• Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Design Principles for Complex, Unpredictable, People Oriented Systems – I found the best explanation for the growing importance of design in a short, elegant article in The Economist, Design Takes Over, by Paola Antonelli, senior curator for architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “There are still people who believe that design is just about making things, people and places pretty.  In truth, design has spread like gas to almost all facets of human activity, from science and education to politics and policymaking.  For a simple reason: one of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change.” “Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life.  When the internet happened, they created interfaces with buttons and hyperlinks that enabled us all to use it.  Designers make disruptive innovations manageable and approachable, so that they can be embraced and assimilated into life.  And they never forget functionality and elegance. . . Design is moving centre-stage in the eternal human quest to make beauty out of necessity.” Design principles are particularly applicable to problems that are socio-technical in nature, that is, they involve people and technology, having to deal both with complex technical, business and societal infrastructures and human behaviors.  They are critical for dealing with the Grand Challenge problems we are facing in the 21st century, including health care, urbanization, education, energy, finance, and job creation.   What do we mean by applying design principles to complex, unpredictable, people oriented systems and problems?  Let me discuss three such principles based on my personal experiences.
• Innovating User Value – The Interrelations of Business Model Innovation, (Service) Design Thinking and the Production of Meaning | Service Design Network – Abstract
  We live in a hyper-competitive world, where whole industries either shift towards services or become obsolete due to new market entrants, technologies or even social practices. A world, where permanent interactions with customers, fast time-to-market, and the ability to innovate »right« (e.g. the right thing or value) are the key to corporate success. On that score the business sphere isn't getting tired of emphasising the need for strategic innovation (which means »creating superior customer value«, business model innovations or even the disruption and creation of new markets). This paper uncovers some of the often overlooked links of design (design thinking, design-driven innovation and service design) to strategic innovation through the lens of »customer value«. It will do so by …   Disenchanting the big corporate rhetoric on above claims by showing that prevailing and too one-sided understandings of strategy and innovation, rather reinforce than escape old industry paradigms.   Examining designs still undervalued contributions to strategy-making by approaching business challenges with a user/value-centric and radical service logic.   Showing that every dimension of strategic innovation culminates in the concept of perceived user value and meaning, which gets reviewed in detail (dimensions, forms, properties), especially with regards to constructing value propositions.   Arguing that the current service design and business model innovation discourses cannot be negotiated separately, as they may be good methodological complements.   So when speaking about the innovation of value for the customer, the paper argues, the above stated and seemingly separated fields intersect. Therefore their most apparent systemic connections and the facilitation of value creation by design are outlined and discussed.

• Die Corporate-IT-Abteilung von Amazon stellt SharePoint 2010 in der AWS-Cloud bereit – Die Corporate-IT-Abteilung von Amazon stellte ihre äußerst geschäftskritische IT-Anwendung, das unternehmenseigene Intranet, in der AWS-Cloud bereit. In dem Whitepaper werden die Bereitstellungskriterien, die Sicherheitsanforderungen, die Architektur und die Implementierung der betriebsnotwendigen Anwendung erläutert. Es wird nicht nur beleuchtet, wie sich die Abteilung die Sicherheitsfunktionen von AWS und Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (und Microsoft SQL Server 2008) zu Nutze machen und eine Anwendung, die überaus vertrauliche Daten beinhaltet, bereitstellen konnte, sondern auch offen und ehrlich dargelegt, welche Lehren daraus gezogen werden konnten.
• Three Principles for Net Work | Harold Jarche – Conclusion These three simple principles of narration, transparency and shared power should provide enough guidance to motivated leaders in an organization. Implementation depends on the specific context of each organization and the ability to keep things in what I call, “perpetual Beta”. Power-sharing and transparency enable work to move out to the edges and away from the comfortable, complicated work that has been the corporate mainstay for decades. There is nothing left in the safe inner parts of the company anyway, as it is being automated and outsourced. The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they already know has increasingly diminishing value. How to learn and solve problems together is becoming the real business advantage.
• Alexander Stockers Weblog zu Web 2.0 für Unternehmen: Erfolgsmessung von Social Media – Die Frage ist (für mich) immer, was kann überhaupt gemessen werden – und was nicht.
  Sind denn vielleicht gerade die nicht messbaren Effekte jene, die den meisten Nutzen für das Unternehmen bringen.
  Eine einheitliche Aussage zur Erfolgsmessung gibt es nicht und wird es niemals geben – denn die Ziele sind zu individuell und die Parteien zu interdisziplinär.

