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“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt A high percentage of the population has a fear of change – made up of their constituent fears including fear of the […]
“You can cultivate optimism by…. Remaining up-beat even when you’re beaten up” John C. Maxwell in Failing Forward. Any significant OctopOSS project will find a way of beating you up somewhere along the way. Working with small teams on international projects, away from the support network of home, it was obvious to me that the […]
“We need to invest in a way that makes sure we’ve got the workforce we need in the future.” Jeanne Shaheen Workforce management is the tool/s by which discrete CSP tasks are tracked and managed. For example, when creating a new customer order, the following separate pieces of a sample end-to-end order process might all […]
“Eliminate the things that don’t matter, that you’re never going to get better at or that you’re already good at. What’s left are the places where you have the opportunity to change your position in the market.” Seth Godin In many ways, the quote above holds true for whether you’re a vendor, a CSP or […]
“Most consultants tend to read voraciously, seeking new ideas and insights as they emerge around the world. Because of the many dimensions of the problems we address, it is important to read both broadly and deeply.” Pamela McNamara OSS technologies and techniques are constantly evolving so OSS consultants and integrators have to allocate time towards […]
In the State of the Asian CXO Survey 2012 by T.C Seow, there has been a clearly identified increase in corporate culture being an inhibitor of innovation. Seow speculates “that there is now conflict between senior management and the younger, so-called Generation Y executives or millennials who do not see eye-to-eye with their bosses. Perhaps there […]
“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.” Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration There is an interesting trend that often occurs when a vendor implementation team begins a new OSS project. There is a tendency to start with […]
The following is a true story about an art teacher who decided to experiment with his grading system. It had an interesting side-effect relating to the dilemma of quality versus quantity. David Bayles and Ted Orland document the story in their book, “Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (And Rewards) of Art making “ […]
“I don’t subscribe to the ‘great man’ theory of the world. I’d much rather create fertile soil for other innovators to plant their seeds in than just water my own tree.” Jeff Hammerbacher As the old saying goes, “There’s no I in OSS Team”. No matter how awesome you are or how small your OctopOSS […]
“This new economy has three distinguishing characteristics: It is global. It favors intangible things—ideas, information, and relationships. And it is intensely interlinked. These three attributes produce a new type of marketplace and society, one that is rooted in ubiquitous electronic networks.” Kevin Kelly in “New Rules for the New Economy” Kevin Kelly’s three distinguishing characteristics […]
“Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order.” Victor Papanek One area of significant differentiation between OSS inventory systems is in their ability to model design changes. Of the many inventory management solutions that are available currently, many are able to model a single snapshot in time. However, very few are able to […]
“Consultants do most of their best work live (asking questions, innovating answers) while novelists virtually never do their work live.” Seth Godin This quote was from an interesting blog entry about doing it live. As discussed in the blog post, Seth compares and contrasts between live music and pre-recorded music. Pre-recorded music sells 500 times more than […]
“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” Edward De Bono OctopOSS are complex beasts so it’s very easy to dig out a negative viewpoint, focussing on the difficulties, the failures, the problems or the reasons it won’t […]
“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” Jimmy Dean When you set out on a journey with your OSS, is the destination at the forefront of your thoughts? What are the guiding coordinates that you’re aiming for? Every boat has its leaks. Every […]
“Introverts treasure the close relationships they have stretched so much to make.” Adam S. McHugh Stay inside your box and you will get forever stuck inside that little box. Instead get out of your box, bring others to you and help connect others. OSS are all about connections. If you stay inside the box that […]
“All of us depend on technology, but none of us know how to read or write code” Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas This video from code.org implies an interesting question, “Will it be as important in the future to read code as it is to be able to read now?” As discussed, whether you’re […]
“When you hear buzz around the beehive, you know they’re making honey in there.” Terrence Howard In an earlier post we talked about gesture computing and how it might be used to manage the networks and control the OSS of the future, so the possibilities presented by the MYO from Thalmic Labs, seen here, appears to be […]
“Don’t judge the past by the standards of today. It won’t work. They’re incompatible.” Rachel Mead While recently reading through some books from TM Forum recently about Frameworx, there were two things that jumped out at me: The amount of brain-power that has gone into creating these standards is phenomenal and the contributors have every […]
“Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” ” Isidor Isaac Rabi Questions, by their very nature are designed to initiate learning for the questioner. But the best questions also […]
“The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.” Michael Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg made his whole business model around getting financial data to traders just a few seconds faster. His net worth was in the order of US$25B according to Forbes in September 2012. Are CSPs willing to pay a premium to […]
