The Enterprise IT Adoption Cycle: warning, graphic content

I lay no claim to this illustration at all, although I wish I had thought of it myself.

Illustration by Simon Wardley, 2012

For all the talk about competitive advantage and agility, enterprise IT departments tend to be inherently conservative beasts.  A classic case in point comes from this quote by silicon valley startup guru and former SAP strategist Ryan Nichols (originally published here in 2011:)

"You know, the reality is that enterprise IT is going to be looking to different vendors for different things, and I think one of my learnings from the time I spent at SAP is that SAP’s enterprise customers want SAP to be the system that doesn’t change, be the system that they don’t need to touch more than once every five years. That’s what they want SAP to stay, which is why it’s so tough for SAP to innovate and change because at the end of the day, their customers don’t really want them to."

I am a huge fan of Geoffrey Moore's work.  In this 2010 Slideshare presentation, he describes his concepts of Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement, and ties them to the challenges of moving enterprise IT departments beyond the last panel of Wardley's graph.

Back on track

This my blogging Mea Culpa

Why has Infrics been fallow for so long?  Well, the short answer is that I let my depression at not finding a professional job convince me that I really didn't have that much talent, not that much useful to say.

And THAT, I promise, is the very end of my whining. Time has renewed my appreciation that I have a lot left to contribute, and moving into my 60s has helped me realize that time is valuable.  At 20, there was a horizon WAY out there, and there was always time to go a different direction.  The horizon is a little closer now--time to get busy!

This is a listing of the main topics areas I want to approach with my return to active writing and posting, and some of the specific titles/subjects.

• Embedded in Retail: observations of an industry analyst who has spent 2 years on the front line.

Management lessons from the emerging future:

• The hidden value of your front line, and the enterprise failure to apply social network techniques to capture that value. 
• The “reverse Maslow pyramid” effect and why it's so hard for useful information to make it up chains of management. 
• Why personalization is both more important and easier than ever, and why it matters as an incentive to change your management approach. 
• Personalization granularities, and why they matter to supply chain and marketing (the “no lawn furniture at Home Depot in FL when the weather gets nice” effect)

Other topics

• The failure of HR, and how talent is going to waste. 
• Updates on the business of research. 
• How the 24 hour news cycle and SEO are poisoning the way we research and use information. 
• Continuing the discussion of separation of digital ownership and rights management, and the house of cards implied by content ecosystems. 
• A return look at Google: Chrome OS update, Google’s ongoing mess with digital content (the Photos debacle) and the evident failure of one hand at Google to know what the other is doing. 
• A new hands-on strategic planning idea: using the concepts implied in technology trigger graphs as a way to make enterprise planning more effective. 
• The horrible mess we've created by measuring the wrong things in business, and then acting as if those metrics are a useful tool.

So I am back, and I'd like your help.  If any of these ideas resonate, let me know so I can work on them sooner.  And please hold my feet to the fire; if I don't post at least once a week, drop me a line and say, "Hey! Where the hell are you and why haven't we heard from you?"