Will democratising of Innovation lead to futility of Patents & copyrights?

There is the amazing trend of democratizing innovation carried out by Open Source Software..remember a blog I had written on the same topic fome time back....it seems the abstraction of the thoughts there has finally leading me to understanding the idea of democratizing innovation...thanks to great open source book by Eric Von Hippel and the book by MS Krishnan and CK Prahalad in their book "New age of Innovation"...


Interestingly, we are seeing more user initiated innovations shared freely and openly off late. It seems the key motivation for sharing the innovationa re:
1. The purpose of sharing innovation to benefit the society... Great example generics in the market by developing countries like India...I know pahramaceutical companies will hate this, but who cares! other example include wikepedia
2. The value of getting back refinements to the innovative idea by user community that leaves the product or service richer than it would have been otherwise..Great example is Linux...other example include the custom Semiconductor development kits by Xylinx
3. The motivation one gets by merely sharing their learning experiences to wider audience out there....Great example Innovation community portals (i've written about these earlier)

Now lets look at it from the financial angle:
we know that innovation leads to sunken cost for the innovator...there can be the direct costs or several proxies to these costs such as invested time, effort, and so on...We all know from our business experience that sunken costs are always unavoidable and unrecoverable unless some greedy accountant out there capitalizes it and amortizes it over the the life of the innovated product/service so he can avoid paying additional taxes ;-)...so whats the big deal in not being too obsessed with recoverability of the cost...the benefits of sharing openly that I listed above far exceeds the sunken cost for some....

So now lets come to the entire idea of having patent and copyright laws preventing/limiting the wider commercial benefit of an innovation...what it really means for the commercial benefit is to exploit the common need of the large community of users by the manufacturer/service provider to make money...in the process what really happens is the innovative product/service focus is to not only recover the sunken cost but also to generate more benefit to satisfy the greed of the organizations....The product/service meeting mass-market needs is not good enough for some users of it, who have either found better use for it by innovating more on the product...good example here is the surf board holders innovated by surfers to enable them jump over waves pointed in the book by Eric von Hippel...or alternate uses for the product :-) Benadryl used as a good substitute for chep intoxicating agent....

Atleast in the 21st century of consumerism we will see more users and the communities will start creating more innovation on the product making the product more of a commodity....the patents and copyrights then naturally becomes futile either by filing new patent over the base and completely altering it...well some of the TRIZ fans would love this.....Net-net what it will do is displace the manufacturer from the Product-Development/Engineering and Service development domains. They may only survive in the realm of Manufacturing or Service execution spaces purely due to the benefits that can accrue due to scale economies...

So what does it really mean....i've really argued (may not be a very erudite one) for futility of patents and copyrights and favoring the open source innovation as long as I'm not a manufacturer of the service provider with huge sunken costs :-)....Whats your view...

Cloud Computing & SOA - Hype and Hoopla

There is so much hype and hoopla about Cloud computing and Service Oriented architecture....as I had earlier mentioned in my earler article that these are going through the peak of Inflated expectation (thanks Gartner for this nice terminology other than the Magic Quadrant)....

If you have been long enough in the IT career say 10-15 years you can see through it nothing differently than Inflated expectations...

Remember the great hype and Hoopla created at every phase of an Innovation:
a. Midrange computers challenging the Mainframes: The SUN & HP of thw world giving the IBMs of the world the run for their money...it all seemed to be a great hype on midrange as Intel based servers today are giving the midranges run for their money...
b. RDBMS challenging the Network and Hierarchical DBMS: Remember the Oracle/Ingres/Sybase/Informix/DB2s of the world giving the DEC and IBMs databases run for their money...we also brefly saw Object oriented Databases momentarily sending sparks and fizzling out
c. Client server architecture challenging the Mainframe screens/C cursors/the Windows SDK fat clients: Remeber Oracle, Powerbuilders of thw world giving the gargantuan and complex Windows SDKs run for their money...all to be challenged again by the internet thin client frameworks...we saw a full circle here...

