A kind of curated creative sourcing service

Crew (previously Ooomf) offer a high quality creative service, technology edged, arty, crafted (link).

Prof Erran Carmel: Guest Lecture on "Enterprise Crowdsourcing"

Part of the lecture recorded with Google Glass. 

Winners! Leaders of Tomorrow 2014

Nubi Kayode and Alex Keaney were chosen as winners with OnePlace.

From Alex's FB photos: Pitching for the penultimate time to Accenture leaders and competition.
"Bring on the final — with Nubi Kay at Accenture Grand Canal Plaza."

OnePlace is an application to make messaging simple again. OnePlace aggregates all of your messaging apps, allows for smart sending (so you send to active and priority recipient accounts), and consolidate in-bound messages from multiple platforms for better context.

They will travel to Accenture’s New York Digital Innovation Centre and have the opportunity to pursue their business idea in a dedicated space on the NDRC Launchpad programme, Ireland’s leading digital accelerator platform. They will receive expert mentorship, weekly workshops and more to make their idea their future and become a Leader of Tomorrow. They also have the option of a 6 month Leadership Internship with Accenture.

The Leaders of Tomorrow competition aims to identify, foster and recognise leadership potential and innovative thinking amongst aspiring entrepreneurs in Ireland.

From the Irish Times...

See the video

Accenture's LoT pages

NDRC announcement

Nubi's blog

Leaders of Tomorrow Award 2014

Kayode Nubi and Alex Keaney at the LoT Pitch Meeting

Four students on the MSc iBusiness - Innovation through ICT programme entered this year's "Leaders of Tomorrow" competition.

Cathal McNamara and Darragh Leahy with QR-Stamp, a system for making post easy; and Nubi Kayode and Alex Keaney with OnePlace, an application to make messaging simple again.

Kayode Nubi and Alex Keaney were selected as finalists, while Cathal and Darragh made it through to the second round.

The winner from the top six finalists will be announced at the 2014 LoT award ceremony, Thursday April 10th, 6pm at Accenture, 4th floor, 1 Grand Canal Square.

The Leaders of Tomorrow competition aims to identify, foster and recognise leadership potential and innovative thinking amongst aspiring entrepreneurs in Ireland.

From the Irish Times...

See the video

Accenture's LoT pages

NDRC announcement

Nubi's blog

Fungible Jobs and other Fallacies

The intellectual, academic, author, analyst Vaclav Smil directs his attention to the big challenges facing society and the world at large. He has addressed (among others) a broad range of topics, from the economics of meat production/consumption, the consequences of the oil/engine economy, the catastrophic potential of anthropogenic biosphere change, and the intrinsic relationship between industrial activity and the production of a middle class. Smil suggests that Globalization's dynamic on labour, the relocation of manufacturing jobs from economies like the U.S.A. to China, Brazil and others, is not balanced by an increase in knowledge work in the U.S. because IT jobs (for example) are fungible.

"Can IT jobs replace the lost manufacturing jobs?  No, of course not. These are totally fungible jobs. You could hire people in Russia or Malaysia - and that’s what companies are doing." (a link to the interview in Wired Magazine)

Fungible is a term in law for goods that can be contracted for without an individual specimen being specified. A fungible good is easily replaced with another identical item; for example: a tonne of wheat, 20 short tons of pork belly, a kilowatt-hr of electricity, a specific software package, a type of computer.
Smil's contention is that IT jobs, and by extension knowledge work generally, are easily moved to lower cost locations, that they are in a sense tradable services or commodities that can be relocated, delivered and changed at the will of the owner or buyer. We can certainly agree that a whole gamut of knowledge work has undergone change in terms of how it is delivered and sourced, from front-line customer engagement, sales and support, through to back office process like medical analysis, product development, service delivery etc. However undergoing the changes and transformations necessitated by outsourcing/offshoring (O/O) entails diverse risks and uncertainties for vendors, clients, end-customers and more. A fungible good or service is easily traded, substitutable, and its value or utility is readily imparted by its purchaser/consumer. We might ask therefore: "Are People and Place fungible matter?"

