DEMO 08 - The Power of the Individual - Personal Scheduling

Palm Desert - Enterprise scheduling company Time Trade demoed their new application TimeDriver today at Chris Shipley's DEMO 08 conference. TimeDriver is a new kind of sales tool that lets users pro actively invite customers and clients to schedule an appointment. By embedding a �schedule now� button in email messages and on Web pages, users can provide a compelling call-to-action for scheduling a demo, support call, consulting session, interview, briefing and other interactions. TimeDriver borrows rules based scheduling technology from TimeTrade's Enterprise Scheduling Application used by organizations such as Charles Schwab, Sears, PETCO, Quest Diagnostics and Harvard. Their pitch at DEMO was very straightforward and went off without a hitch. DEMO should be proud to have such as pragmatic team with a cool application as part of their lineup this year. DEMO is one of those great, though provoking conferences that you should put on your list for September 08 when they come to San Diego.

This was one of the most practical, useful technologies demonstrated at the DEMO conference so far.

Below is a video of the demo at DEMO.

Was the Fed Tricked?

Today in the Wall Street Journal:

"When the Federal Reserve surprised markets with a 0.75 percentage-point cut in the federal-funds target Tuesday morning, the thinking was that concerns about a U.S. recession had so fully enveloped the markets that just about anything could happen. Sure, the thinking went, the Fed was in danger of looking like it had responded to market action rather than an economic report, but if markets were reacting to economic reports, well, it's all the same in this world these days.

The revelation that Societe Generale is taking a $7 billion write-down due to the activities of one rogue trader — and additional reports that the French bank may have been unwinding those positions on Monday, a thinly traded, volatile day when Asian and European markets were rocked with losses, puts the Fed's move in a new light. Namely, that they were taken in."

That's right – a single French rogue trader is believe to have caused the Fed to make an emergency move to adjust rates in reaction to the market sell off.

This highlights the highly deterministic methods used in computer based selling and analytics in the markets today. It spells out a need for more sophisticated methods to monitor market fluctuations. See our earlier post in this Blog regarding Semantic Webs. Collective intelligence helps when you are making big decisions.

The Street Reacts to Fed's Rate Cut

Today's Wall Street Journal video summarizes the downward reaction AND the market rally after the adjustment. Look to healthcare and tech stocks to be the least affected overall by the ongoing issues in the financial markets.

Ten Tips for the Innovative Leader

I recently read and enjoyed Paul Sloane’s latest book, The Innovative Leader. Here are a list of just some of the gems from this book. It's available at Amazon.com (click the title of the link above and go directly to the page on the Amazon web site).

1. Have a vision for change
You cannot expect your team to be innovative if they do not know the direction in which they are heading. Innovation has to have a purpose. It is up to the leader to set the course and give a bearing for the future.
You need one overarching statement that defines the direction for the business and that people will readily understand and remember.
Great leaders spend time illustrating the vision, goals and challenges. They explain to people how their role is crucial in fulfilling the vision and meeting the challenges. They inspire men and women to become passionate entrepreneurs, finding innovative routes to success.

2. Fight the fear of change
Innovative leaders constantly evangelise the need for change. They replace the comfort of complacency with the hunger of ambition. They'll say, "we are doing well but we cannot rest on our laurels, we need to do even better." They explain that while trying new ventures is risky, standing still is even riskier. They must paint a picture that shows an appealing future that is worth taking risks to achieve. The prospect involves perils and opportunities. The only way to get there is by embracing change.

3. Think like a venture capitalist
VCs use a portfolio approach and balance the risk of losing with the upside of winning. They like to consider lots of proposals. They are comfortable with the knowledge that many of the ideas they back will fail. These are all important lessons for corporate executives who typically consider only a handful of proposals and who abhor failure.

4. Have a dynamic suggestion scheme
Great suggestion schemes are focused, easy to use, well resourced, responsive and open to all. They do not need to offer huge rewards. Recognition and response are generally more important. Above all, they have to have the whole-hearted commitment of the senior team to keep them fresh, properly managed and successful.

5. Break the rules
To achieve radical innovation you have to challenge the assumptions that govern how things should look in your environment. Business is not like sport, with its well defined rules and referees. It is more like art and is rife with opportunity for the lateral thinker who can create new ways to provide the goods and services customers want.