What is a pattern we see in all the above...it seemed that they are really reinventing the wheel or coming a full circle...I'm unable to articulate this much better, but let me try and give this simple analogy...its like the earht going around the Sun year after year in a clocks precision...I dont really see the Cloud computing any different from retracing the Mainframe era....and the SoA going back to the very fundamentals of what the technologies and methodologies exit for to run a business with what you have rather than buying new technology to support the existing business....

So whats so great about the SoA and Cloud Computing...not coz' i', not chasing them this time...it all seems to be a good marketing gimmick...what has to be innovated in the technology space has really been innovated and it is just about putting the old wine in a new bottle or just plain message in a bottle ;-).... it seems its all about the context and not really the core....

What do you think? Just a hype and Hoopla around cloud computing and SOA...Whata the big deal?

Dealing with Darwin in the IT Industry - What is the Innovation strategy that is apt for the IT Industry

In Dealing with Darwin book Geoffrey A. Moore brings a great menu of innovations types that can be applied by organizations operaing in different market/growth phase of their respective industry...

Let me trace the growth of Indian IT Services Industry and the innovations that were so effectively applied over 2 distinct phases:
Early 1980-2000: The Indian IT Industry was in the growth phase and if we look at the dominant innovation themes was that of Disruptive innovation of Offshoring. The primary participants here were TCS, Wipro, Infosys, PCS, IBM, and HCL-HP
2000 onwards the IT Service industry is quickly become that of a mature market: The dominant innovation themes used in customer intimacy zone were: marketing Innovation and experential Innovation. The marketing innovation was to provide different types of services AM, & AD and within them Fixed price, capacity and T&M models. The experential innovation was to provide services to client businesses on SLA and KPI. The participant in the industry were still TCS, Wipro, Infosys, IBM, HCL-HP and we saw new emerging MNC like Accenture :-)...
On the operational excellence zone it was a combination of Process Innovation and off late Value engineering and Migration innovations. The process innovations were the ISO, CMMI and so on. ALl participants in the industry have adopted this innovation which resulted in these cores actually becoming the context. Very few organizations graduated to the value engineering and Value migration innovation like TCS and Wipro by adopting 6-Sigma and Lean management practices....But there are some fast followers..

Now all the above innovations have actually been adopted and replicated very quickly by other resulting in these cores actually becoming the context...Now every client looks for their service provider to have adopted and assimilated these innovations. Hence performing on Quality, offshoring etc. only gives a neutral or negative outcomes to service providers and definitely not positive :-)...

The question of what is really the core of the services offered by IT services companies...I really dont know....I've been struggling to figure this out myself...the core it seems really lies in the unique culture of the organizations and in specific domains of IT service like in embedded engineering etc. we'll dvelve on this topic later...but you can reach me through the comment section if you are interested in discussing this and application of the 5 model core-context repurposing strategy...

It is also interesting to understand what will a new player getting into the market operate on in the mature market. It definitely has to be a disruptive innovation...where will this disruptive innovation come from:
1. Marekting innovation/Experential innovation in the customer intimacy zone: For example: Cost, price innovations like outcome based pricing, variable margins, etc.
2. Integration, Value Engineering, Value Migration/Process Innovation in the Operational excellence Zone: Usage of automated tools or operating model to provide a unique benefit to the client....

Or a combination of the above two...It would be good to think about this
Interestingly we see that the market has not gone into Declining market yet...so I'll reserve discussing this for later...however we have seen some organizations may soon reach this phase if they are in niche/commoditized service areas like AM where only the bigger players can survive the challenges by sheer scope and size....

Well my thoughts are flying in a zillion directions right now....maybe i'll structre it better with more insights....watch out this space for more....

Starfish & the Spider - The power of networks in IT Organizations

I read the excerpts of the book Starship and Spider and really loved the power of Starfish - Network of decentralized decision making...

Its quiet amazing how the author narrates the difficulty faced by Spanish in decimating the Apache tribe in the US, while the same decimated the Incas and the and other tribes of New mexico....

It seems it was difficult to decimate the apache coz it was a tribe which shared decision making in decentralized groups....the network of the groups were linked up by a Nantes where ideals, and beliefs are shared consistently among the Apache tribes...quier amazing..this is exactly what we with the evolving terror modules of Al Qeda..The interesting part of such society is that whenever it is attacked the society becomes even more open and decentralized...

