Oh, the future...it just arrives so fast. Sometimes it's already here. Sometimes it arrives in the 1760s in Britain and yet people can still talk today about the coming automation revolution. What would happen if they found out that the Future of Work is mostly just like the past of work? But then they would have to actually read history, or visit factories, or realize that jobs aren't sacred or finite in number.
Reading about the "Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work" by Vikram Bhalla , Susanne Dyrchs , and Rainer Strack brought to mind my recent visit to the state of Pennsylvania's printing and sign department, which is located in Harrisburg about fifteen minutes drive from the Capitol, which is a government entity that has to bid against the private sector for state government contracts, that does not receive an annual budget allocation, and has to break exactly even every year. And they have so many cool machines. This department has rapidly automated their workflow in the past five years: sorting machines and printers that work 1000s and 10000s of times faster than human. They've also expanded their workforce from 12 to 35. Automation hasn't been a massive disruption; rather, good management has used technology to optimize work processes and increase capacity and value. They have a clear strategy and mandate to provide excellent printing services to the PA state government. They are constantly aware (from talking to them) of the numbers, of the data, of the ROI for everything they do. But there's still intuition and institutional knowledge. The machines and data are just tools. 23 jobs isn't a massive, but I would say this micro-tale of a government department checking all the right boxes is indicative of a more positive macro-level reality of the future of strategy and what firms achieve. It will mostly be the same toolbox as the past and present, but a better toolbox with cooler tools. The "Twelve Forces" have already changed how many organizations act, some for 100s of years and others more recently.
Porter and Kramer's "The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value" should be replace Porter's "Five Forces" as required reading for managering types (just as an aside, the authors of "2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating" should give it a read, if nothing else so to emulate Porter and Kramer's tone and even-keeled evaluation). The reality of value-generating technology clusters has a long history (Pittsburgh a hundred years ago, Italian ceramics for the past few hundred years, Silicon Valley for the past 60 years or so, etc). I had this plan that CMU's general council shot down (yeah, I took it all the way to the top) to do an exchange semester at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in spring 2019 to study under Dominique Foray, a French economist who developed the "smart specialization" idea, which is currently a core part of the EU's economic development strategy. The essence of smart specialization is exactly what Porter and Kramer outline in their article: develop technology clusters such that businesses within said clusters are able to generate high value for a given geographic pocket of Europe. The EU sees in smart specialization a way to not just redistribute funds, but to increase the size of the pie. The idea of "shared value" is slightly different, here looking more to the German SME model of clustering and firm-level value, but the essence is the same. Alas, thanks to aforementioned CMU general council, the exchange agreement remained unchanged, I won't study under Foray, and I'll never know about smart specialization on a deeper level. I am left with no other alternative for spring 2019 and the foreseeable future than public service technology consulting with IBM. Such is life.
References
Creating Shared Value (Porter and Kramer, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2011)
Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work (Bhalla,
Dyrchs, and Strack, Boston Consulting Group, March 2017); https://www.bcg.com/enus/
publications/2017/people-organization-strategy-twelve-forces-radically-change-organizationswork.
aspx
2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating (Anthony,
Viguerie, Schwartz and Landeghem, Innosight, 2018);
https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/
Reading about the "Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work" by Vikram Bhalla , Susanne Dyrchs , and Rainer Strack brought to mind my recent visit to the state of Pennsylvania's printing and sign department, which is located in Harrisburg about fifteen minutes drive from the Capitol, which is a government entity that has to bid against the private sector for state government contracts, that does not receive an annual budget allocation, and has to break exactly even every year. And they have so many cool machines. This department has rapidly automated their workflow in the past five years: sorting machines and printers that work 1000s and 10000s of times faster than human. They've also expanded their workforce from 12 to 35. Automation hasn't been a massive disruption; rather, good management has used technology to optimize work processes and increase capacity and value. They have a clear strategy and mandate to provide excellent printing services to the PA state government. They are constantly aware (from talking to them) of the numbers, of the data, of the ROI for everything they do. But there's still intuition and institutional knowledge. The machines and data are just tools. 23 jobs isn't a massive, but I would say this micro-tale of a government department checking all the right boxes is indicative of a more positive macro-level reality of the future of strategy and what firms achieve. It will mostly be the same toolbox as the past and present, but a better toolbox with cooler tools. The "Twelve Forces" have already changed how many organizations act, some for 100s of years and others more recently.
Porter and Kramer's "The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value" should be replace Porter's "Five Forces" as required reading for managering types (just as an aside, the authors of "2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating" should give it a read, if nothing else so to emulate Porter and Kramer's tone and even-keeled evaluation). The reality of value-generating technology clusters has a long history (Pittsburgh a hundred years ago, Italian ceramics for the past few hundred years, Silicon Valley for the past 60 years or so, etc). I had this plan that CMU's general council shot down (yeah, I took it all the way to the top) to do an exchange semester at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in spring 2019 to study under Dominique Foray, a French economist who developed the "smart specialization" idea, which is currently a core part of the EU's economic development strategy. The essence of smart specialization is exactly what Porter and Kramer outline in their article: develop technology clusters such that businesses within said clusters are able to generate high value for a given geographic pocket of Europe. The EU sees in smart specialization a way to not just redistribute funds, but to increase the size of the pie. The idea of "shared value" is slightly different, here looking more to the German SME model of clustering and firm-level value, but the essence is the same. Alas, thanks to aforementioned CMU general council, the exchange agreement remained unchanged, I won't study under Foray, and I'll never know about smart specialization on a deeper level. I am left with no other alternative for spring 2019 and the foreseeable future than public service technology consulting with IBM. Such is life.
References
Creating Shared Value (Porter and Kramer, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2011)
Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How Organizations Work (Bhalla,
Dyrchs, and Strack, Boston Consulting Group, March 2017); https://www.bcg.com/enus/
publications/2017/people-organization-strategy-twelve-forces-radically-change-organizationswork.
aspx
2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating (Anthony,
Viguerie, Schwartz and Landeghem, Innosight, 2018);
https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/
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