6. Give everyone two jobs
Give all your people two key objectives. Ask them to run their current jobs in the most effective way possible and at the same time to find completely new ways to do the job. Encourage your employees to ask themselves—what is the essential purpose of my role? What is the outcome that I deliver that is of real value to my clients (internal and external)? Is there a better way to deliver that value or purpose? The answer is always "yes", but most people never ask the question.

7. Collaborate
Many CEOs see collaboration as key to their success with innovation. They know they cannot do it all using internal resources. So they look outside for other organisations to partner with. A good example is the Mercedes and Swatch collaboration, which produced the Smart car. Each brought different skills and experiences to the team.

8. Welcome failure
The innovative leader encourages a culture of experimentation. You must teach people that each failure is a step along the road to success. To be truly agile, you must give people the freedom to innovate, experiment and to succeed. That means you must give them the freedom to fail, too.

9. Build prototypes
People's Bank has a refreshingly original attitude to new ideas. "Don't debate it, test it," is the motto of this innovative American financial services organisation. Try the new idea at low cost in a section of the market and see what the customers' reactions are. You will learn far more in the real world than you will in the test laboratory or with focus groups.

10. Be passionate
Focus on the things that you want to change, the most important challenges you face and be passionate about overcoming them. Your energy and drive will translate itself into direction and inspiration for your people. It is no good filling your bus with contented, complacent passengers. You want evangelists, passionate supporters. You want people who believe that reaching the destination is really worthwhile. If you want to inspire people to innovate, to change the way they do things and to achieve extraordinary results, then you have to be passionate about what you believe in and you have to communicate that passion every time you speak..

Paul Sloane is an Advisor to No World Borders, and the founder of Destination Innovation (www.destination-innovation.com). He writes and speaks on lateral thinking and innovation. His book, The Innovative Leader, is published by Kogan-Page.

Fed Cuts Rates by Quarter Point, Some ETFs up 12%, 70% on Year. Is it all in the Software?

On the heels of a quarter point cut in the federal funds discount rate, stocks closed lower today. Leading the declines were financial stocks, which had been rising on hopes of strong Fed action to resolve the credit-market crisis, and stocks of companies whose profits are most closely tied to economic growth, such as transportation firms, retailers and industrial companies.

Smaller stocks suffered more than big ones, on the theory that they are less stable in times of economic trouble. Technology stocks closed lower also. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 2.5% Tuesday.

However, an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that shorts real-estate values was up nearly 12% on the day, and an ETF based on the Brazilian economy is up 70% for the year. International markets and selective investment instruments that are betting on the devaluation of real estate have performed well this year. This compared to an ETF that is tied to an index in selected tech stocks, which is only up approximately 12% for the year.

ETFs, which trade on exchanges like a stock and generally track various stock and bond indexes, already had lower expenses on average than traditional mutual funds. So now investors can find razor-thin expense ratios for some ETFs that track broad-based indexes of market sectors like international stocks, U.S. growth stocks or municipal bonds. But investors' infatuation with ETFs also has prompted several firms to introduce much pricier versions that seek higher returns by following offbeat and narrow indexes, such as ones tracking European drug companies or using computer-based algorithms to pick stocks. Such algorithms might be described visually, in their simple form as a flow chart using a lamp scenario to illustrate (see below):













Essentially, investors are paying for the quality of software, programmed with scenarios (or, as above, algorithms) and the added value of the managers who review the investments indicated by the algorithm that simulate market conditions.

No World Borders can help you assess the value of intellectual property (IP) that is in the form of software.

Here is a video from the WSJ with Chief Investment Officer Bob Doll of BlackRock with his reaction to the rate cut by the Fed today:

Housing downturn indicates opportunities in Default, REO

While loan originations are down and subprime lenders and those that invested in the loans they orignated are feeling pressure, there are opportunities in the troubled mortgage market.

Hedge funds are looking for distressed loan pools. Analytics firms that monitor leading indicators of at-risk mortgage are seeing a brisk business. The default management divisions at First American Financial (NYSE: FAF), and Fidelity National Financial (NYSE: FNF) are experiencing record volume in their loss mitigation and other related services.

12 Step Program for Successful Offshoring and Outsourcing

Offshoring can be seen in the context of either production offshoring or services offshoring. After joining the World Trade Organization 2001, China emerged as a popular destination for production offshoring. After technical progress in telecommunications improved the possibilities, India became a country leading in service offshoring.

