IN SEARCH OF "PRECOMPETITIVE" TECHNOLOGIES
Despite the recent squeeze on research budgets, companies are filing for
more patents than ever, and the recently released 1997 Battelle R&D Magazine
research-funding forecast predicts the budget pendulum will swing in the
other direction for the next few years. And while today's research labs are
focusing on relevancy -- making sure the research complements the company's
strategic goals -- they're not afraid of what's called "discontinuous"
research -- radical studies that break with a company's normal
investigations. Industry observers caution that these further-out studies
won't look much like the old "blue-sky" heydays at Bell Labs and GE, but the
trend does indicate a higher risk tolerance as companies try to anticipate
new businesses before they're forced out of the ones they're in. To
leverage these research efforts, they're funding more joint projects with
academic labs and turning to research consortia similar to the Sematech
semiconductor effort, to pursue so-called "precompetitive" technologies.
(Upside Sep 97) http://www.upside.com
SPEEDING TECHNOLOGY, WEARY USERS
Looking at the accelerating rate of technological change, Shane
Greenstein
of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thinks that the biological
metaphors for technology may have to be replaced by ones associated with
earthquakes and tectonic movements. A biological metaphor such as "product
life cycle" suggests an orderly progression that no longer does justice to
the frantic pace of modern innovation. "With only rare exceptions, only
technologists brag about the speed with which things change today. Vendors
no longer boast about it; most just endure each new competitive episode and
celebrate surviving another day. Except for the most technical user (or the
most competitive office situation), the speed of change comes too rapidly
for most users." (Shane Greenstein, "The Biology of Technology," IEEE
Micro Jul/Aug 97) http://www.computer.org
ORGANIZATIONAL LOYALTY
The authors of a study of 686 middle managers from twenty Fortune
500
companies say there has been a shift of loyalty in the past decade: no
longer are loyalty to an organization and loyalty to a career mutually
exclusive. Instead, "today's manager -- a free agent in managing his or her
own career in an insecure corporate environment -- can nonetheless be loyal
to the company where he or she is developing that career." They also found
that for many managers the move to another company actually increases their
sense of organizational loyalty to the one they left. "Perhaps burned-out
managers are refreshed and renewed by changing companies." There's a big
difference between short-term, self-centered "job hopping" and long-term
"career development" that transfers a manager's talents (and loyalty) to a
more receptive corporate setting. (Linda K. Stroh & Anne H. Reilly,
"Loyalty In The Age Of Downsizing," Sloan Management Review Summer 97)
BEING REALLY DIFFERENT ... ALL ALONG THE LINE
Management professors Ian MacMillan (Wharton) and Rita McGrath
(Columbia)
say that the creative organizations are the ones that think about their
customers' entire experience with a product or service (which they call the
"consumption chain") and find ways to distinguish themselves from
competitors at each and every point in that chain. How? By methodically
asking who-what-where-when-why questions about every aspect of the
customer's use of the product or service. Example? Oral-B asked the
question, how does a customer know that it's time to get a new toothbrush?
-- and then developed a patented blue dye for coloring the center of the
bristles; the color fades when the toothbrush is no longer effective.
Similar questions led to the following differentiation strategies: CarMax
and AutoNation "selling" cars by letting customers create their own
selection process; Compaq targeting installation time as a source of
differentiation and giving the customer a poster and a video; Nordstrom
seeking differentiation with a "no questions asked" returns policy (and even
gained national publicity when one Nordstrom store manager took back a set
of tires even though the company does not sell tires). The trick is to take
a long look at each and every single point in the customer's experience --
from the time of selecting it to the time of consuming or discarding it -
and to brainstorm possible ways of distinguishing yourself -- at that single
point -- from your competitors. (Ian C. MacMillan & Rita Gunther McGrath,
"Discovering New Points of Differentiation," Harvard Business Review
Jul/Aug 97)
INTERNAL BEST PRACTICES: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
When you try to new ideas in an organization the chances are high
you'll be
told: "That won't work here!" So one good way to be an effective
change-agent is to look within the company itself for internal "best
practices" that can be replicated throughout the organization. Begin by
asking yourself what is crucial to your success -- revenue? profitability?
