell and Transportation Commissioner Ralph Carpenter on how to make the processes and practices at the State's Dept. of Transportation more effective. Critelli has also served on the board of the Urban League of Southwestern Connecticut and the National Urban League. He joined Easton Corporation's board of directors in 1998.

Resources

Mike Critelli's Blog
http://www.mikecritelli.com/

Mike Critelli, Pitney Bowes Chairman, says you like to get unsolicited mail, CatalogChoice
http://blog.catalogchoice.org/2008/10/25/mike-critelli-pitney-bowes-ceo-says-you-like-to-get-unsolicited-mail/

Podcast -- Rob Pew, Larry Keeley and Mike Critelli panel discussion on healthcare, Institute of Design Strategy Conference, May 2008
http://vimeo.com/5189004

Michael Critelli to retire from Pitney Bowes, DMNews
http://www.dmnews.com/michael-critelli-to-retire-from-pitney-bowes/article/110077/

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Content Strategy and Media Production by Tom Parish, Inc.

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Tom DeGarmo, a principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Makes a Case for Open Innovation in Economic Downturn

tom@tomparish.com — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:04:16 GMT

(16:12)

In this podcast, Tom DeGarmo, a principal in PricewaterhouseCoopers advisory practice, talks about why companies must practice open innovation, especially in this economic downturn.

What do the Apple iPhone and Linux have in common? They are both products of some form of open innovation. Linux came about through the collaborative efforts of the thousands of developers who participate in the open source community. The hundreds of applications for the iPhone mushroomed when Apple made the iPhone platform available to application developers. Other companies, such as Google and Microsoft, have followed in Apple's open innovation footsteps.

Tom DeGarmo, a prinicpal with PricewaterhouseCoopers, first got exposed to open innovation when he worked at Bell Laboratories, AT&T's research arm, back in the 1980s. He says that Bell Laboratories' culture thrived on sharing experiences, ideas, and research for the sake of research. He says, "We took the best of what we learned and applied it to problems outside of the lab."

With traditional innovation, or what DeGarmo calls closed innovation, companies have ownership over their assets and their intellectual property. They look at how they can leverage their employees' expertise to solve problems. "This type of innovation can be somewhat limiting and very constraining. In a down economy, companies need to explore every avenue for innovation."

Companies that practice open innovation, on the other hand, look outside for smart problem-solvers. "Some of these people might have already solved your company's particular problem, might have people working on your particular problem, or might have people with insight to share. You might find people who are working on totally unrelated problems. If you apply these problems to your situation, you might solve your problem. If you are open enough, you can take advantage of what the world has to offer."

In this on-going series of innovation podcasts, DeGarmo provides insight from his research experience with open innovation, gives examples of open innovation communities, and gives CIOs and CTOs several takeways for using technology to carry out open innovation initiatives.

Bio
Tom DeGarmo is a principal in PricewaterhouseCoopers' advisory practice and leads the technology consulting solutions practice. He joined the company following PricewaterhouseCoopers' purchase of BearingPoint's commercial services business unit in June 2009. DeGarmo was executive vice president of BearingPoint's 2,000-person commercial services business unit, comprised of financial services and commercial services (including managed services, management consulting and Latin America). He has also served as a board member for the Homeland Security and Defense Business Council. DeGarmo has more than 25 years of experience in commercial and public sectors, including positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories and Unisys.

Resources
PwC Innovation, PricewaterhouseCoopers
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/innovation/index.jhtml

Use Web Innovation to Cope with Downturn, Harvard Business Review

https://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/35871

An Open Business Model Is the Convergence Imperative according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, GlobeNewswire
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=96706

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Adam Hartung, managing partner of Sparks Partners, Talks about Driving Innovation Based on Disrupting the Status Quo

tom@tomparish.com — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:36:08 GMT

(27:06)

In this podcast, Adam Hartung, managing partner of Spark Partners, discusses an innovation business model based on disrupting the status quo that gave way to an organization's foundational success.

If you want to succeed, you have to grow. If you want to grow, you have to disrupt. That is the advice of Adam Hartung, managing partner of Sparks Partners and author of, Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition. Hartung adds that you have to make it a basic fact of your organization that disruption is acceptable and possibly even desirable. He says, "Look at the kind of markets Virgin gets into. Sir Richard Branson and his team encourage disruptive ideas. What could be more disruptive than Virgin Galactic, selling seats on space flights? That's how Virgin has produced superior returns for investors, employees and suppliers."