The economic logic is to reduce costs. If some people can use some of their skills more cheaply than others, those people have the competitive advantage. The idea is that countries should freely trade the items that cost the least for them to produce. However, the cost of reduced quality and the costs associated with managing an offshore or out sourced process need to be considered early in the plan.

A common consequence in both captive and outsourced operations originates from unrealistic ramp-up expectations, where project planners try to start up too much new offshore process too quickly. Quality could be sacrificed for quantity. The most important lesson that new project managers should to learn is that quality must be achieved before ramping up large numbers of seats -- or quality will never be achieved. Risk factors in quality usually should include customer satisfaction. Customer sat with remote call centers, fulfillment, language and time zones should be carefully scrutinized at the planning phase and reviewed after roll out to continuously measure results.

The planning and implementation processes for moving work offshore is similar for back office, customer service, and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). Firms should plan to choose between outsourcing and opening a captive facility once they have completed an assessment of the types of work that could be shifted. Offshoring is a series of tasks and deliverables. Key decision points are identified -- to enable them to be recognized and formally presented to a senior management authority. Describing offshoring in a work plan format enables it to be quickly translated into an implementation document.

Once the initial management goals have been set and planning have been completed it make take between six to twelve months to establish an offshore presence and have transferred operations ramping up. Time frames for a new offshore operation to "go live" vary according to the size of the project, complexity and training.

It is also important to ensure that labor savings alone are not used to create the business model and the ROI. There will be additional costs of managing an offshore or outsourced organization that will counter the cost savings, to some extent.

Twelve Step Program for Successful Offshoring and Outsourcing

1. Set business goals with senior management for expected benefits of offshoring (cycle time, cost, customer satisfaction) and make sure these are measurable metrics.

2. Identify the low-hanging fruit in the project – seek an initial process that marries reasonable exposure to risk with an attractive ROI

3. Use Business Process Mapping (BPM) to map the existing process and simulate it VISUALLY. Ensure that business stakeholders buy in to what exists today. Consider using a Lean “Kaizen” approach to ensure that team members, not just management have input into what the current process is and the new process will be.

4. Use Business Process Mapping (BPM) to map the new process, and simulate the new process in a VISUAL way for senior management and ensure that they buy-in to the new process, costs, timing, and change management process.

5. Socialize metrics for success with the team

6. Catalog and baseline work that could be shifted offshore

7. Assess infrastructure requirements

8. Develop tax and other compliance strategies

9. Develop a labor strategy and personnel procedures

10. Determine whether to “make” your own presence offshore or partner

11. Train

12. Roll out first process

No World Borders can help with your offshore or outsourcing process. We have experience in what works and what does not, and which roles should stay local and which may be successfully outsourced. Contact us at info@noworldborders.com or 877-623-76287

Impact of Google's wireless strategy - cellphones with ads or easier access to applications?

Carriers traditionally have decided what applications most consumers see on their cellphones, setting rules and negotiating fees for software developers to gain access. Google has struggled at times in recent years to get its products -- including Google Maps, Gmail email and its search engine -- onto mobile phones in a way that's easy for people to use.

In the video below, Amol Sharma of the Wall Street Jornal reports on Google's new announcement that the company is developing cellphone software with a variety of wireless handset makers and operators. However, ad server technology designed or cell phones is a part of the componentry being built out as well.

Semantic Web: Borderless Information for Healthcare, Climate Change, User Generated Content

These developments are strategically aligned with our company's roots. Shared information via a common framework for data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries.

Examples:

Semantic Web ('SemWeb") Technology is being used to share information at the Australian Great Barrier Reef Park Authority. Users ("observers") of coral bleaching can self-report incidents to the authority to improve knowledge of the millions of square miles of coast around Australia.

Craigslist, a company with less than 50 employees champions user generated content for Collectivie Wisdom. This is a hugely disruptive development because Craigslist is one of the top 20 most visited sites on the web.

Semantic Webs are being leveraged as a mechanism for improved health care. The World Wide Web Consortium and the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group , which is chartered to deploy standardized Semantic Web specifications to provide services defined by the user community. Looking to overcome obstacles to data sharing in the life science research and health services communities, W3C seeks a framework supporting semantically rich system, process, and information interoperability. According to W3C, embedding of semantics into medical and research information will offer better access to information needed to find cures for diseases, make drugs safer and more affordable, and enable health care providers to offer individualized clinical management.