No doubt the Americans have not learnt their lessons in dealing with the Talibans in the Afghan and Pakki borders...


Now imagine large MNC or Transnational organizations operating a network of delivery center...do they really run it as a decentralized empowered network node that runs their organization...not exactly they are strongly controlled by the Headquarters either as a cost center or as a profit center with control over common functions like marketing, branding, corporate finance..etc. they have some function that limits and subserves the node to the headquarters....look at countless organizations in this sphere, P&G, Unilever, Pfizer, J&J, Dell, etc. But, do these MNC/TNC really achieving their mandate of successfull growth in the regional nodes they operate in...Not really they are also ran...



Just look at the IT Industry, the Indian Pure Plays are gicing a run for money to the large MNC/TNC like IBM and Accenture....How do they manage to do that so effectively...it seems the MNC/TNC always in a reactive mode when it comes to competing with the Indian Pure plays...almost to an extent that the Indian nodes of the organization grow only coz clients come to indian pure play....would they have really grown and pursued a strategy of India growth otherwise...

My perspective is a BIG NO...coz there are certain paradoxical and conflicting Performance gaols that drive the organization. For example Revenue received by using the India node is much less when compared to using the local workforce...the challenges of economic factor and their management: Inflation, Forex, etc.

What do you think? Any other whacky conspiracy theory????

What is common or different between "Product Lifecycle", and "Technology Hype-Curve"?

 

To understand the basic jargons here are few references for you:
1. Product Lifecycle: http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/product/lifecycle/
2. Technology Hype-Curve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

 

A quick Narrative

When we look at the combined figure all new technology trigger leads to new product introduction in the market. The unabated hype results in inflated expectation this is usally marked by the growth  and maturity phases. The market soon comes to grips with the real potential of a technology offering in terms of the benefits/utility of it and troughs in disillusionment, this often is the stage of market decline. The final phase is a plateau of productivity reached by the new technology, this is where the product sales tanks… This is where the “Innovators dilemma” creeps in and also if there is no innovation dilemma there is the “long tails” for the product…Which way it heads to depends on what is the nature of innovation….

Now lets look at the commonality and difference between the curves….

 

First Lets tackle what is common:
1. They all have a "S-Curves" or seemingly a "Normal curve"
2. They all explain the phenomena of a seemingly predictable pattern for entities through their lifecycle
3. They all appear to be simplifying (maybe somtimes trivializing!) the challenges of Technology Forecasting. (Refer more on techniques one uses in Technology forecasting...)

Lets look at what is so different:
1. They use different jargons (depending on your subject of interest: Marketing, Change Mgmt, etc.) to explain the inflection points on the curves


I cant see any more differences though...Need your help! Any comments or perspectives you can share?


We can look at few ideas like Grid Computing, Cloud computing, SoA and so on on the curves to see how they pan-out... Quiet interesting to view these trends by positing them on the curves....I was quiet amused when I was reflecting on my journey through school where I was so obsessed with AI and NLP...Thanks to my internship in one of the premier R&D center and few Terminator type movies, I was able to see through the disillusionment :-)...

Its a worthy exercise after all!

For more reading on this topic visit : http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-futr.htm#adoption

Its time well-spent I would

Lean in ADM - Mckinsey Chauvinism

Sometimes I like criticizing Mckinsey and their superficial thoughts. Here it goes again on using Lean techniques for ADM engagement. How shallow and superficial they seem to be sometime! http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technology/Management/Applying_lean_to_application_development_and_maintenance_1979

I remember dealing with bunch of Mckinsey consultants donning a impeccable (Armani) suit and combing hairs in the rest room before a scheduled meet with CxO of my former organization - guess what they were pitching to get a consulting assignment to pioneer lean techniques in IT Services. Ironically they reviewed the work I was already doing for a large utilities companies, pretended to ask me questions and understanding what I've done (well ofcourse deep down I could sense they were thinking how to make their USD 25 Million money out of this client, and were giving me the "Rats-Ass"). They then repackaged whatever I told them into a nice document/ppt and pitched to the top mgmt. claiming to solve all the problems of the organization.