Hartung's Sparks Partners goes beyond helping companies nurture innovative ideas and bringing them to market. Instead, Spark Partners prevents companies from short-circuiting innovation because they lock themselves in to the success formulas that have brought them to where they are. The company's three-step innovation process includes the following:

Analyzing the external challenges that will disrupt an organization's marketplace.
Opening the lock that keeps an organization's best ideas from being implemented.
Converting ideas into success by creating white space within the organization where the ideas are safe and not hampered by established ways of doing things.

Hartung has much first-hand experience helping companies to take advantage of emerging technologies and new business models. He began his career as an entrepreneur, selling the first general-purpose computing platform to use the 8080 microprocessor when he was an undergraduate. At DuPont, Adam built a new division from nothing to over $600 million revenue in less than three years, opening subsidiaries on every populated continent and implementing new product development across both Europe and Asia. At Pepsi, Adam led the initiative to start Pizza Hut Home Delivery. He opened over 200 stores in less than two years. He also led the global expansion mergers and acquisition initiative acquiring several hundred additional sites. He played a lead role in the Kentucky Fried Chicken acquisition.

Bio

Adam Hartung is managing partner of Sparks Partners and author of Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition. He previously spent eight years as a partner in the consulting arm of Computer Sciences Corporation. He also held strategy positions at The Boston Consulting Group, PepsiCo, and DuPont. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School with Distinction.

Resources

To Succeed You Must Disrupt, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/01/disrupt-change-innovation-leadership-managing-hartung.html

Listen to Competitors, Not Customers, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/06/innovation-customers-competitors-leadership-managing-marketing.html

A Key to a Successful Business Plan, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/07/scenario-planning-strategy-leadership-managing-plan.html

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Bill Whitmore, CEO of AlliedBarton Security Services, Talks about Delivering an Innovative e-learning Environment for Employees

tom@tomparish.com — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:44:35 GMT

(13:51)

In this podcast, Bill Whitmore, CEO of AlliedBarton Security Services, talks about creating an innovative e-learning environment to empower outsourced physical security personnel to deliver great results for customers, and to retain and deliver quality employees.

When Bill Whitmore joined AlliedBarton Security Services almost 30 years ago, this provider of on-site physical security personnel was in its infancy with one million in annual revenue. It also had a lofty commitment to invest in providing employees with quality training programs. Today, AlliedBarton ranks as the country's largest provider of physical security personnel to third parties. The company has more than $1.5 billion in annual revenues, more than 50,000 employees, and has about 100 offices around the country. About 200 of the Fortune 500 companies use security services from AlliedBarton. Meanwhile, AlliedBarton has transformed itself from a training organization to developing an innovative culture based on leadership and employee development. In fact, this company has made Training magazine's Top 125 in training excellence for five years in a row.

Significant technology investments in a variety of e-learning programs underpin AlliedBarton's culture. For example, all security personnel can take the Dare to Be Great challenge, a 14-module online Master Security Course. The Allied Barton Edge, another e-learning program, provides all employees with more than 52 courses in a variety of disciplines. Harvard Business School Press administrators the program. The MyAlliedBarton.com site allows employees to collaborate with each other and to provide management with feedback about the training programs. Other online capabilities include the following: a customer connection, which enables AlliedBarton management to respond quickly to customers' concerns, and a performance management program that provides metrics about each employeee's training, development, and performance. Whitmore says, "All of these tools help us to evaluate and improve our current training programs, develop new programs, and create new services to offer our customers."

In this podcast, Whitmore talks about the transformation of AlliedBarton's culture, the things that make it an innovative organization, the types of technology it has deployed to create an e-learning environment, the way it measures the effectiveness of its e-learning programs, and some takeaways for C-level executives who strive to create a more innovative company.

Bio

Bill Whitmore is the chair, president, and CEO of AlliedBarton Security Services, the largest American-owned and managed contract security company. He serves on the Private Sector Senior Advisory Committee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Whitmore belongs to several trade associations including the International Security Management Association, and the Building Owners and Managers Association. He is chair of the Board of the Philadelphia Police Foundation, and a board member of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

Resources

Daring to be Great, Smart Business
http://www.sbnonline.com/National/Article/12774/0/Daring_to_be_great.aspx?Category=87

National Company Touts Benefits of Outsourced Security Services, Philadelphia Business Journal
http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2004/11/29/focus3.html

How Leadership Development Engages and Retains Employees, Human Capital Institute
http://www.hci.org/lib/how-leadership-development-engages-and-retains-talent

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Roger Hardy, CEO of Coastal Contacts, Talks About Building an Innovative E-Commerce Company to Change the Way Consumers Buy Glasses and Contact Lenses

tom@tomparish.com — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:41:19 GMT

(9:22)

In this podcast, Roger Hardy, CEO of Coastal Contacts, talks about using online technology in innovative ways to build a global e-commerce company to do two things: drive down the cost consumers pay for eyeglasses and contact glasses, and create a superior customer service model to eliminate customers' fears about buying these products online.

