Portfolio
I've been fortunate enough to have worked with some great people over my career and as a result, had the opportunity to contribute in a wide variety of innovations. Here are just a few from my portfolio.
Solving for Two Worlds: The Digital era has transformed how business and society operates. This does not replace the principles and practices of the Industrial Age, but it is so different it requires professional to be adept in operating in 'Two Worlds'. In 2018 I researched and developed an approach to help explain this dichotomy and help professionals excel at managing this challenge.
Digital Transformation: The last several years my focus has been on coaching CIOs on how to form a balanced approach to IT performance improvement that continues to drive Operational Excellence, enables more Digital Capability, and grows the Agility of both. This work spans leadership, strategy, and planning and implementing new methods like platforms, APIs, bimodal behavior, devops, and more.
Information Logistics: Over 2013 I worked with a key client to develop a vision and technology strategy focused on addressing the next generation of information exchange. Dubbed Information Logistics, it included the formation of strategic services pillars for Sending, Sharing, Syncing, and Streaming information, and a new object oriented API to manage the variety of payloads and their relationships. As a result of this work the company was subsequently bought out by a large enterprise software firm.
IT Strategy: During 2011-12 I led the formation of a new IT strategy at a large Financial Services firm in support of their business and IT transformation. Using a collaborative style, I helped the executive team build a 5 point approach called 'Compass' to improve competency, streamline processes, engineer better solutions, leverage information more strategically, and improve service level management.
Information Bus: Probably because of my early OO training, I have always been interested in decoupling information from the technology that provides it. Originally conceived in the late 90’s, I have implemented versions of this in several places. The concept is still sound (and more valuable than ever). Said in terms that people understand today, a modern enterprise information service should provide a simple catalog of assets like Google, an indicator of their health like Amazon, and easy way to access them like Salesforce.com, a modern way to enable mashups, and an effective, real-time security control. 95% of company information is still locked in silos but we all are heading towards the future…an Information Bus.
Innovation Portal: At one client I led the vision to build an InnovationPlace where employees can submit ideas, self rate them, evolve them in concert with established internal processes, and connect with the corporate patent submission process. While there are many companies who have packaged offerings in this space today, it was fun to develop an early version for a Fortune 10 company.
TeamConnect: I have always been keenly interested in collaboration and was an early evangelist of many late 90’s tools to facilitate this. Later, I led an entire corporate changeover to Sharepoint and launched the solution, from initial executive decision to do it, through the whole process of RFP, design, implement, and launch, in 9 months. Given historical timelines of 2 years to do similar efforts, it was gratifying to work with a team that moved with such speed.
Product Management: IT is fast shifting from a functional model with siloed projects that are reactive to demand, to a more product management approach, where services are led with a strategy and team that is proactive and builds out capability that is market competitive in price, function, quality, and support. I’ve been fortunate to lead such efforts at several majors companies and the result is not only better IT service, but a step change in leadership and culture from order takers to service leaders.
CAE Excellence: I’ve mentioned my focus on collaboration and cloud. At one company I led a shift in global Computer Aided Engineering to better combine efforts across different engineering groups and locations, build an integrated strategy, share and implement commonized best practices, and spend more time to ‘innovate where it matters’. The results were great to be sure but the most gratifying aspect was it’s key role in helping the overall corporate revitalization of one of the worlds great companies.
Cloud Computing: At a Fortune 10 company I led the architecture organization and developed a whole new strategy (at the time...this was early 2000s) for computing there. One of the key concepts was to move the infrastructure towards a 'utility' or 'cloud' model across several areas. In data warehousing we saved millions and enabled a much better range of capabilities. In basic Java hosting we reduced the cost by 90% (that's right). I was blessed with a supportive executive staff and some great colleagues who were passionate to make the leap even if the industry was still not ready.
EnterpriseXspan: In the mid-90's I was an early e-business evangelist with IBM. As part of that role I worked with a variety of companies interested in developing more collaborative capabilities with their suppliers. Among many efforts my capstone was developing a new capability to manage the myriad of security and administrative issues related to sharing enterprise resources with suppliers. This led to an IBM product patent. The innovation was to apply object oriented concepts to the management of Internet resources and I still love it. Here is a link to the patent.