  Ich selbst stelle mich aber grundsätzlich auf die Seite der Befürworter der Erfolgsmessung – denn wer nicht misst, der kann sich und andere nicht verbessern. Dennoch gebe auch ich zu bedenken, dass man nicht jeden Effekt zu jeder Zeit messen kann. In Zeiten der Wirtschaftskrise befürchte ich daher, dass viele gute Projekte daran scheitern werden, wenn ROI-fokussierte Entscheider diese gleich verhindern bzw. laufende Projekte abdrehen

Embedded Link

The megatrends companies must face to meet sustainability challenges
Systems thinking comes of age as KPMG says environmental, social and economic problems cannot be solved separately

Google+: View post on Google+

(too many question marks, for one)

((too radical in a way, and it does not help to alleviate that problem by pushing emotional intelligence))

So, all in all, a quick but disturbing read.

Embedded Link

Collaboration is about humans, not technology
How important do you think new technologies, platforms, and tools are for collaboration? I would say that they are the fuel that enhances it, but the core -the essential raw material- that we need for…

Google+: View post on Google+

• The Network Singularity: Organization Networks – Rather unbelievable how limited network comprehension is and how slow people gain a network mindset. it is a real problem. Changing the org chart, moving the nodes and connections, in an effort to improve performance, is primitive org/social network analysis (SNA). People are often dismissive of the org chart. However, organizational hub and spoke network configurations are critical for continuity, resource allocation, governance and so forth. Org charts are often the formal networks of the organization.
• Get Your Team to Work Across Organizational Boundaries – Brad Power – Harvard Business Review – A social media platform like Handshake or a three-day process workshop are just tools to help build and maintain teams that work across organizational boundaries. These tools need to be complemented by new behaviors of the CEO and C-Suite, shared objectives and measures, and a governance structure and management processes to implement changes together and monitor and celebrate progress. These institutional changes are huge. Yet, as shown in the MITRE and patient journey examples, the best way to compete is to get everyone working together across boundaries to solve customer problems. Question: What experience have you had in building teamwork across organizational boundaries?
• AIIM2012 Clay Shirky Keynote | Collaborative Planning & Social Business – The title of his talk was “To Make Sense of Data, First Make Sense of People“. His central theme is that for a business, knowledge management is not purely knowledge management, and is becoming more & more associated with people management.  Change is getting messier, more human, and more social.  New tools and techniques are needed, and are becoming available for problem solving.
• AIIM2102 Dion Hinchcliffe Keynote | Collaborative Planning & Social Business – Dion Hinchcliffe has been a luminary in the social technology space, however with this talk “Mobility First: New Opportunities” he has shifted into being an evangelist for mobile computing.  For a very good reason: the shift to mobile computing is the most dramatic technology transition in history.  Ever.   What follows are my notes from the talk.

• The 6 Pillars of Social Commerce: Understanding the Psychology of Engagement (Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 social innovation. Edited by jérémy dumont, strategic planner in FRANCE) – The psychology of social commerce reveals the emotional elements that stimulate the human network. It is the understanding of the 6 pillars of social commerce that facilitates the development of a more cohesive and connected online experience for customers. More importantly, by investing in the value, productivity and efficiency of consumer decision making and not just the outcome, businesses can not only earn reciprocity and goodwill, but also earn social capital as a result…and, that’s priceless.