If you paid $400 for a pair of glasses with designer frames, then perhaps you need to go online and checkout Coastal Contacts, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 2000, Coastal Contacts bills itself as the world's largest online optical store. Consumers can buy brand name contact lenses from leading providers, such as Ciba Vision and Bausch & Lomb, at up to half the price of optical stores. The same goes for designer eyeglass frames from Gucci and Hugo Boss.

Roger Hardy, Coastal Contacts' founder and CEO, says that his company s has emerged as one of Canada's fastest growing companies. In fact, Hardy says that 2009 was a good year for the company with revenues growing about 17 percent. He attributes much of the company's success to investments in innovative technology to handle the volume of orders and to offer unprecedented customer service. In fact, during one 18-month period, the company fulfilled more than 1.5 million orders. "Each week we seem to set a new record for sales," Hardy says.

Bio

In 2000, Roger Hardy founded Coastal Contacts as one of the first e-commerce vision care products company. He is currently Coastal Contact's CEO . He built his entrepreneurial career for a transportation and logistics company later purchased by DHL worldwide, followed by Wessley Jessen. Since 2004, he has been a member of the Vancouver Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization. Over the years, Hardy has received many leadership awards, including BC Business Magazine's Top Forty under Forty in 2002, and The Pacific Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Business to Consumer) in 2006. He graduated from Bishops University in 1993.

Resources
Roger Hardy --- The Visionary, BCBusiness
http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/people/2006/10/02/visionary-roger-hardy

Web Sales Grew Nicely for Coastal Contacts in 2009, Internet Retailer
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=32868

Listening to Customers - Sandbox Solutions, Canadian Business Online
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/columnists/roger_hardy/article.jsp?content=20080501_198714_198714

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Dr. David Tennenhouse, partner at New Venture Partners, Talks about Different Approaches to Open Innovation

tom@tomparish.com — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:50:51 GMT

(26:31)

In this podcast, Dr. David Tennenhouse, a partner at New Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on corporate spinoffs, talks about different approaches to open innovation. New Venture Partners practices what Tennenhouse calls inside-outside open innovation.

Partners and other staff members at New Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with about $700 million under management, do not spend their time slogging over business plans looking for the next Amazon.com or Google.com. Instead, New Venture Partners works with global companies to spin off prospective new product ventures residing in research labs and business units. To date, the firm has invested in more than 50 spinoff ventures from companies such as British Telecom, Philips Electronics and Freescale Semiconductor. A spinoff from Lucent, New Venture Partners became a standalone venture capital firm in 1997. The firm has its roots in Bell Labs where it incubated new projects and then created new ventures from them.

David Tennenhouse, a partner at New Venture Partners, labels his firm's approach to investing an inside-outside form of open innovation. He says, "The companies we work with practice open innovation in two ways. First, they have an inside component where they input knowledge into the company. Second, they use an inside-outside component to use external vehicles, such as venture capital firms, to create spinoff venture. Open collaboration becomes the way we work together to amplify the dissemination of a company's internal research and to enable it to influence the surrounding ecosystem."

Tennenhouse has had much hands-on experience practicing inside-outside open innovation. He was previously a director of research at Intel. He says, "Many of Intel's corporate research projects made a successful transition to existing business units. Some projects created new business units, which is the gold standard for a research director. Many projects, however, did not have a natural home within the company. That situation allowed me to undertake the mission to spin off the project or engage in inside-outside open innovation. The job included taking the benefits of the company's learning about the prospective product and influencing the ecosystem around us. The difficulty was to do this knowing we were not going to make and market the product."

In this podcast, Tennenhouse talks about the need for companies to turn to open innovation, the way open collaboration enhanced open innovation at Intel and other organizations, the emergence of innovation that venture capital firms are seeing, and the takeaways CIOs need to be aware of if they want to promote innovation and open innovation.

