April 30 – May 1, 2001
in
Los Angeles,
CA
The Post
e-Corporation – A
Future Mapping Event
May 1 & 2, 2001
|
• New Development
Environments
• Free vs. Open Source
• Smaller Software
• Better Learning Technologies
• Knowledge and Collaboration
• Intelligence, Agents and Personalization
• Assessing the ASP Model
• Self-configuration
Software is increasingly
distributed, multi-platform and adaptive. How will
we develop, implement, manage
and integrate these complex software environments of
the future? As new software problems emerge, do some
old ones go away? With disk space approaching a cent
per gigabyte, perhaps we can safely ignore storage
costs as a consideration in software and database design.
Business
software is on the cusp of a revolution – but
what revolution will it be? Peer to peer is the architecture
du jour, full of possibility and controversy. Client/server
is over, and big iron is making a comeback on the Web.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is under siege from all directions.
Linux and the Open Source movement still look promising,
but they are dividing into camps. The ASP model is
finally gaining traction, and if it succeeds in the
marketplace, will completely restructure the software
industry as we know it, in terms of both the technology
and the prevalent business models.
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Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO, Zaplet,
Inc.
Mr. Bran Ferren, Co-chairman
and Chief Creative Officer, Applied Minds
Dr. Alan Kay, Vice President,
Research & Development,
The Walt Disney Company
Dr. Butler Lampson, Distinguished
Engineer, Microsoft Corporation, and an Adjunct Professor
of Computer Science
and Electrical Engineering, MIT
Dr. Douglas Lenat, President
and CEO, Cycorp, Inc.
Dr. Dorothy Leonard, Professor
of Business Administration, Harvard University
Dr. Wei-Min Shen, Project
Leader and Senior Research Scientist, Information Sciences
Institute, University
of Southern California
Mr. Chris Smith, President,
CEO, and Founder, Efinity, Inc.
Mr. Richard Stallman, Founder,
the GNU Project
Mr. Matt Lerner, Co-founder & CTO,
E-Quill Corporation, www.equill.com
Mr. Nicholas Maier, Chairman & CEO,
Newzing, www.newzing.com
Mr. Dmitry Paperny, Vice
President, Strategy, Viewpoint Corporation, www.viewpoint.com
Mr. James Phillips, Chairman & Chief
Executive Officer, Internet Pictures Corporation (iPIX),
www.ipix.com
Mr. Mike Rosen, President & Chief
Executive Officer, 2ce, Inc., www.2ce.com
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Jim Herman & Dave Mason,
NerveWire
In the rapidly changing environment of e-business,
leaders that are best able to manage uncertainty,
cope with sudden change, and take control of their
corporate destiny have the clear competitive edge.
In
this Future Mapping Event workshop, developed and led
by Jim Herman and Dave Mason of NerveWire, we’ll
examine and explore such questions as:
• What happens to the nature
of a corporation after all the e-stuff is in place
and operational?
• What are the boundaries of the corporation, how will
it be structured, organized, and operated?
• What information will make a difference?
• How can we enhance the customer-centric e-business?
• What does it take to transform a value chain into a
global open-value web?
•
What will be needed to take advantage of the "swarm" economy?
• How can internal e-markets benefit large-scale, multi-business
organizations?
Attendees will be divided into teams and given a set
of ideas to expand upon and defend. The closing activity
will integrate the alternatives discussed by the group.
If you’ve attended one of their sessions before,
you know that these are rich peer discussions aimed
at co-discovery rather than determining a correct answer.
If you haven’t attended, please try to do so
as you’re in for a real treat!
Workshop Description
Today’s hot topic concerns how e-business systems
and practices will ultimately affect the very nature
of a corporation in the "post-e" world.
