There is a famous quote attributed to the American retailer John Wanamaker - "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." It to a great extent sums up the challenge that faces the modern advertising and marketing industry - in a clamour for demonstrable, linked return … Continue reading Return on no investment
Category: Management
In my last post I introduce a simple 2x2 matrix that can help to classify services within an organisation to help make sense of how digital technologies impact and can be managed effectively. We'll now look at each of the four quadrants in turn, starting with the Support services. These internal business functions, processes, departments … Continue reading Digital Architecture: Support Services
The two-by-two matrix is the stock-in-trade of the management consulting industry. There's a reason for that - they are generally pretty useful, and help to put a bit of classification onto things that helps conversations about what to do next. As mentioned in my previous post, there are a number of technology architecture frameworks that … Continue reading A framework for Digital Architecture
Update - November 2015 - I've recently revised the Digital Architecture model Just before the Christmas break I wrote an article that explained why I think we are entering a new phase for technology where everyone needs to be able to understand something of the architecture of technology within the businesses they operate to make … Continue reading Becoming a digital architect
Every day it seems I can barely move in the world of the Internet without another big blurb about how software and developers are changing the world. Can you humour me for a moment so that we can lance that particular boil? For every Facebook or Twitter or whatever other clever doo-dad, there's a BBC … Continue reading We are all architects now
There appears to be mounting press coverage at the moment about the causes and consequences of Microsoft being unable to announce the name of Steve Ballmer's successor as the next Redmond CEO. Much of that coverage appears to be about the culpability of the company's board in this, as their main job is succession planning … Continue reading It’s not played on paper
For some time I've struggled to take job titles particularly seriously, but I was keen to refer to myself as something other than "founder" on LinkedIn because it's just a bit naff. In the end, after much thought, I went for the flippancy option and now am entitled Chief <Insert Buzzword du Jour> Officer … Continue reading CDO – this officer is time limited
Continuing a theme from a post I wrote earlier, I have been spending a bit of time today looking through Business Insider's encyclopaedic collection of data about all things digital (see for yourself here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-digital-2013-2013-11?op=1)There's a lot of data. Much of it summarized into neat graphs. It's all very interesting.But what does it tell us about … Continue reading Trending nowhere
Nearly 17 years ago I was a member of a team that implemented the BBC's first data warehousing project. It gathered information from a number of operational systems, and then using a combination of products provided reports about the profitability of various products that the commercial wing of the organisation produced and sold. Technically … Continue reading Big data, little questions, cognitive biases
I'm currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile. It's not the easiest of reads (a prequel written after a sequel starts on a bad footing - just ask George Lucas) but a fascinating concept - that the opposite of "fragile" isn't "robust" or somesuch (which are just neutral concepts) but rather "antifragile" where things get stronger … Continue reading Digital fragility
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