Bio
Dr. David Tennenhouse is a partner in New Venture Partners. He joined the firm from Amazon.com where he was vice president of platform strategy and chief executive officer of its A9.com subsidiary. Before Amazon/A9, Tennenhouse was director of research at Intel Corporation. He also worked as a chief scientist at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.

Tennenhouse is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a Fellow of the IEEE. He is also an advisor to Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and to the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. Tennenhouse holds a B.A.Sc. and M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and obtained his Ph.D. at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

Resources
Verizon Leads 4G Investment Group, The New York Times
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/verizon-launches-13-billion-4g-investment-group/

New Venture Partners Looks to Find the Next Big Thing, Fox Business
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/innovation/new-venture-partners-looks-start-ups-corporations/

Innovation in Stormy Markets, National Venture Capital Association
http://nvcatoday.nvca.org/index.php/current-issue/112-innovation-in-stormy-markets.html

CTOs Embrace Open Innovation, Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/127254/ctos_embrace_open_innovation?fp=16&fpid=0

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Steve Shapiro, InnoCentive's vice president of Strategic Consulting, Talks about Using Open Innovation to Solve Tough Problems

tom@tomparish.com — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:30:40 GMT

(20:11)

In this podcast, Steve Shapiro, InnoCentive's vice president of strategic consulting, talks about how InnoCentive's open innovation model has helped companies solve the most challenging problems.

When the Oil Spill Recovery Institute in Alaska wanted to find out how to pump out the almost solidified oil at the bottom of Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez spill, the Institute did not turn to its researchers. Instead they posted a challenge to InnoCentive, an emerging company that specializes in open innovation, also called crowdsourcing. According to The New York Times, the Institute paid John Davis, a chemist from Illinois, more than $20,000 for his idea. Davis, an expert on cement, figured that if making cement vibrate can keep it from hardening, then a similar concept can be adapted to keep the oil in the tanks from freezing.

Founded in 1998 by three scientists working for Eli Lilly, the major pharmaceutical company, InnoCentive, became an independent company in 2005. To date InnoCentive companies, such as Dow Chemical and Procter & Gamble, and not-for-profits have posted more than 1000 challenges on InnoCentive. Research areas include everything from business processes to chemistry. Steven Shapiro, InnoCentive's vice president of strategic consulting, says that today's corporations cannot depend on their internal research and development departments to solve their toughest problems. "They need to look at external resources. InnoCentive enables these organizations to tap into a global network of more than 200,000 solvers who enjoy the challenge of competing for a cash reward. Our partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation is helping to solve problems posted by not-for-profits working in poor countries."

In this podcast, Shapiro explains the reasons for using open innovation to solve tough problems, InnoCentive's business model for generating revenue, some of InnoCentive's most successful challenges, the benefits of using InnoCentive, and the challenges this company faces in this economy.

Bio
Steve Shapiro is InnoCentive's vice president of strategic consulting. He founded the 24/7 Innovation Group, a management research and education company focused on helping organizations be more competitive. Before 24/7, Shapiro spent 15 years with Accenture, where he established and led its Global Process Excellence Practice. He delivered innovation training to 20,000 Accenture consultants. His books include 24/7 Innovation, Goal-Free Living, and The Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas. He earned a B.S. in Engineering from the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University.

Resources
Open Business Model Player InnoCentive Radically Expands Its Markets, Opensource.Association

http://freethinkr.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/open-business-model-player-innocentive-radically-expands-its-markets/

If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/22inno.html

Crowdsourcing Innovation: Q&A with Dwayne Spradlin of InnoCentive, Fast Company
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kermit-pattison/fast-talk/millions-eyes-prize-qa-dwayne-spradlin-innocentive

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Content Strategy and Media Production by Tom Parish, Inc.

Sponsored by BMC Software

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How CIOs can Reshape Their Company's Business Model: C.K. Prahalad, Best-selling Author and Academic

tom@tomparish.com — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:37:29 GMT

(23:08)

In this podcast, C.K. Prahalad, author of The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value through Global Networks, and Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, talks about how CIOs can use innovative technology to reshape their company's business model, as well as drive new opportunities for poverty-stricken areas. (He calls the latter the bottom of the pyramid.)

Despite the downturn in the economy, this is a great time to be a CIO or CTO. That's the conclusion from C.K, Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy and the author of best-selling management books such as The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value through Global Networks, and Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits. He says, "Because some CIOs must work under the pressure of shrinking budgets and don't have much time for innovation, this might be a tough concept for some CIOs to grasp."