• Open Innovation als strategisches Unternehmens-Konzept – Co-Creation/Toolkits für Open Innovation Je enger die Zusammenarbeit mit den externen Wissensträgern wird, desto wichtiger werden die Prozesse und Formen der Zusammenarbeit. Social Media- / Web2.0-Technologien sind die Basis für eine effiziente Zusammenarbeit. Unter Toolkits werden Entwicklungsumgebungen verstanden,  die es den Nutzer erlauben, ihre Bedürfnisse direkt und iterativ in den Produktmanagement-Prozess zu überführen. Spätestens in dieser Konstellation wird, wie generell im Social Media-Umfeld, eine offene Unternehmenskultur zur Voraussetzung für den Erfolg. Die nach innen gerichteten Denkweise des ‘Not Invented Here’ Syndroms würde die erfolgreiche Open Innovation-Strategie verhindern. Auch die Prozesse der Zusammenarbeit müssen geregelt werden, um die Effizienz, aber auch Motivation der Teilnehmer zu sichern. Co-Creation kann man häufiger in der Automobil-Industrie sehen. Beispiele sind Local Motors oder Streetscooter.
• Managing beyond the organizational hierarchy with communities and social networks at Electronic Arts | opensource.com – Lessons EA’s experience also makes clear the need for management to support mass collaboration—management not in the sense of controlling but in the spirit of working within the community to help members refine their purpose as well as to motivate participation, generate a flow of ideas, and facilitate decisions should the community become deadlocked. Among the key lessons: Support and enable individuals, but don't add to their workload. Empower teams to make recommendations and decisions. Provide an interactive, content-filled platform that will draw people in and keep them interested and engaged Think big: what about communities of customers, partners, IT staff, and the entire business ecosystem? But start small: kick off 4-5 pilots to get started Establish governance and a competency center, but allow communities sufficient autonomy to spawn, scale and thrive The platform and toolset are critical success factors Get help and find leverage to jumpstart the platform. At a very minimum, communities should get people talking and sharing!
• Reimagining capitalism—as principled, patient, and truly social | opensource.com – It’s time to radically revise the deeply-etched beliefs about what business is for, whose interests it serves, and how it creates value. We need a new form of capitalism for the 21st century—one dedicated to the promotion of greater well-being rather than the single-minded pursuit of growth and profits; one that doesn’t sacrifice the future for the near term; one with an appropriate regard for every stakeholder; and one that holds leaders accountable for all of the consequences of their actions. In other words, we need a capitalism that is profoundly principled, fundamentally patient, and socially accountable.
• The Innovation Matrix Explained: Innovation Competence « Innovation Leadership Network – Elements of Innovation Competence As is the case with Innovation Commitment, we don’t have a system yet for quantifying Innovation Competence. While the core metric should be something like how many new ideas you execute and diffuse successfully, here are some questions you can ask to assess where you currently are along this dimension:

  How many new ideas do you successfully execute and diffuse?

  Are you good at all the components of the idea management process?

  Do you practice different forms of innovation?

  Do you practice both small and large innovation?

  Do you have an innovation portfolio

  Does your firm have a culture of systematic experimentation?

  Does your firm learn from failure?

• A scenario is a description of a persona using a product to achieve a goal, they describe an instance of use…in context. (Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 social innovation. Edited by jérémy dumont, strategic planner in FRANCE) – Why Use Them There are a number of reasons that scenarios are useful for experience design. They can provide a vehicle for communication as well as a mechanism to explore design solutions. They help mediate the thinking and communication required in design. They are concrete yet flexible enough to change and morph in detail as the project progresses. They help us understand the flow of experience and are tools for thinking about design (they help us reflect and reason) They help us present and situate solutions They help identify potential problems They are easily understandable by all stakeholders as they are story-like They can provide rich descriptions of use in context which can spark ideas and help inform design They help determine if the design solution is appropriate They can help us see social factors and help understand a users multi-channel experiences (i.e.z on and off-line_