Author / Roger Dennis

Posts by Roger Dennis

Innovation without the jargon to give clear tangible results.
by Roger Dennis

The Return of Asia

A quick link to something that has been discernible for a a while, and something that was clearly identified when we ran Future Agenda two years ago.  However now the clever (and time rich) analysts at McKinsey has quantified it:

A thousand years ago, the economic centre of the world was in central Asia, just north of India and west of China, reflecting the high levels of wealth enjoyed in the Middle and Far East at that time, says the report, Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class. At that time, Asia accounted for two-thirds of the world’s wealth.

By 1900, the centre had shifted to northern Europe, which had leapt far ahead of the rest of the world thanks to the Industrial Revolution. And by 1950, the centre had shifted to the North Atlantic, reflecting the economic rise of the United States.

But now that trend is reversing itself, and at a stunning speed. What took 1,000 years to travel west will have travelled all the way back east in a matter of a few decades.

According to the McKinsey report, the economic centre of gravity has been shifting east for the past decade at a rate of 140 km (87 miles) per year, and by 2025, it will have returned to a spot in central Asia just north of where it was in 1,000 A.D.

“It is not hyperbole to say we are observing the most significant shift in the earth’s economic centre of gravity in history,”

via World’s Economic Centre Of Gravity Shifting Back To Asia At Unbelievable Speed: McKinsey Institute.

by Roger Dennis

McKinsey Quarterly – developing strategy en masse

Over at McKinsey there is a fascinating article about engaging an entire workforce in the development of organisational strategy:

…executives at organizations that are experimenting with more participatory modes of strategy development cite two major benefits. One is improving the quality of strategy by pulling in diverse and detailed frontline perspectives that are typically overlooked but can make the resulting plans more insightful and actionable. The second is building enthusiasm and alignment behind a company’s strategic direction—a critical component of long-term organizational health, effective execution, and strong financial performance that is all too rare, according to research we and our colleagues in McKinsey’s organization practice have conducted.

This is similar to some very successful work I’ve done with one client over the last five years. Initially we involved eighty thought leaders and influencers (along with a handful of hierarchical leaders) in a process to develop a vision.  Later in the process we spread that out to thousands of people using word of mouth.  It was extremely powerful, but you need to take great care to ensure the process does not go astray, and the McKinsey article touches on this.

via The social side of strategy – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategy in Practice.

by Roger Dennis

Radio Interview on Cashless Societies (ABC Australia Future Tense)

Over the weekend ABC Australia played a programme about the rise (or otherwise) of cashless society.  It contained an interview with me about my experience of technologies, and specifically about my experience at egg (the UK branchless bank) in the early 2000s.  Here’s the blurb (and a link at the bottom)

We hear a lot about the cashless society and the death of the local bank branch—as commerce becomes increasingly digital. But how close are we to a completely cashless environment? Is it still possible to live a whole year without those little pieces of paper or polymer we carry in our pockets? We look at the rate of change when it comes to money’s digital future and whether all of us are heading for a cashless future at the same speed.

via Money, banks and our changing times – Future Tense – ABC Radio National Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

by Roger Dennis

Letting people come to their own understanding (HBR)

Clayton Christensen published an article in the HBR in the middle of last year.  I missed it at the time and only just came across it.  While the article itself is interesting, I found the opening story to be fascinating:

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is…,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

I find this fascinating because in good workshops you don’t tell someone the answer, but you frame the content up in such a way that leads them to discover it themselves.

Secondly this is fascinating because Clayton tells a personal story in order to get his message across.  He could have told this story in dry prose, but by making it real the message not only gets across, it gets remembered.

In my book Really Bad Workshops (and how to avoid them) I talk about these things (among others), and how important they are.  Never underestimate the power of people making their own connections, nor the power of narrative.

via How Will You Measure Your Life? – Harvard Business Review.

by Roger Dennis

Creative thinkers don’t always fit organisational structures (HBS research)

It can be quite tricky to involve creative and non-linear thinkers in your organisational structure. Many people that fit in this category prefer to have wide-ranging remits that don’t fit the normal hierarchical structures.  Fresh research (indeed it’s work-in-progress) from HBS supports this and sums up it up in the context of distributed innovation:

Many creative problem-solvers will not or simply cannot work effectively under standard employment or supply contracts. That is why distributed innovation in a business ecosystem is such a desirable organizational form.

via Organization Design for Distributed Innovation — HBS Working Knowledge.

by Roger Dennis

Innovation in Unexpected Places

Another lovely example of how it’s the innovation that happens outside the core that’s usually the most interesting.  After all, cutting edge research in space propulsion is the domain of heavily funded Government labs right?

19-year-old Egyptian physics student Aisha Mustafa is someone we may see again in the media in the future because though young she’s patented a new type of propulsion system for spacecraft that makes use of an obscure, and only recently experimentally proven, quantum physics effect.

via Mustafa’s Space Drive: An Egyptian Student’s Quantum Physics Invention | Fast Company.

by Roger Dennis

Govt policy – faith, new ideas and paradigms

A quick link to David Skilling’s excellent post today about the tensions in introducing new ideas to Governments, and the importance of doing so:

After years of observing governments, I have come to the view that one of the most costly features of policy-making is ‘faith-based policy’ in which certain policies become articles of faith and are not subject to serious scrutiny. This can lead to poor outcomes at any time, but particularly in times of disruptive change when new ideas are needed to enable governments to adapt to a changing world. It is the governments that respond flexibly to a changing world that are more likely to sustain strong performance.

via Landfall  ✧  On faith-based policy.

by Roger Dennis

Movements and change – watch Russia

There’s something to watch here: a young, rich and glamourus woman spurns her roots and becomes a poster child for change.  She knows how to cross both the digital and real worlds for impact, and clearly understands the system she exists within.

The pampered “it girl” of Putin’s Russia, author of “Philosophy in the Boudoir” and “How to Marry a Millionaire,” has restyled herself as a leader of the opposition. Last week, Ms. Sobchak hosted protest leaders on her new political talk show, which was canceled by Russia’s MTV after just one episode and is now broadcast on a Web site.

(via Kseniya Sobchak, Russia’s ‘It Girl,’ Dons Opposition Cloak – NYTimes.com.)

I’m increasingly interested in how social movements and social media will intersect, and the implications for power brokers (both government and non-government).  I think there’s something here in social movements getting digital smarts and becoming digital movements (think rapid scale, emergence ‘from nowhere” and clear actions). Watch this space…

by Roger Dennis

How TED Makes Ideas Smaller

This is a great article about what’s good – and what’s bad – about the TED conference.  The paragraph that resonated with me the most is also the reason why I will never turn down an invitation to a Foo Camp but inevitably turn down many invitations to conferences:

We live in a world of increasingly networked knowledge. And it’s a world that allows us to appreciate what has always been true: that new ideas are never sprung, fully formed, from the heads of the inventors who articulate them, but are always — always — the result of discourse and interaction and, in the broadest sense, conversation.

via How TED Makes Ideas Smaller – Megan Garber – Technology – The Atlantic.

by Roger Dennis

The Economist on 3D printing and making

A short snippet from an article in the Economist that links a new hobby of ‘tinkering’ with possible disruption.  This is something that we could easily see a few years back and identified as part of the Shell Technology Futures programme in 2007.  It’s fascinating to see it unfolding:

“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.

It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.

via Monitor: More than just digital quilting | The Economist.