Prahalad lists four fundamental drivers that can create new opportunities for all kinds of businesses - everything from retailing to financial services to manufacturing. These drivers include the convergence of technology, convergence of industry boundaries of technology, the emergence of social networking, and the globalization of things such as the global supply chain, global markets, and global research and development in third-world countries.

He says, "Convergence of technology is all around us. For example, the cell phone and the PC are now merging into one device. We're seeing a dramatic reduction in the cost of digital technology. Social networking sites such as Facebook didn't exist five years ago. Meanwhile, many companies have taken advantage of global opportunities by expanding to new markets in China and India."

In this podcast, Prahalad provides specific examples of how senior IT executives can address new business opportunities for their companies, how new technology initiatives can drive business opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid, why companies should embrace the concept of open innovation, and what the CIO role will be like 10 years from now.

Bio
C.K. Prahalad is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and a globally recognized management thinker. He has consulted for the top management of many of the world's foremost companies, such as Ahlstrom, AT&T, Cargill, Citicorp, Eastman Chemical, Oracle, Phillips, Quantum, Revlon, Steelcase and Unilever. Prahalad serves on the board of directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited, and the World Resources Institute.

His best-selling management books include The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value through Global Networks, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits (rereleased in 2009), The Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (co-authored), Competing for the Future, and The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers. He has authored numerous award-winning articles, several of which won Harvard Business Review McKinsey Prizes. Other prizes include European Foundation for Management Award in 1993, 1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper, and the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence.

Resources
C. K. Prahalad Talks about How Changing Business Models in the New Age of Innovation Will Impact IT, Enterpriseleadership.org
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/Articles/2008/07/23/c-k-prahalad-talks-about-how-changing-business-models-in-the-new-age-of-innovation-will-impact-it

C. K. Prahalad Talks about Business Models Driving the New Age of Innovation, BTM Institute
http://www.btminstitute.org/LeadershipInsight/CKPrahalad.html

How Strategy Guru C.K. Prahalad Is Changing the Way CEOs Think
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968089.htm

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Tom Koulopoulos, author of The Innovation Zone and Delphi Group founder, Talks about the Challenges of Driving Corporate Technology Innovation

tom@tomparish.com — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:54:40 GMT

(19:51)

Many business gurus consider relentless innovation to be the United States' only remaining edge in a global marketplace marked by labor arbitrage and the competitive threats posed by exploding economies in China and elsewhere.

Tom Koulopoulos, the author of a new book, The Innovation Zone, and the founder of the Delphi Group, says, "While some progress is being made on the innovation front, too many U.S. companies still under perform when it comes to driving the type of sustained innovation needed to meet this competitive threat. On the other hand, many corporations are looking at operational innovation as a way to cope with the complexity technology brings."

In his book, Koulopoulos demonstrates how organizations can create and sustain a culture of innovation. Koulopoulos, who writes a blog called The Innovation Zone (http://www.tomkoulopoulos.com) says that if public and private organizations are serious about taking the lead in innovation and re-invigorating the marketplace and U.S. economy, they must move behind the hype of innovation and apply proven techniques and processes. His book provides a how-to-do blueprint for innovation process methods that organizations can put into practice. He says, "We need to stop singing innovation kumbaya and start delving into the practice and science of innovation."

Koulopoulos' insights about innovation have received wide praise from luminaries such as Peter Drucker, dee Hock, and Tom Peters who called Tom Koulopoulos' writing, "a brilliant vision of where we must take our enterprises to survive and thrive." According to Peter Drucker, Tom's writing "makes you question not only the way you run your business but the way you run yourself." He is also editor of the Delphi Report, a quarterly journal for business and technology leaders.

He sees signs that organizations are embedding innovation in their business practices, and that they have devoted both financial and staff resources to innovation. He says, "It's surprising to me that more companies actually are putting people in positions of authority with respect to innovation. They are not necessarily new people; they are folks that are already on staff, but they also are carrying that [innovation] badge."

In this second Enterpriseleadership.org podcast, Koulopoulos talks about the following:

the status of technology efforts in the U.S. corporations;
the challenges of IT innovations in global corporations;
the ways companies have used IT in innovative ways;
the need for corporate education programs in innovation;
the things CIOs and CTOs need to do to get involved in corporate innovation; and
the way his organization works with clients to drive corporate innovation.

Bio

Tom Koulopoulos is the founder of the Delphi Group, a 20-year-old Boston-based thought leadership firm providing advice on leading edge technologies to global 2000 organizations and government. He sold Delphi to Perot Systems in 2004 and today serves as managing director of a global innovation lab.

