Godengo - where is it going?

I wonder about Godengo's business model and if they run the risk of going the way of other online services consulting firms. For my strategy class we are reading the case of Razorfish, a consulting firm that saw its revenues skyrocket in the late 90's, early 2000's and then saw a dramatic drop in demand for its services as its clients began to build internal capability for the services it provided. 

As the magazine industry moves towards a much stronger online presence and much smaller print circulation, I would not be surprised if magazines begin to develop the capabilities in-house to publish and manage their online content. The recent trend in new journalism ventures has been to skip right over the print phase and go directly online (politico.com, slate.com, etc.). Since print is such a losing proposition, it is hard to believe that any firm would outsource the capability to manage a huge part of its revenue base to a consulting firm when they could manage it internally.

Time will tell...

Lean and SOA - can they be friends?

I'm still struggling with the different strategies I'm hearing from different professors about process management and improvement. While lean production calls for a reduction in technology in order to simplify the process, SOA seems to improve the process by optimizing technology solutions. I can see the benefits of both, but I'm not sure that they can work together as well as Doug was saying they could. The point of lean is to expose the waste in the system and make it visible to the users of the system. Implementing a technology that requires user to input information both adds a step, and hides the information from the users. Lean is decidedly anti-technology solutions for this reason. 

SOA, on the other hand, automates decision-making processes. I think there is a time and a place for this, but I don't think it is always the right way to go about optimizing all processes. 

The constraints of the BCM

I have a few criticizms of the BCM and heat map. In studying strategy, we learn about core competencies. We learn that it is important to evaluate the core competency of your organization and to protect this competency and to enhance it ahead of your competitors. It is the thing you have that your competitors do not. It is complex and inimitable and it might not fit into a grid or be something you can put into words. But it is essential that you make decisions around it, you expand with it in mind, and you never outsource it.  

The BCM requires you to break down the components of your business both vertically and horizontally. It ignores the relationships between departments and the interconnectedness of the tasks and responsibilities. The heat map assigns priority to certain areas based on their potential to affect revenues, costs and how differentiated they are as a competency. 

While I can see where this is a useful exercise, I think it over-simplifies the structure of the organization too much. Targeting one business component at one level of accountability ignores the fact that a competency is not necessarily as neat and clean as the BCM might suggest. It segments parts of the business as if they function alone. I believe that corporations create a competitive advantage not based on how they carry out certain tasks at certain levels and how responsibility and accountability are measured, but rather how they structure and interconnect the different departments and levels of their organization in a way that gives them an edge on their competitors. 

IT delivery

One might think that a software development company would have a firm handle on what IT delivery strategy to pursue. At my old company, this was not the case. The company struggled with where its core competencies could best be employed. The prevailing attitude was, "we are software engineers first and foremost, and we know our business best. Therefore, we will always be able to develop a software solution internally better than any contractor ever could." Unfortunately, this attitude became crippling when we needed solutions to problems and did not have the appropriate resources to address these problems. Ad-hoc systems were developed and they did not talk to one another. Additionally, we purchased a few software programs that could not integrate with our in-house system. There was a failure to recognize future needs in programs that were developed early on in the company's life, which created serious issues when it came time to upgrade and change the system. 

On the surface, it might look like these software engineers simply did not know what they were doing. In fact, these engineers were very talented, but their skills did not transfer well into database management, HR, acounting and CRM software. They were highly specialized engineers who created a niche market software to help individual investors and investment clubs learn about investing and manage portfolios of individual stocks. 

The conclusion I draw from this example is that it is important for a company to recognize its competencies when it decides on an IT delivery platform. Don't let pride get in the way of good decision-making and know when to say that someone else probably has a better solution to your problem than you do. 

AutoCAD...not good enough?

It is pretty incredible that with all of the technology tools available to them, architects have not come up with a system like Mortenson has any sooner. It's frightening to think that, without an integrated review of the plans, the Twins' stadium would have been off by so much. Perhaps architects (and bridge builders?) should look to this industry leader to see what advantages they could gain by employing a system like the one Mortenson uses to truly integrate the myriad of electrical, plumbing, architectural and structral plans in a building project. 

I found our discussion on the possibility of an emerging global culture very interesting. As an anthrolopology major in undergrad, I spent quite a bit of time exploring the notion of globalization and culture. While I am not convinced that we will ever have what can be considered a global culture, I think it's important to look at the evolution of cultures around the world when we think about the future of the world's culture. I think there were some pretty strong adverse reactions to this idea in class the other day. Mia mentioned that she would never partake in a global culture if there was one. Others mentioned that it was inevitable. I think the reality falls somewhere in between. As technology has evolved, cultures inevitably become more integrated. Culture is the learned behavior of one human by another. As such, no culture ever exists in isolation. Studies of cultural groups that developed independent of one another show us that culture can and does evolve and change over time. Archaeological studies show that early migrations started in the northern regions of what is now Asia and traveled across a land bridge and down the coast of what is now North and eventually South America. The cultures, norms and mores of people in Mongolia and people in China evolved from the same small group of people. The divergence of these cultures can be attributed to the lack of communication between these peoples, but the similarities can be tied to a common heritage and the passing on of traditions and beliefs from one generation to another. Culture today emerges in a much different manner because we have such advanced methods of communication and we have instant access to people around the globe. Arguments have been made that this kills culture, and that the free flow of information makes people abandon their heritage and their "true" culture. I would argue that this exchange of information, while much more advanced than it used to be, is a) no different from how culture has always emerged and changed and b) inevitable. Will we ever become "one" culture? I don't think so. I believe that there are too many people in too many places for us all to become homogenous. However, I think if we look at the trajectory of human interaction over the history of the world, we will see that the interaction of one culture with another always results in a change or adaptation of both cultures.