An inspiring evening courtesy of the Club of Amsterdam February 18, 2011
Posted by rthewins in Business, Society, Technology.1 comment so far
I had a great evening yesterday participating in a conference on the Future of Services at the Club of Amsterdam. It has been a while since I’ve done something like this and it reminded me how important it is to share data, information, knowledge beyond our professional borders. The Club of Amsterdam’s mission is “Shaping Your Future in the Knowledge Society” and I found the topic for the evening, my fellow speakers, the audience and, well, basically everybody to be an inspired, inspiring and impressively diverse collection of humanity.
My theme for the evening was Darwinian ecosystems as applied to business — or, as we call them at Pentacle, Money Making Machines. A quick romp covering the incredible economic longevity of the rock band Aerosmith versus the rock band game Guitar Hero, and the Battle Royale between BlockBuster and Netflix.
My official 15 minutes of air time was dutifully enforced by a repeated technology failure that prevented me from wrapping up my presentation as planned, but the key message still got through: in the New World business ecosystems are forming and collapsing with increasing velocity and a key driver for this phenomenon in products and services is the rapid evolution of consumer preferences. The constant creation of technology wrapped into informatized services has led to equally rapid declines in experiential tolerance.
In other words, consumers get bored much more quickly with the latest and greatest that they have now and want the next latest and greatest faster.
Other speakers covered the evolution of education programs for future designers, the future of hyper-personalized services and the future of the Internet of Things taken from a design perspective.
Eclectic topics, but all connected.
After a break for a half hour mixer with drinks, snacks and conversation, the speakers reconvened as a panel to allow the audience to ask questions on the presentations.
A late dinner with new friends capped the evening. I look forward to my continued involvement with the Club.
2011: A Year for Virtual Leadership? February 8, 2011
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February 8, 2011 – Amsterdam
2011 has started with a strong demand for Pentacle expertise in Virtual Leadership and Programme Management.
For clients and prospects from Turkey, to Scandinavia, Slovakia, Belgium and the UK, January and now February have produced a steady drumbeat for New World™ know-how that combines large-scale change with technology.
A signal for pick-up in economic activity? Pent-up demand for something different in a changed world? A need for new ideas to jump ahead? What is the driver for this convergence? Is it the technology? Is it the new economic landscape after global financial crises?
Robert Hewins, Director for Pentacle Benelux’s Programme Management practice thinks it is all connected:
The Complete (Virtual) Leader
“The main theme we are running across in 2011 is large-scale business change programmes delivered by dispersed teams. Funding for capital-intensive projects is on the rise and companies are trying to reach their goals efficiently given advances in communications and Web 2.0 technologies. ‘Why move our people around all the time’, they ask, ‘if there is a better way that makes sense in terms of efficiency, sustainability and reduced human wear and tear?’
Pentacle was a pioneer in the 1990s both in the design of virtual work and business processes, and in strategy execution through structured programmes and projects. Later, Pentacle designed the Complete Leader series of development programmes that marries essential leadership skills as an integral part of successful change management. Now, clients are asking for guidance, know-how for virtual leadership. That has driven us to combine several of our disciplines into one integrated design called ‘The Complete (Virtual) Leader’ that connects leader and team behavior and actions with business processes and supporting technology.
The term Virtual Leadership is often used in a manner that implies complexity and something completely new and very difficult for organisations to adopt successfully. That is simply not the case. This New World™ challenge is one of reinforcement of key leadership principles supported by pragmatic tools. Having effective, high-performance networks of dispersed teams in global organisations is a very achievable and indeed a very desirable proposition. Pentacle is working closely with its clients and corporate education partners to bring this message across and it seems that we are getting traction. “
On the web: www.pentaclethevbs.com