During the past two decades Tom Koulopoulos' works have introduced core industry concepts, frameworks, and vernacular that describe the impact of technology on business. These things include Single Point of Access, Touch Points, Digital Control Rooms, Business Operating Systems, Corporate IQ, Information Value Chains, and Smartsourcing.

InformationWeek named him one of the industry's most influential information management consultants. Koulopoulos' insights on the implications of IT on global organizations frequently appear in national and international print and broadcast media, such as BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, CNBC, CNN and NPR.

Tom Koulopoulos' eight books include: Smartsourcing, Corporate Instinct, Smart Companies, Smart Tools, and The X-economy.

Tom Koulopoulos has also been an adjunct professor at the Boston College Wallace E. Carroll Graduate School of Management and a guest lecturer at the Boston University School of management and Harvard University. He is the former director of the Babson Center for Business Innovation.

Resources

Enterpriseleadership.org Podcast - Tom Koulopoulos - The Innovation Zone
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/podcasts/2009/06/29/podcast-with-thomas-m-koulopoulos-author-of-the-innovation-zone

Podcast -Tom Koulopoulos on Unemployment, Innovation & the PUMA Personal Transportation Vehicle from Segway & GM, The Wall Street Journal Online
http://arikjohnson.com/2009/04/10/tom-koulopoulos-on-unemployment-innovation-the-puma-personal-transportation-vehicle-from-segway-gm/

IT Outsourcing According to Tom Koulopoulos, Wisconsin Technology Network
http://wistechnology.com/articles/2795/

Architecture & Process keynote: Tom Koulopoulos
http://www.column2.com/2008/04/architecture-process-keynote-tom-koulopoulos/

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Steve Cakebread, former Salesforce.com Executive: Demystifying Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 Platforms

tom@tomparish.com — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:00:31 GMT

(19:12)

In this podcast, Steve Cakebread, the former president of Salesforce.com, takes the mystery out of cloud computing by explaining the complementary relationship of Salesforce.com, Google's Apps Engine, and Amazon's Web Services.

When Steve Cakebread joined Salesforce.com in 1999, the company had not even introduced its first product. That event happened two years later with the introduction of the single CRM product called Singular Edition people. Today, Salesforce.com has moved beyond CRM to become a diversified company in platforms such as knowledge management and service support. Cakebread says that these new platforms will help to spur the growth of the cloud computing industry.

Meanwhile, cloud computing has got a shot of adrenalin with the likes of Amazon.com's Web Services and Google.com's Apps Engine. Amazon.com built its business around store fronts and logistics, while Google.com's built its business around a consumer's ability to search. Cakebread says, "Amazon's Web services help businesses create those storage fronts on the fly through collaboration or cloud computing, as well as to provide businesses with additional storage and computing power. If you look at Google.com's Apps Engine, it is now creating developer platforms that make it easier to add information for consumers to share in businesses network."

Cakebread says that these three entities have a complementary relationship with each other through various relationships and partnerships. "Each of these technologies, even through they are considered cloud computing, all have different strengths. Salesforce.com is the business platform provider. Google.com focuses on search, while Amazon.com focuses on store fronts, logistics, storage, and computing power. All of these technologies are internally designed on the same technology platform as Oracle Solutions and blade services. The reality is that their architectures are very different, but they can be used by platform developers to achieve service and reliability."

In this podcast, Cakebread also discusses the key technologies that will benefit from cloud computing, the other areas in which both cloud computing and Web 2.0 will enable innovative enterprise applications, and the issues that need to be resolved before companies can deploy cloud computing widely.

Bio

Before becoming CFO of Xactly Corp., Steve Cakebread was the president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com. He had been the company's CFO for six months. During his tenure as Salesforce.com's CFO, Cakebread helped to grow the company from $22 million in annual revenue in 2002 to about $749 million in revenue in fiscal year 2008. He also led the company through its initial public offering in 2004.

Cakebread came to Salesforce.com from Autodesk, where he served as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Autodesk, he was vice president of finance for Silicon Graphics. He has also held many key positions at Hewlett Packard.

Cakebread holds a B.S. in Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a MBA from Indiana University.

