July 2009

As the global economy shifts and turns, IT must be strategically positioned to add corporate value in 2009 and beyond. These papers, events and research reports will keep you informed of the latest trends and help IT stay on track.

• A Meeting of the Minds: Innovation, clean technologies and even cloud computing were among the topics discussed at the recent National Summit gathering in Detroit, June 15-17. The high-level forum addressed the state of the U.S. and global economies and offered solutions to improve competitiveness. CEOs and leaders from major corporations, government and consultancies — in the U.S., Canada and Asia — shared ideas and created action items to pursue. See full details of the event here.

• Lean Blog: John Shook, Senior Advisor of the Lean Enterprise Institute, asks in a recent blog posting whether technology staffs often become bottlenecks as a result of technology glitches or whether it’s due to deficiencies in their communication skills. It’s a question that may ring true for CIOs who need to align their staff’s skills with the needs of the business. Shook suggests that both types of capabilities must be optimized in a lean, productive business. Read the blog.

   

• Branching Out: Forrester Research has published a new report that describes the benefits of branch-office consolidation. In the report, “Optimizing the Branch,” Analyst Chris Silva concludes that “as businesses look to IT for the efficiencies, savings and streamlining that will improve the bottom line, consolidation of branch office infrastructure represents a distributed, but easy-to-optimize area of IT infrastructure.” Read the executive summary here.

• Virtual Backlash: Do virtual teams actually inhibit collaboration and decrease business productivity? After years of global expansion and praise for dispersed work groups, a new study — conducted by the VitalSmarts corporate training group — suggests that there may be a downside to these arrangements. The study, “Long-Distance Loathing,” is based on 500 individual responses. It claims that telecommuting damages morale and productivity compared to business groups that work in the same location and offers five tips for holding crucial conversations with remote colleagues: These include: Talking before problems start; praising early wins; never raising individual concerns publicly, and clarifying what you don’t want to say. Read full details on the findings and see the chart attached.

• European Design: IT productivity begins with good system design and, even more fundamentally, with efficient microchips and processors. Current as well as upcoming developments in the electronics industry were discussed at the recent Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE09) conference, held in Nice, France, in April. Keynote speakers included Mike Muller, Chief Technology Officer, ARM; Joseph Sifakis, CNSR Researcher and Founder, Verimag Laboratory; Pierre Garnier, Vice President, Texas Instruments; and Eric Flamand, Head of Computing Division at STMicroelectronics. The sessions aimed to bring together basic laboratory research work with real-world industrial applications. Topic areas such as healthcare electronics, parallel software design and emerging technologies were discussed. Review the agenda here.

• Download This: Has information technology leveled the competitive playing field between large and small firms? It’s a topic that was discussed at several conferences earlier this year and was noted by MIT professor Andrew McAfee in his blog. The original research paper, written by MIT doctoral student Adam Saunders, addresses “the ways and the extent to which IT is reshaping the economy and the relationship between IT and non-IT capital and the competitive dynamics within U.S. industries.” Saunders addresses three questions: Is IT affecting barriers to entry? What is the relationship between IT capital and the rate of turnover among small firms in an industry? And, he asks, is more IT associated with industries becoming more concentrated in smaller or larger firms? His answers? “When an industry becomes more IT-intensive, there is more expansion of firms and entry of new small firms.” Yet, he says, “There is also more turnover of small firms in the industry.” Download the full report as a PDF.