Solving for Two Worlds: The Digital era has transformed how business and society operates. This does not replace the principles and practices of the Industrial Age, but it is so different it requires professional to be adept in operating in 'Two Worlds'. In 2018 I researched and developed an approach to help explain this dichotomy and help professionals excel at managing this challenge.
Digital Transformation: The last several years my focus has been on coaching CIOs on how to form a balanced approach to IT performance improvement that continues to drive Operational Excellence, enables more Digital Capability, and grows the Agility of both. This work spans leadership, strategy, and planning and implementing new methods like platforms, APIs, bimodal behavior, devops, and more.
Information Logistics: Over 2013 I worked with a key client to develop a vision and technology strategy focused on addressing the next generation of information exchange. Dubbed Information Logistics, it included the formation of strategic services pillars for Sending, Sharing, Syncing, and Streaming information, and a new object oriented API to manage the variety of payloads and their relationships. As a result of this work the company was subsequently bought out by a large enterprise software firm.
IT Strategy: During 2011-12 I led the formation of a new IT strategy at a large Financial Services firm in support of their business and IT transformation. Using a collaborative style, I helped the executive team build a 5 point approach called 'Compass' to improve competency, streamline processes, engineer better solutions, leverage information more strategically, and improve service level management.
Information Bus: Probably because of my early OO training, I have always been interested in decoupling information from the technology that provides it. Originally conceived in the late 90’s, I have implemented versions of this in several places. The concept is still sound (and more valuable than ever). Said in terms that people understand today, a modern enterprise information service should provide a simple catalog of assets like Google, an indicator of their health like Amazon, and easy way to access them like Salesforce.com, a modern way to enable mashups, and an effective, real-time security control. 95% of company information is still locked in silos but we all are heading towards the future…an Information Bus.
Innovation Portal: At one client I led the vision to build an InnovationPlace where employees can submit ideas, self rate them, evolve them in concert with established internal processes, and connect with the corporate patent submission process. While there are many companies who have packaged offerings in this space today, it was fun to develop an early version for a Fortune 10 company.
TeamConnect: I have always been keenly interested in collaboration and was an early evangelist of many late 90’s tools to facilitate this. Later, I led an entire corporate changeover to Sharepoint and launched the solution, from initial executive decision to do it, through the whole process of RFP, design, implement, and launch, in 9 months. Given historical timelines of 2 years to do similar efforts, it was gratifying to work with a team that moved with such speed.
Product Management: IT is fast shifting from a functional model with siloed projects that are reactive to demand, to a more product management approach, where services are led with a strategy and team that is proactive and builds out capability that is market competitive in price, function, quality, and support. I’ve been fortunate to lead such efforts at several majors companies and the result is not only better IT service, but a step change in leadership and culture from order takers to service leaders.
CAE Excellence: I’ve mentioned my focus on collaboration and cloud. At one company I led a shift in global Computer Aided Engineering to better combine efforts across different engineering groups and locations, build an integrated strategy, share and implement commonized best practices, and spend more time to ‘innovate where it matters’. The results were great to be sure but the most gratifying aspect was it’s key role in helping the overall corporate revitalization of one of the worlds great companies.
Cloud Computing: At a Fortune 10 company I led the architecture organization and developed a whole new strategy (at the time...this was early 2000s) for computing there. One of the key concepts was to move the infrastructure towards a 'utility' or 'cloud' model across several areas. In data warehousing we saved millions and enabled a much better range of capabilities. In basic Java hosting we reduced the cost by 90% (that's right). I was blessed with a supportive executive staff and some great colleagues who were passionate to make the leap even if the industry was still not ready.
EnterpriseXspan: In the mid-90's I was an early e-business evangelist with IBM. As part of that role I worked with a variety of companies interested in developing more collaborative capabilities with their suppliers. Among many efforts my capstone was developing a new capability to manage the myriad of security and administrative issues related to sharing enterprise resources with suppliers. This led to an IBM product patent. The innovation was to apply object oriented concepts to the management of Internet resources and I still love it. Here is a link to the patent.
