Category: General

The concept of "maturity models" is one that has been bouncing around the IT industry since the 1970s (according to the oracle that is Wikipedia). In one of my conversations last week at the ITDF, we stumbled upon the idea of an immaturity model. The thinking goes something like this: Traditional maturity models are predicated on the … Continue reading Immaturity models

A couple of years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote a cover article entitled "The Web is Dead: Long Live the Internet". His argument at the time was that we were seeing a shift from Web development to App development, and that as such the Internet was becoming more a transport mechanism than a place … Continue reading Bye bye WWW?

I've been reading Mark Tungate's history of global advertising Ad Land over the past few weeks (reading books takes on a new time frame when you have toddlers). It's been an interesting background to the ad and marketing industry, and has given me a few surprises not least, how old most of the major ad agencies … Continue reading Art vs Science

From Twitter last week: @stevenackerman: Sainsbury's as a music retailer. Don't see that at all, but then again what do I know? http://t.co/zvtDXLhl @mattballantine: no doubt in late 1990s, "Apple as a music retailer" would have had a similar response... @stevenackerman: I really hope you're not comparing Apple and Sainsburys!! @mattballantine: I know, I know. Apple … Continue reading Pivots

I was flicking through my wife's latest copy of Living Etc this morning having had my interested aroused by the fact that there was a photo that included a computer on the front cover. If you aren't aware of it, Living Etc portrays an idealised, minimalist, modernist world of European furniture and houses where there is … Continue reading A matter of style

My slide deck for the Spring 2012 IT Directors' Forum: http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=itdfpresentationfinalmetro-13358830489337-phpapp01-120501094105-phpapp01&stripped_title=spring-itdf-presentation Scene Setting My LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattballantine Touch expectations: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/03/21/touch-expectations/ The battlelines of consumerisation: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2011/08/08/the-battlelines-of-consumerisation/ Green field thinking https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/01/26/a-green-field-it-function/ Positive reinforcement https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/13/motivating-through-games/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/20/positive-reinforcement-and-business-systems/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/14/skinner-the-art-of-motivation/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/22/theory-x-theory-y-and-the-strange-case-of-the-expenses-system/ Avoiding "stupider, faster" https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/03/27/avoiding-stupider-faster/ Providing a service https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/06/30/managing-the-client-experience/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/07/01/implementing-the-client-experience-model/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2010/07/14/lowering-expectations/ Fostering innovation https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/04/04/apis-everywhere/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/02/24/chief-playfulness-officer/ https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2012/01/24/when-is-an-it-strategy-a-business-strategy/

Sometimes I get fixated on random things... like press buttons on toilet cisterns. You know the ones - a circle, with two sections (usually a big "ying" and a little "yang"), one which does a long flush, and the other that does a short flush. The short flush is the more sustainable, less water used … Continue reading A UI Paradox