Multiple
development vectors arise at the same time. What
is truly of value is understanding how these
vectors interact, not which is "right" or "most
likely", and knowing what dynamics will be in
play three years from now. This understanding is
what we want to derive with the rich experience of
TTI/Vanguard
members. Specifically, we’ll look at:
• The Customer-Centric e-Business
-
Focus on new customer interfaces is critical to retaining
customers in the connected
economy
- Define process and system requirements in terms
of creating an integrated, compelling experience
for the
customer
- De-capitalize the production side of the corporation.
• Global Open-Value Webs
- E-markets transform value chains into value webs
that increase access to buyers and suppliers globally
- Cooperative ecosystems of focused specialists
succeed
- Value webs address demand aggregation, supplier
interactions, and now even collaborative product
design.
•
The "Swarm" Economy
- Individuals and small companies are the basis for
the new economy; they coordinate through e-markets
- Firms compete for talent rather than customers
- The ecosystem model outperforms traditional corporate
structures.
• Complex Adaptive Giants
- Large companies consolidate e-business markets
into utility-like operations, new companies have
only
a small role.
- Large-scale, multi-business operations are made
more efficient and adaptive through the internal
use of
e-markets.
- If e-business solutions work for inter-enterprise
operations, surely they hold promise for improving
internal operations of multi-business global corporations.
These
examples of development vectors will combine in fascinating
ways. Different industries will
experience different outcomes. The slow shift of
the computer
industry from a vertically integrated model to
a horizontal layered model with well-understood
interfaces
is one
change most TTI/Vanguard members are familiar with.
But the same thing is happening in other industries
as some players choose to de-capitalize and focus
on the customer interface, while others choose
to take
on the capital-intensive manufacturing role.
Jim
and Dave will offer a framework (endstates for those
of you familiar with Future Mapping)
for the
future of software at the opening of the TTI/Vanguard
Conference. Then, after listening to the presentations,
offer a revised framework and facilitate a discussion
that integrates the various points of view on the
topic.
The Future Mapping Process
The early stages of the Future Mapping process
involve several kinds of research, interviews,
and material
preparations by NerveWire. The outcome of this
preliminary work is the positing and defining of
many potential
events and a small number, typically three to five,
of alternative futures. Neither forecasts nor predictions,
these "endstate" descriptions, explore
the full spectrum of potential change, by encompassing
the range of possibilities from the point of view
of
outcomes, or endstates.
The next step is the heart
of Future Mapping, the intensive workshop involving
you and your colleagues
in a day
of small team interactions and plenary presentations.
A workshop typically starts by establishing a baseline
of the current conventional assumptions. We then
move on to scenario building, or "proof" process,
which involve team discussions, and presentations
on strategies and tactics to "achieve" a
given endstate.
The purpose of the scenario-building
stage is to develop an understanding of how underlying
business
dynamics
would change from the present state to each of
the posited alternative futures. Together, we will
identify
the important prospective events that would be
required to pursue a particular endstate, and examine
the
driving forces either of those in the present or
those that
might come into play that could produce such events.
The purpose of the process is to survey the "lay
of the land", the givens of our business environment,
and to engage in constructive speculation about
unusual new features of the competitive landscape
that might
appear on the horizon as e-business practices mature
and their impact on the nature of a global corporation
becomes apparent.
About NerveWire
NerveWire (formerly Northeast Consulting), the
creators of Future Mapping®, are leaders in
the application of scenario planning to the business
problems of
information technology and telecommunications for
both vendors
and users. NerveWire started mapping the future
of computing and communications 10 years ago, providing
a structured way to talk about what will be. Their
work in e-business began with projects on the impact
of the Internet on publishing, followed payment
systems,
banking, the impact on system and software vendors,
and topics in e-business strategy.
Some TTI/Vanguard
members likely recall programs in the past presented
by Jim and Dave using Northeast
Consulting’s Future Mapping method. Jim and
Dave merged Northeast into a new venture-funded
professional services firm called NerveWire (www.nervewire.com).
After a year of hard work successfully getting
the
company up and running (now some 300 people), they
have transitioned to the status of NerveWire Fellows,
allowing them more time to spend with clients and
groups
like TTI/Vanguard.
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