Guess what you can fool around with some people some time, but not all of them all the time!. They got mutiliated when their idea was presented to the leadership and lost the deal. On the contrary some good sense also prevailed among the leadership, to let us pioneer lean techniques ourselves by just reading books and applying it innovatively in our organization...the rest was taken over by the HBR case study on whether applying innovative techniques like Lean can help change course of my former organization over the other formidable competeitors in the IT services market....

The next I heard was 3000 miles away in Germany when an ex-Mckinsey partner messing up with a Communication giant telling them that vendors should apply lean techniques to cut-down ADM to accomodate + or - 30% variability after committing to the estimates....

Anyways happy reading Mckinseq quarterly....It is good sometimes to introspect!...

Now, I feel a lill good bitching about Mckinsey! I'm a mere mortal and this is my second nature!

Mean, Lean and the Almighty!

Is 6-Sigma the answer to managing the Cost of Poor Quality for IT projects?
Thats a mean sales gimmick...by just staring at the UCL and LCL for metrics and then determining the means and reducing the variability does not lead to reducing the CoPQ.


Is Toyotas Production System abstracted as Lean management a panacea for IT services productivity?
It is a pretty interesting question, and its answer depends on whom, when, how and with what intent you are asking.


Can applying any of the above method lead to 30% IT productivity?
Maybe Almighty can answer this!


Is it better than using Agile methodologies for Software development?
The answer to the above, in my opinion is fairly easy for anybody who is seasoned in the IT industry and has dealt with a typical SDLC/V-Process model for their Software products' development.

Deciphering software complexity - Cohesion, Coupling, threading and concurrent engineering

I was just curious to understand software complexity & concurrent programming...increasingly so as I was encountering several deals where there is a requirement for software concurrent engineering to reduce cycle time from requirements to production deployment especially in AD engagements. It reminded me of the complexity assessment throuhg dependency matrices and application of DSM technique expounded by my former collegue Navneet. It reminded me then to look into cohesion, coupling, concurrent engineering and cyclometic complexity topics in software engineering that I learnt long back while in college. I never got the time to look at it, except for now as I was thinking of a novel approach to handling this problem and write a paper!

Cohesion is defined as the closeness of the relationshio between its components [Ian Somerville on Software engineering]. There are 8 difeerent levels of cohesion in order of increasing strength: Coincidental, logical association, temporal cohesion, procedural cohesion, communicational cohesion, sequential cohesion, functional cohesion and object cohesion.

Coupling is the strength of interconnectedness between the components during design.

In general a reduced software complexity requires high cohesion and loose coupling.

For concurrent engineering perpective one can look at how multi-core processors are handling concurrent execution. This takes me back to the basics of concurrent execution and synchronization basics [Terrence W Pratt, Programming language] I read while at college. Concurrent execution is facilitated through syncronization techniques such as interrupts, semaphores, guarded statements, multi-tasking and so on. Now the paradigm for concurrent execution has shifted with multi-threading and the concept boosted with multi-processor and multi-core systems.

What of the above technique can we use to address software complexity and concurrent
software development?

Breaking down the cost-to-serve parameter for service management optimization

The objectives of managing the service (any service Consulting, System Integration, Application Outsourcing, etc.) through application of innovation techniques are to reduce the cost to service. It is critical for one to understand the constituent factors that influence cost to serve goal. The following diagram crisply captures the factor trees that influence the cost to serve goal.



Now we can capture the difference in the estimate/forecasted cost for each of above
parameters, measure the actuals during execution and drive management and control to minimize the differential.

Our transformation intiatives can be focussed on reducing the estimate/forecast cost in the first place...we'll dvelve more on this topic later...