I assert that utilising O/O is manifestly not like this and furthermore, that O/O as a movement or strategy carries the baggage of a number of such fallacies.

1. That work is fungible
• O/O easily imparts access to new/more skills, knowledge?
• It lets us focus on our core valuable competences?
• O/O lets us utilise new/more people, resources, etc.
2. Cost savings are inevitable
• O/O is cheap?
• It delivers timely realisable returns?
• The upfront investment cost is a known quantity?
• O/O lets us utilise new/more people, resources, etc.
3. It gives more and better control
• O/O is easy to control?
• O/O lets us operate measurable management and governance?
• The performance of O/O centres can be made more transparent than local or in-house operations?
• Problems can be solved in the SLA/contract etc?
• Because control can be centralised although production becomes more dispersed?
• O/O will make us more flexible, nimble
4. Communication is easy
• Problems can be solved in the SLA/contract etc?
• O/O easily imparts access to new/more skills, knowledge?
• Relationships don't need to be personal.
5. Knowledge is transferrable
• The capability to operate O/O is easily acquired?
• Problems can be solved in the SLA/contract etc?
• It lets us focus on our core valuable competences?
• O/O easily imparts access to new/more skills, knowledge?
• Relationships don't need to be personal.
6. Location doesn't matter
• We could be anywhere: Bangalore, Berlin, Boston, Beijing, Baile Átha Cliath, ...
• Distance doesn't matter?
• Inter-corporeality isn't necessary?
• Relationships don't need to be personal.
• You need/get 24/7 global reach.
7. That you have a choice!
• Our competitors are doing it, so must we?
• Or, we don't have to do O/O if we don't want to?
• You need/get 24/7 global reach.

However O/O can be a strength, drawing on new knowledge and capabilities that are multi-lingual, cultural, ethical, and sustainable. The fallacies are assumptions and must be addressed as risks. They can be worked through over time to achieve success however it is defined.

"Anywhere is nowhere if people and place matter."

Additional Reading
Wired.com "This Is the Man Bill Gates Thinks You Absolutely Should Be Reading" 2013 (link)
FT.com "Benefits of outsourcing come under scrutiny" 2013 (link)
Deloitte "The Risk Intelligent Approach to Outsourcing and Offshoring" 2008 (link)
NYT "The Benefits of Outsourcing for Small Business" 2008 (link)

10 outsourcing trends to watch

These are posed as current trends, moves that are taking place now or soon (CIO.com)
My take on the 10 trends, I'm being selective here, as follows in terms of value added...

1. Getting to grips with inter-supplier cooperation (this is hard but strategic if you can do it)
2. More hybrid entities (JVs, partnerships, captives)
3. Return to insourcing (because location still important)
4. Clients regain ownership of integration (because you can't outsource responsibility)
5. Infrastructure, operations, devOps, goes to India (standardised hardware, cloud, and operations)
6. Cloud becomes a commodity market (bad for differentiation strategy based on cloud)
7. Consulting becomes a commodity market (bad for consultancy firms, price pressure)
8. The rise of new machines (new tech keeps our inner geek happy)

Remote working, a reflection

Remote working works, or at least it does in this case... (article on InfoQ)

"
We have a long history of working together in offices and a very short one of doing it remotely. The tools are just about there, with plenty of new ones emerging as WebRTC starts to become a reality, but it will take us some time to adapt our way of working and learn how to use them as effectively as we do in the office.
Can remote working change our organisations? I certainly feel less of the negative effects of silos and hierarchy without the physical structures we build in offices to separate and elevate us. This leads to a feeling of greater autonomy and freedom to collaborate and connect more widely within the organisation.
So if we can be as effective working remotely, can it give our organisation a competitive edge? It will come as no surprise that I believe it can.
"

(Tom Howlett, 2014)

The realities of conference calls

So if you were thinking that technology could solve the communications challenges posed by globally distributed teams...