Thought you may find this story about Buffett's decision to buy Berkshire (the textile company) that he says is a $200 Billion blunder interesting in view of our discussion about IT leadership.
--
Cheers
Monday, October 18, 2010
A bit of a sideline to the discussion about the public sector:
One thing that came up a bit today was the potential or really need for the public sector to partner with the private sector in order to take advantage of technologies and the other resources that the private sector offers. On the other side of the coin, companies want to invest in the public sector, and areas like research and education to build up the pipeline of both technologies and people that will be available to their companies.
I thought it was interesting to note the recent gift of $50 million by Tata to Harvard (granted, not public, but it is education), in support of its business school and specifically the executive education programs. As investments go back and forth between companies and schools and the public sector, the boundaries of each start to blur. I wonder what the impact or influence of such investments will be on the goals and strategic direction of educational institutions like Harvard (or public institutions, both from education all the way to municipalites).
http://www.pr-inside.com/harvard-business-school-receives-r2179056.htm
One thing that came up a bit today was the potential or really need for the public sector to partner with the private sector in order to take advantage of technologies and the other resources that the private sector offers. On the other side of the coin, companies want to invest in the public sector, and areas like research and education to build up the pipeline of both technologies and people that will be available to their companies.
I thought it was interesting to note the recent gift of $50 million by Tata to Harvard (granted, not public, but it is education), in support of its business school and specifically the executive education programs. As investments go back and forth between companies and schools and the public sector, the boundaries of each start to blur. I wonder what the impact or influence of such investments will be on the goals and strategic direction of educational institutions like Harvard (or public institutions, both from education all the way to municipalites).
http://www.pr-inside.com/harvard-business-school-receives-r2179056.htm
Twitter & Disaster Response
For several years there has been talk of leveraging Twitter (and similar technologies) for use in crime fighting and disaster response. Even the MBTA Transit Police are getting in on the act. But a recent exercise--codenamed 'Exercise 24'--took this idea to a whole different level. Organizations and governments from 15 countries took part in the fake earthquake disaster exercise, whose purpose was to "test the speed and widen the scope of responses to a major disaster, focusing on how social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can be used."
This very well could be the face of disaster response in the future. As more people become connected and active on mobile social media platforms, resources like Facebook and Twitter increasingly contain relevant and accurate indicators of information. Twitter is increasingly being used to pull information, rather than to push information. With this in mind, what other ways could the public sector utilize such resources?
This very well could be the face of disaster response in the future. As more people become connected and active on mobile social media platforms, resources like Facebook and Twitter increasingly contain relevant and accurate indicators of information. Twitter is increasingly being used to pull information, rather than to push information. With this in mind, what other ways could the public sector utilize such resources?
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Where are Tomorrow's IT Leaders?
Susan Cramm is the founder and president of Valuedance. As a former CFO and CIO, she is an expert on IT leadership. In her blog "Where are Tomorrow's IT Leaders?" published at HBR, she shared her views on tomorrow's IT leaders. http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/cramm/2010/08/where-are-tomorrows-it-leaders.html
She acknowledged that the most IT leaders have been developed within the organization starting from junior-level positions, but with more and more such positions outsourced, it's become a challenge. The best IT leaders not only need to be technically competent, but also need to have the insider understanding of the business, have the ability to influence and lead change. Traditionally, companies have developed pipeline to prepare high-potential individuals to develop these skills and get on the path of becoming CIO, now as outsourcing impacts the pipeline, how can IT leaders be developed and where are they?
What are you thoughts?
She acknowledged that the most IT leaders have been developed within the organization starting from junior-level positions, but with more and more such positions outsourced, it's become a challenge. The best IT leaders not only need to be technically competent, but also need to have the insider understanding of the business, have the ability to influence and lead change. Traditionally, companies have developed pipeline to prepare high-potential individuals to develop these skills and get on the path of becoming CIO, now as outsourcing impacts the pipeline, how can IT leaders be developed and where are they?