margin? productivity? cycle time? customer satisfaction? Then collect
the current data on the critical performance factor for the various units
throughout the organization. "Using a common definition of performance to
begin the process is essential. Without a common definition, and reliable
data, the process will be ineffective. Reaching agreement on standards of
performance may take time, but it is the only way performance can be truly
compared between units." But once you have that common definition, graph
the performance data to make it virtually impossible for lagging managers to
ignore the obvious -- and act aggressively to try to bring their units up to
best-practice levels. (Richard Baumbusch, "Internal Best Practices: Turning
Knowledge Into Results," Strategy & Leadership Jul/Aug 97)
TRANSACTIONS OR RELATIONSHIPS? PICK ONE OR THE OTHER, NOT BOTH
Management strategists sometimes talk too glibly about developing
"customers
for life" and a long-term, highly-trained, fully-committed workforce. You
can't just create those outcomes by force of will: you have to live with
the realities of the particular business you're in, the nature of your
customers, the type of product or service you offer, and your ability to
attract and retain competent employees. The basic question is whether your
strategy should be relation-based or transaction-based. Activities that
should be relation-based are ones where customers are making costly and
important decisions about something they know relatively little about;
examples would be financial planning or the purchase of special power tools.
In contrast, a company that makes standardized products (such as rubber
bands) or sells standardized services (such as tax preparation) should adopt
a transaction-based strategy and be ready to compete on cost with short-term
customer relationships and short-term employee relationships. The current
trend in human resources is to take a lean-and-mean approach with employees
at the same time the marketing department is trying to win "customers for
life." "Because both choices are very appealing, a common response is to
say, 'Let's do both!' But such a response is inappropriate because the two
'visions' are mutually exclusive." (Diana L. Deadrick, R. Bruce McAfee, &
Myron Glassman, " 'Customers For Life': Does It Fit Your Culture?"
Business Horizons Jul/Aug 97)
LASER BINOCULARS
Military planners are envisioning a future where all
communications on a
battlefield are transmitted via laser, and a new prototype developed by
Thermo Trax Corp. demonstrates this scenario. The device is a pair of
binoculars equipped with a tiny, lightweight laser communications system
that perches on the brow of the eyepiece. The system can handle voice,
video and data at a speedy 1.2 gigabits per second, and developers predict
that theoretically, such a system could handle 200,000 voice channels.
(Popular Science Aug 97) http://www.popsci.com
TOUCH-FREE PAPER PUSHER
Researchers exploring the capabilities of microelectronic
mechanical systems
have hit upon the idea of expanding the size of the tiny devices and using
them to push air in a way that pieces of paper could be manipulated without
anyone or anything actually touching it. By coating the surfaces of printed
circuit board with components of millimeter- rather than micrometer-size,
they envision a paper mover that uses sensors and tiny air jets to shift and
position pieces of paper. A prototype array incorporates sensors and valves
to operate about 50 air jets on which the piece of paper rides. "There would
be all sorts of new things you could do in printing if you could move paper
without touching it," says a scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center. (Science News 26 Jul 97) http://www.sciencenews.org
ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
Computer-generated speech has gotten a bad rap for being
mechanical- and
monotonous-sounding, but the creator of a software program called Affect
Editor hopes to change all that. When a user selects any of six emotions --
annoyed, cordial, disdainful, distraught, impatient or plaintive -- the
software assigns one of 21 integers to each of numerous acoustical qualities
representing aspects of pitch, voice quality, timing, articulation and
loudness. For instance, plaintive speech is soft, low-pitched and slurred,
with minimal variability and many pauses. Annoyed speech is characterized
as loud, high-pitched, quick, with irregular rhythms, inflections and
precise enunciation. The software is on display at the Boston Computer
Museum. (Technology Review Aug/Sep 97) http://web.mit.edu/techreview/
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