IT Strategy

Borderless Innovation

February 20, 2010 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

Many of the world’s top multinationals have been leveraging the latest technological developments, their expanding global business networks and even competitors’ expertise to change the way they harness new ideas. But while these tools may make global collaboration easier than ever, there’s plenty of work left to do to make “borderless innovation” deliver, according to Knowledge@Wharton article titled “Borderless Innovation: Stretching Company Boundaries to Come Up with New Ideas”.

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Millennials’ Impact on Organization Structure

February 17, 2010 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

Accenture High Performance IT research program titled “Jumping The Boundaries Of Corporate IT”, which surveyed 5,595 students and young workers in 13 countries. It uncovers how the Millennial generation uses technology and confirms the Millennial archetype—global citizen, eager adopter of new technologies, willing to improvise to get the job done—but identifies regional differences for CIOs eager to create a technology environment that enables high performance.

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Long Tail of Manufacturing

February 1, 2010 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

I am back from sabbatical.  It’s time to start blogging on IT Strategy.  Well, I read interesting article in Wired “Next Industrial Revolution Atoms are the New Bits” by Chris Anderson (of Long Tail Fame).

Chris writes that “Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they’re ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other [...]

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Is Outsourcing Eroding Competitive Advantage?

August 12, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  2 Comments

Gary Pisano, Harvard Business School professor and author of the HBR article “Restoring American Competitiveness” points that outsourcing can erode company’s competitive advantage. Outsourcing, which shunts off low value added value chain to an external company, has an unintended consequence of eroding skills …

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Scenario Planning Important for Business Strategy?

July 8, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

WSJ.com article titled “Pendulum Is Swinging Back on ‘Scenario Planning’” provides anecdotal evidence highlighting that the use of Scenario Planning as a tool for Strategic Planning is making comeback because of this recession.   The use of scenario planning rose following the 2001 terrorist attacks, to about 70% of executives surveyed by consultants Bain & Co. [...]

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Fleeting Competitive Advantage

June 29, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  4 Comments

photo @ flickr by Franz Liszt 
Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath has written a paradigm shifting article on the fleeting nature of the Competitive Advantage in an article titled “Competitive Advantage is Fleeting (And its Okay to Admit It)”.  The goal of a great strategy is to achieve “Sustainable Competitive Advantage” – that’s what is taught in [...]

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IT can create ‘Intelligent Urbanization’

May 15, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

The technology has immense potential for ‘intelligent urbanization’ for India according to Susheela Venkataraman, managing director, Internet Business Solution Group at Cisco Systems.  Read complete article here.
Because of faster development in future years; 500 million people would be urbanized within the next five years. There would be emergence of new cities and 60 per cent [...]

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Palm Pre, Apple iPhone – Next Generation Enterprise Devices?

April 28, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

As the race to the bottom continues (From a form factor perspective) in enterprise application, new breed of enterprise devices will continue to ascend.  iPhone and Palm Pre are the new client devices that can be enabled to integrate with Enterprise application.   It’s going to be an excellent fit for custom application for the enterprise, [...]

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Ebay and Skype Strategy Analysis (again)

April 23, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

This is final installment of my thread on EBay’s Skype strategy.   In my initial analysis in Oct 18, 2007 in the blog titled eBay’s failed Business Strategy with Skype Acquisition, I concluded that Skype was wrongly hyped by the management (the then CEO Meg Whitman) on the synergistic advantage Skype brings to EBay’s core business.  [...]

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IBM’s ‘Smarter’ Growth Strategy – From Big Blue to Big Green?

April 19, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant  |  No Comments

IBM, a premier computer hardware company, I think is known for reinventing itself successfully.  First after being outsmarted by Microsoft in late1980s, IBM reinvented itself.  Lot of people believed, IBM cannot survive.  Read the details of the turnaround by the then CEO Louis Gerstner in his book titled ‘Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s [...]

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