What are you thoughts?
Help! They Hijacked my Facebook!
This article discusses the new security policy that Facebook has put into place as a reaction to users' accounts being broken into due to logging onto public computers or unsecure networks. Facebook now allows users to request a temporary password from their mobile phone. The temporary password has a 20 minute lifespan which shortens the opportunity window a cybercriminal has to break into the account. Facebook also now allows users to remotely view the locations where their account is currently logged in and confirm whether the users are legitimate based off the location of the login. Hacked accounts can be logged off and the user is prompted to change their password.
Hacking into a person's Facebook account doesn't at the surface seem very profitable. Are they going to look at my pictures? However, when you think about it, Facebook has a lot of information about your life. It potentially shows where you live, your birthday, phone number, who you are dating and most importantly a concise digital list of all your buddies as well as their basic information. A hacked account can potentially expose a person's entire social network to malware by using the trust associated with friends to trick users into visting potentially dangerous sites. While many are reluctant to click on a link from a stranger, they may not be as guarded when a friend sends a similar link. As Facebook becomes more and more integrated with a users daily life, it becomes a bigger and bigger target for cybercriminals. Scary stuff!
Hacking into a person's Facebook account doesn't at the surface seem very profitable. Are they going to look at my pictures? However, when you think about it, Facebook has a lot of information about your life. It potentially shows where you live, your birthday, phone number, who you are dating and most importantly a concise digital list of all your buddies as well as their basic information. A hacked account can potentially expose a person's entire social network to malware by using the trust associated with friends to trick users into visting potentially dangerous sites. While many are reluctant to click on a link from a stranger, they may not be as guarded when a friend sends a similar link. As Facebook becomes more and more integrated with a users daily life, it becomes a bigger and bigger target for cybercriminals. Scary stuff!
Japan looking to sell 'smart' cities to the world
The article on 7th Oct 2010 in Business Week read 'Japan looking to sell smart cities to the world'.
For a minute I thought that this is got to be the craziest idea every! How can someone or even more a country sell a smart city on a commercial scale? But, when I started reading the article it all started making sense. Below I have taken a few points from the article to give you a picture of how they plan to do this.
Recently in Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, better known as Ceatec, in Chiba-Japan the attraction was the concept of a smart city which was energy efficient in the year 2020. The Japanese have been toying with the idea of creating a smart city which uses energy solely from sun, wind and nuclear. Their goal is to create cities of the future which are carbon emission free and would help reverese the global climate impact. Japan hopes to make this their primary export in the future and help them recover from their current slump.
The city of Yokohama in Japan, is the site of a social and infrastructure experiment to create a smart city. Launched as a pilot project called "Yokohoma Smart City Project" it involves companies such as Nissan Motor Co., Panasonic Corp., Toshiba Corp., Tokyo Electric Power Co., Tokyo Gas Co., Accenture's Japan unit and Meidensha Corp.
The Japanese are treating the pilot smart city project very very seriously and hope to take this concept to other countries very soon. Japan is not the only country in the race to create smart cities of the future which are energy efficient. We see that Australia is in the process of creating a smart grid city in Newcastle in New South Wales and has already invested $100 million. South Korea is even more ambitious and are embarking on a $200 billion smart grid project on their Jeju Island. China is expected to invest $7.3 billion in smart grid and technologies this year. So all-in-all, alot of countries want to be the first to prove to the world that they can create and sell smart cities with smart grid technologies. But more so, it estimated that the global smart grid market will be worth $171.4 bn in 2014 and who wouldn't want to be part of such a large untapped market.
With competiton heating up, Japan hopes to be pioneer in creating smart cities and has already started courting overseas customers in emerging countries where demand for energy has always been higher than supply. The challenge though remains, for Japan and many other countries, in the race to create smart energy efficient cities to not just talk but walk the talk!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)