‘In the beginning computers were human. Then they took the shape of metal boxes, filling entire rooms before becoming ever smaller and more widespread. Now they are evaporating altogether and becoming accessible from anywhere.’ (About as brief a history of computing as anyone can make it, The Economist, 25 October 2008).
It’s hard to know where to start when thinking about the pace and scope of technology innovation. Every aspect of our lives has been transformed and will be transformed again. Some of the wildest predictions in the past have proved to be no more than pipedreams whilst others turned out to have understated the change that followed. Consider these four quotes as examples:
Consider these four quotes as examples:
‘Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons’ (Popular Mechanics, 1945)
‘There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home’ (President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977)
‘640k ought to be enough for anybody’ (Bill Gates, 1981)
… and my own personal favourite:
‘Everything that can be invented has been invented’ (Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899)
No matter who you are, accurately predicting the future of technology is notoriously difficult, and the rate and variety of new ideas and innovations does nothing to make the job any easier. It’s the responsibility of senior Information professionals to make sense of the huge array of technology innovations and convert all the options and possibilities into a series of decisions that will optimise the investment their business makes in IT.
In most organisations today, technology is all-pervasive If it isn’t, it probably should be. In some competitors it definitely will be. In fact’ it’s a bit of a nonsense to think about innovation in technology in isolation of innovation in the business. That’s a real challenge, because there is often, still, a big divide between how life is viewed by the business and technology communities. We see more and more CIOs defining their roles in terms of driving the business forward in the use of IT. To achieve this goal, the divide clearly needs to be bridged.
We’ve seen computer technology move from room-filling mainframes through ground-breaking mini-computers to life-changing personal computers, which in turn may now be under threat from handheld devices and smartphones. Now the talk is of industrial-strength data centres fuelling a network of ‘clouds’ – virtual entities through which users, both corporate and personal, can access software and data in ways that only a year or two ago would have been totally inconceivable.
The reality of technology innovation is there for all to see, and the pace is only going to step up. But what does it mean for our organisations? And specifically, how do we turn what can be a bewildering, if exciting, canvas, into a picture we can understand and exploit?
In our consulting work, which takes us into large corporates and all over the public sector, we still find there is a significant divide between the business and technology communities. Largescale IT-driven business transformation projects have forced collaboration but it’s often not a smooth relationship and it’s all too easy, once the project is over, to retreat into a comfort zone which is often the other side of a big fence. Many large organisations are still struggling to pin down the benefits of these massive projects – ERP being a great example – and the lack of a truly integrated business and technology team is one – only one – of the typical reasons for this.
So if working together with the technology of today is a challenge, what of the opportunities and threats of tomorrow? It’s a huge question and yet, of course, finding the right answer will be commensurately valuable. The prize here isn’t driving out benefit from today’s platform; it’s designing the business model, perhaps even market models, of the future.
Many organisations are geared up to miss a great opportunity. On one side is a technology community bogged down in supporting current operations, without the bandwidth to keep abreast of technology developments or the appreciation of business strategic priorities to be able to relate those developments to current or potential business need or opportunity. On the other is a business that, however clear their strategic aims, are crying out for an understanding of where and how technology could take them to a different place. Bringing the two together is not an easy task, but it is where the ability to think and act innovatively will yield rewards that repay the demands of the journey, over and over again.
Out there … but on its way in here
At any point in time the technology landscape contains a rich array of possibilities – some ready to be exploited right now, some within sight of commercial application, others still out in the far reaches of the universe. But you can’t help noticing that a lot of the here and now has made the journey across the spectrum with startling speed, and if social networking, ubiquitous wireless devices and Second Life are now part of the reality of doing business (which they are), who can afford not to have an eye on what is ‘out there’ today but coming our way tomorrow? There is much talk and much hype today about cloud technology, but manifestations of it are already with us and it doesn’t require too much imagination to see a near-future world where personal data is owned by the individual and shared with selected suppliers, or where agile organisations are in the habit of gathering and responding to information transmitted from customers or the market in real time. You could list hundreds of possibilities and still be thinking of more.
The point is less about what the technological breakthroughs of the future are going to be; it’s about how technology experts, wherever they sit and wherever they are employed, align their knowledge and ideas with those of business leaders and strategy-setters so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, and the future turns out to contain possibilities that nobody could have envisaged without collaboration, imagination and vision. This is the most important and potentially fruitful type of collaboration of all.