Any thoughts on what factors I might've missed

Illustration of a constraint model for optimal outsourcing decision

Lets assume the client has shared the following volumetric and requested the service provider to bid for the Application maintenance deal:

Guiding factors:

Utilization %	60%
Call Data Period	1 Month

Call Characteristics:

Domain	Technology	Sev 1	Sev 2	Sev 3
Billing Application	Java	3	15	13
Customer Care	.Net	5	10	28

Required SLA:

		in Minutes
	Availability	Response Time	Resolution Time	Actual Resolution time (Billing)	Actual Resolution time (Customer Care)
Sev 1	24/7	5	60	45	60
Sev 2	8/5	15	240	160	173
Sev 3	8/5	120	480	300	390

Based on the above details we can apply the step-wise resolution step to shape the deal:

Step 1: Assuming that the demand is even and the incoming calls has a poisson distribution, the l

Since Sev 1 calls are 24/7 availability we are assuming the pattern is evenly spread over 24 hrs, 30 days and 60 minutes and l for sev 1 is Number of calls/(24*30*60)

	Sev 1	Sev 2	Sev 3
Billing Application	0.0001	0.0016	0.0014
Customer Care	0.0001	0.0010	0.0029

Step 2: Assuming the service rate is an exponential distribution, the m

Service rate = 1/(Actual resolution time in minutes)

	Sev 1	Sev 2	Sev 3
Billing Application	0.0222	0.0063	0.0033
Customer Care	0.0167	0.0058	0.0026

Step 3: The number of resources for each domain, the r

	Sev 1	Sev 2	Sev 3	Total	# of resource
Billing Application	0.0052	0.4167	0.6771	1.0990	2
Customer Care	0.0116	0.3003	1.8958	2.2078	3

Step 4: The deal optimization based on the above characteristics can be illustrated as follows:

Lets’ assume the following assumptions:

1. We consider 2 locations US and India for this deal

2. We assume there are no shift requirements and the support will be on-call basis

3. There is only 2 levels in workforce: Software engineer and System Analyst

4. The cost for onshore-offshore is as identified in the following table:

	All figures in USD per Hour
	India	US
System Analyst	21	65
Software engineer	19	60

5. Lets assume the pyramid definition is as follows:

	India	US	Engagement Pyramid
System Analyst	5%	95%	10%
Software engineer	95%	5%	90%

The objective function can be laid out as follows:

Min X_onshoreC_{onshore, System Analyst}R_{Onshore,System Analyst} + X_onshoreC_{onshore, Software Engineer} R_{Onshore,Software Engineer} +X_OffshoreC_{Offshore, System Analyst}R_{Offshore,System Analyst} + X_offshoreC_{offshore, Software Engineer} R_{Offshore,Software Engineer}

Based on the above equation we can represent it as follows:

Min X_onshore*65*R_{Onshore,System Analyst} + X_onshore*60*R_{Onshore,Software Engineer} +X_Offshore*21*R_{Offshore,System Analyst} + X_offshore*19* R_{Offshore,Software Engineer}

The constraint for this is defined as follows:

R_{Onshore,System Analyst} + R_{Onshore,Software Engineer} <= 5*X_onshore

R_{Offshore,System Analyst} + R_{Offshore,Software Engineer} <= 5*X_offshore

R_{Onshore,System Analyst}+ R_{Offshore,System Analyst} <= 0.5

R_{Onshore,Software Engineer}+ R_{Offshore,Software Engineer} <= 4.5

X_onshore + X_offshore = 1

X_offshore - X_onshore >= 0

Any Optimization engineer will be able to solve the above equation using a tool to arrive at the optimal deal parameters. We did the above and identified the following optimal function.

The above is an approach 1 for constraint model for outsourcing deal.....how do we do this in approach 2? What are the limitations of the above model?

We'll revisit these issues later...any ideas and recommendations....

Cost optimization objective for service management/delivery in an outsourcing engagement - A challenge

As in any optimization problem the goal or objective of a outsourcing function is to minimize the cost of providing the service to the lines of business. Evolving an objective function is riddled with multiple factors making it increasingly difficult for one to establish an objective function. Typical factors of an objective function are:

1. Onshore-Offshore percentage

2. Choice of delivery location to perform the services in an outsourced environment

3. Composition of workforce to perform service delivery (managers, Analysts, Software engineers, etc.) and their cost

4. The number of shifts designed to perform service delivery

5. And several more (not sure what I'm missing here)

Modelling based on the above factors results in devising an objective function next to impossible. In this context I was considering two approaches for the same:

Approach 1: Why not we consider all the above factors and design one single objective function. For example:

Min ååå X_dC_aR_b

^{d a b}

where X is each location where service delivery is performed and d = {India, US, China…..}

C is the cost per shift per resource pyramid and a ={(Shift A,Cost of Executives in location d), (Shift A, Cost of Managers in location d), ,…..(Shift A, Cost of Software Engineers in location d), (Shift B, Cost of Executives in location d)…. (Shift B, Cost of Software Engineers in location d), (Shift C,Cost of Executives in location d)…. (Shift C, Cost of Software Engineers in location d)}

R is the number of resources per resource pyramid in each shift and b = {(Shift A, # of Executives in location d), (Shift A, # of Managers in location d), ,…..(Shift A, # of Software Engineers in location d), (Shift B, # of Executives in location d)…. (Shift B, # of Software Engineers in location d), (Shift C,# of Executives in location d)…. (Shift C, # of Software Engineers in location d)}

Approach 2: We peel the optimizing functions for each of the key parameters and individually optimize them.

I'm yet to figure out which is the best approach to figuring out a optimizing function. If I choose the former then the function becomes too complex and modelling the constraints equally so. Will such a function be solvable.

If I adopt the Approach 2 then I'm not looking at it from a systemic perspective and hence may inherently end up building a suboptimal objective function while the individual parameters themselves are optimized.

Any thoughts on what could be the right approach?

Service management - Applying simple queue model to address service management challenge

A simple Server queue model can be applied to address some of the challenges identified in the blog http://insightful-journey.blogspot.com/2008/07/service-management-issues-with-using.html:

The following step-wise approach can be adopted on the same:

1. Demand characterization is nothing but the l for a unique combination of the service factors (Service type, service scope, service domain and service category). The best way to represent such a set of demand characterization is defined using the mathematic notation below:

l = l_ijklm

i Î {Incident management, Problem Management, Change requests/enhancement..}

j Î {Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4}

k Î {Business, Infrastructure, Application…}

l Î {sev 1, sev 2, sev 3, sev 4…)

m Î {Java, .Net, Tibco, Oracle, …)

2. Capacity for providing service can be determined based on the service rate for each combination of service factor.

m = m_ijklm

i Î {Incident management, Problem Management, Change requests/enhancement..}

j Î {Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4}

k Î {Business, Infrastructure, Application…}

l Î {sev 1, sev 2, sev 3, sev 4…)

m Î {Java, .Net, Tibco, Oracle, …)

3. The optimal service level objective can be set by setting factors:
1. Utilization percentage (as indicated above) 70-90% but not 100%. (Note that a model which is 100% utilized is unstable)
2. Healthy backlog for tickets to smoothen the demand-capacity gaps. This can be determined as the number of request in queue for each combination of service factors
3. Balanced service time for service tickets and a cap on target improvement. Uncapped service improvement target leads to instability in system and disproportionate cost to maintain such a model.
4. Assuming a typical utilization of 90% we can determine the number of resources for each demand:

r _ijklm (number of resources) = l _ijklm /m _ijklm/90%

Total number resources R = å r _ijklm

This is a classical optimization problem where one can apply constraint theory for solving it. (We will cover this in detail later).

4. Designing the optimal demand-supply model can be determined by applying constraint theory for an optimal engagement.
1. Objective function is the minimum resources to manage the engagement (note we are not using a function to minimize the cost due to complexity introduced in the system due to workforce, the levels, delivery center utilized and so on)
2. Constraints are defined by cap on service requests, backlogs and service time for each combination of service factors,
5. Execution and sustenance of the service model requires one to have the right value stream map (a.k.a. service process), waste elimination by continuously eliminating non value added activities (for example reducing the infused management team for transition engagement), improving turn around time for service tickets by measuring and optimizing time for value added activities (one can also apply other engineering techniques such as DSM, concurrent engineering, etc.), using multi-skilling of resources through ongoing training, and so on.
6. Continuous improvement involves driving some transformation initiatives similar to ones identified in point 5 above to reach the ideal state as determined by the server queue modeling in Step 2.

Your comments & thoughts welcome!