Resources
Podcast -Steve Cakebread on SaaS, sales performance management, IT Knowledge Exchange

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/voices-of-crm/steve-cakebread-on-saas-sales-performance-management/

SaaS & the CFO: A Special Webinar with Steve Cakebread

http://www.opsource.net/event/saas-cfo-%E2%80%93-special-webinar-steve-cakebread

Salesforce.com exec named Xactly CFO, Silicon Valley Business Journal
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/02/09/daily51.html

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Dr. Joel West, Academician and Author, Talks about the Open Innovation Paradigm for Technology Development

tom@tomparish.com — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:53:25 GMT

In this podcast, Dr. Joel West, an associate professor at San Jose State University's College of Business, talks about the open innovation paradigm for technology development. His teaching and research focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. Along with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke, West is editor of the book, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

Working and living in the heart of Silicon Valley, Dr. Joel West cannot get away from technology innovation. In fact, his course offerings and research at the San Jose State University's College of Business focus on technology innovation and strategic management in technology companies. San Jose State University ranks at one of the top 25 research business schools in the U.S.

Dr. West's interest goes beyond traditional innovation to the concept of open innovation. He defines it as the idea of using the market rather than the internal hierarchy, both as a source of innovation and a way to commercialize innovation. Open innovation also means treating innovation like anything else -- something that can be bought and sold on the open market, not something that happens within a company. He says that a company can no longer depend on its internal resources to drive its innovation efforts.

His research in open source computing led him to look at open innovation and a book on the subject. He was one of the co-editors with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke on the book, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (2006). He also writes several blogs about open innovation, including openinnovation.net, which describes his research and provides comments on other academicians' research projects.

In this podcast, Dr. West explores what powers the concept of open innovation and how it differs from traditional innovation efforts, such as research and development. He says that open innovation raises the question about how those companies that practice it differ from those organizations that have research and development programs. Henry Chesborough explored this in the first book on open innovation published in 2003.

West says, "Companies that practice open innovation will do the same things they did before they adopted it. They might have a research and development department. Chesborough went one step further by looking at the revolutionary nature of open innovation. According to him, open innovation is a process that enables a company to find the best sources of innovation, and to find the best paths to commercialize that innovation. The company might accomplish these goals looking within company and looking outside the company. They might take other paths that they would not have considered if they did not know about open innovation."

Dr. West has two important takeaways for chief information officers, chief strategy officers, and chief technology officers: look for external resources who know how to make your products better or who have new products ideas, and find the best ways to bring these resources into your organization. He says, "You might look at university students, your suppliers and customers, or an open innovation community. You might have to look at all of these possibilities to find out which class of individuals or position in the value chain will provide the best ideas you want. Money does not always motivate people to share their ideas with you. Many people like the idea of a challenge to compete for recognition. You might have a contest to find the best ideas."

Bio

Dr. Joel West is an associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Department of Organization and Management in the College of Business at San Jose State University. His research, teaching, and industry experience center on global technology industries, which provide the lifeblood of Silicon Valley.

His research findings have appeared in Asian Survey, Information Systems Research, Management International Review, R&D Management, Research Policy, Telecommunications Policy, and The Information Society, among other journals. He has won best-paper awards for tracks of the Academy of Management and HICSS conferences, and has been active in service to the research community. Along with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke, West is editor of the book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

West earned a Ph.D. in management from the University of California, Irvine.

Resources

Joel West's Personal Blog

http://http://blog.openinnovation.net/2010/02/joel-open-innovation-podcast.html

Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm

http://www.openinnovation.net/Book/NewParadigm/

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Mastering Agility – How IT Can Drive Revenue: Michael Hugos, former Fortune 1000 CIO and Author

tom@tomparish.com — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:00:22 GMT

In this podcast, Michael Hugos provides insight from his CIO experience and his latest book, Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.

Michael Hugos, the former CIO for Network Services Company, took a different track when he wrote his latest IT book. Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World provides business executives with tools and tips on how they can help IT professionals drive business revenue. He says that IT professionals tend to forget that the business is where the money is. That's why IT exists." He adds that technologies, such as cloud computing, open source and virtualization, will provide great cost benefits to the business. "We need to be in better position to guide these decisions."

Hugos has first-hand experience working with business executives to drive revenue at Network Services Company, an $8 billion cooperative of 86 distributors that market industrial products to major companies. Before this company became agile, the profit margin on coffee cups was practically nothing and getting smaller. Multiply this by Network Services' distributors who sell to 5,000 stores across the country. He says, "We banded together under this cooperative and worked closely with sales. Interesting things started to happen and ideas for making more money started to flow." The information-based, value-added services Hugos helped to devise returned a two percent to three percent profit margin. "If you do things right, you can earn more money or what he calls the agility dividend"

Hugos thinking is nothing new. He refers to the invisible hand theory which Adam Smith, the great British economist, came up with 250 years ago. He says, "The invisible hand pushes the price of all products to their cost of production. No amount of fast talking sales people and ball game tickets will change this."

