Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: nookiez  CC license
Chapter four from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) is about extreme innovation, AKA, serious disruption.
Innovative products and services aren’t enough any more.
“As one U.S. CEO explained, “We’re starting to think about things we couldn’t do before.” With the Internet, businesses can now find niche markets for rare, surplus or highly specialized goods — a virtual “garage sale,” as it’s often called. Business processes, as well as some products and services, are becoming more virtual. New delivery channels …read more

Chapter Three from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) is about being “globally integrated.” It may sound as if it’s strictly for giant multinationals, but it’s not.
“It was striking that CEOs of companies of all different sizes and geographic coverage were engaged and enthusiastic about these topics, which suggests optimization is crucial whatever the current geographic scale.”
Integration isn’t about selling products or outsourcing work or even doing lots of business in China and India—it’s about connecting, both internally and externally.
According to one US CEO, “We need …read more

Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: nookiez  CC license
Continuing last weeks conversation about change based on IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future.
Let’s start with the fact that change isn’t easy and well-managed change is even more difficult.
“CEO s rate their ability to manage change 22 percent lower than their expected need for it — a “change gap” that has nearly tripled since 2006. While the number of companies successfully managing change has increased slightly, the number reporting limited or no success has risen by 60 percent.”
The problem isn’t just change per se, but

the speed of change;
relentlessness of change; and …read more

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: nookiez  CC license
A week ago I brought IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future  to your attention and said I’d be discussing it in the future, but there’s so much material in the three studies that I decided to make it a Saturday staple for awhile.
Additionally, if you or someone you know, would like to provide a guest post based on or related to any of the three IBM studies (CEO, CFO and HR) I would love to have them.
In the Global CEO Study five critical traits needed for success were identified through conversations with …read more

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: nookiez  CC license
IBM has surveyed 1,130 CEOs who are collectively responsible for 2.224 trillion dollars of revenue.
The 2008 study uses their “collective insights and wisdom” to formulate what IBM calls “The Enterprise of the Future”—an enterprise that encompasses these traits

hungry for change;
innovative beyond customer imagination;
globally integrated;
disruptive by nature;
genuine, not just generous.

“This Global CEO Study report presents findings related to each of the attributes of the Enterprise of the Future. It draws on the rich insights from our CEO s through statistical and financial analyses as well as the voices of the CEO s themselves. …read more