The end result for Network Services was complete transparency for more products. Hugos says, "Out of the 50 items we came up with, we carried out 25 for them. For example, we could fill an order directly off a purchasing system or via EDI or XML. We now had a customized solution that made our paper cups more valuable."

In this podcast, Hugos provides some current IT enablers that will help an organization achieve speed and agility, give some examples of companies that have achieved both business and IT speed and agility, and offers takeaways to help CIOs assess the business impact of IT based on speed and agility.

Bio
Michael Hugos, at Center for Systems Innovation [c4si], mentors companies and teams in practices of IT and business agility. Up until 2006, he was the corporate CIO at Network Services Company, an $8.2 billion cooperative distributor of janitorial product and disposable food service items. His books include the Essentials of Supply Chain Management (2nd Edition), Building the Real-Time Enterprise, and he contributed to CIO Best Practices -- Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology. His most recent book is Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.

Resources
Michael Hugos' Blog, CIO Magazine, "Doing Business in Real Time"

http://advice.cio.com/taxonomy/term/30

Michael Hugos' Website

http://www.michaelhugos.com/Center_for_Systems_Innovation.html

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

We'd love to hear what you think. Send us your feedback.

Vid Byanna, Accenture IT Executive: Driving a Global Company's Collaborative/Cloud Computing Initiatives

tom@tomparish.com — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:15:40 GMT

In this podcast Vid Byanna, executive director of Accenture's internal IT infrastructure, talks about his company's collaborative computing, and cloud computing initiatives.

Each day the 177,000 employees at Accenture, a $19 billion global IT services company, must communicate effectively with 1,000 of customers in more than 120 countries. In fact, Accenture executives often find themselves looking for internal experts who can support specific customer engagements. The traditional process has involved emailing one's network of colleagues to help with the search. Now these executives can use Accenture People, an internal version of LinkedIn, to search the company's global network of employees.

Accenture People comprises Accenture Collaboration 2.0, a global set of technology initiatives to improve knowledge sharing, enhance communication, and allow for dynamic collaboration within the organization. Technologies in this collaboration platform include social networking applications, greater search functionality, telepresence, and unified communications.

Vid Byanna, the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilitities and Web 3.0 initiatives, says that Accenture Collaboration 2.0 allows employees quickly to get access to the information from experts who can help resolve an issue, or kick start things that deliver value to customers better than through traditional methods. For example, 30 minutes after looking in Accenture People, an employee was holding a telepresence session with an Accenture expert on digital media communications."

Meanwhile, with the help of the Accenture Cloud Opportunity Assessment Tools, the internal IT Accenture organization also has developed a cloud computing strategy. It consists of both internal and external cloud computing initiatives. He says, "We think of cloud computing as dynamic resource allocation of computing capacity, storage and other resources. It gives us the ability quickly to provide these resources for peaks and valleys in IT resource demand. We have heavily invested in our internal cloud by consolidating all of our business applications in a single data center. We also have virtualized our servers, databases, and storage. We are now looking at what external cloud providers can give us. Will these services supplement what we have, or will they give some more scale capabilities?"

In this Enterpriseleadership.org podcast, Byanna talks about the following:

the catalysts for Accenture Collaboration 2.0 platform,
the key technologies that comprise this platform,
the different ways Accenture plans to extend its internal collaboration initiatives to partners and customers,
the Accenture cloud computing strategy,
and the benefits the company plans to derive from cloud computing.

Bio

Vid Byanna is the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilities. He reports to Frank Modruson, Accenture's CIO. Byanna also drives the implementation of IT products and services to support the company's mergers and acquisitions organization.

Before stepping into his current role, he held other IT leadership position in Accenture's CIO organization. From 1989 and 1998, Byanna was part of the company's communications and high-tech operating group, where he directed large solution-oriented projects for global telecommunications providers.

Byanna received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and a M.S. in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Before joining Accenture, he worked at Bell Laboratories.

Resources

Accentures Topples Communicatons Barriers, InfoWorld

http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/accenture-topples-communication-barriers-745

Leveraging Knowledge to Better Meet Client needs, Accenture

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Services/CIO/LeveragingNeeds.htm

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis