Knowledge Library
Curated by BPI Network staff
Industry Studies
The Role of the CIO in Fueling A Successful Digital Transformation
By the end of 2017, two-thirds of CEOs at Global 2000 companies will include “digital transformation” at the core of their business strategy. Of those who already made significant digital efforts, 81 percent say it has clearly differentiated their company from the competition. In this white paper, BlueJeans interviewed top IT influencers to gather their recommendations on best practices for success in the CIO role and their predictions for the future of digital transformation initiatives. Read more »
Azure Stack: An extension of Azure
Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments. Organizations can now build modern applications across hybrid cloud environments, balancing the right amount of flexibility and control. Developers can build applications using a consistent set of Azure services and DevOps processes and tools, then collaborate with operations to deploy to the location that best meets the business, technical, and regulatory requirements. Read more »
Cloud technology options towards Free Flow of Data
This whitepaper collects the technology solutions that the projects in the Data Protection, Security andPrivacy Cluster propose to address the challenges raised by the working areas of the Free Flow of Datainitiative. The document describes the technologies, methodologies, models, and tools researched anddeveloped by the clustered projects mapped to the ten areas of work of the Free Flow of Datainitiative. The aim is to facilitate the identification of the state-of-the-art of technology optionstowards solving the data security and privacy challenges posed by the Free Flow of Data initiative inEurope. The document gives reference to the Cluster, the individual projects and the technologiesproduced by them. Read more »
Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Public Cloud: Challenges and Mitigating Strategy
Cloud computing is geared towards the effective and efficient use of computational resources and it has been making a big revolution in the field of information technology by reducing capital investment. It delivers computing as a service, that enables effective utilization of computational resources, rather than, a product, for a fraction of the cost. This paper explores key security issues associated with PaaS and proposed mitigating strategies are provided. These security challenges slow down the adoption of PaaS. Mitigating these security issues could increase PaaS adoption. This paper focuses on the security issues associated with Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering on a public cloud platform and provides various mitigating techniques to address these security issues. If properly implemented, we could realize an increase in PaaS adoption. Read more »
Aligning to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework in the AWS Cloud
Governments, sectors, and organizations around the world are increasingly recognizing the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) as a recommended cybersecurity baseline to help improve the cybersecurity risk management and resilience of their systems. This paper evaluates the NIST CSF and the many AWS Cloud offerings public and commercial sector customers can use to align to the NIST CSF to improve your cybersecurity posture. It also provides a thirdparty validated attestation confirming AWS services’ conformance to the NIST CSF risk management practices, allowing you to properly protect your data across AWS. Read more »
Moving Financial Market Infrastructure to the Cloud
DTCC plays a critical role in protecting the integrity and stability of the global financial system. The firmstands at the center of the global marketplace, and in its role as the holding company for SystemicallyImportant Financial Market Utilities (SIFMUs) in the United States, its services are deemed essential forthe safe and efficient functioning of the marketplace. Historically, DTCC’s core platforms and systems havebeen hosted in private data centers owned and operated by the firm – an approach that was consistent withmany of its peers in the industry. Read more »
Security and Privacy in the Age of IoT
The primary goal of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to provide better, more efficient experiences for consumers, citizens and businesses. With innovation comes an increased need for security. As the industrial sector steps into unknown territory of implementing enterprise level IoT solutions, there are opportunities to efficiently and effectively mitigate potential risks associated with the new technological capabilities. Security and privacy in the age of IoT are of utmost importance to industrial leaders, and IT specialists are responding with effective and actionable recommendations. Read more »
Pragmatic Approach to Big Data
The explosion of e-commerce, devices, wearables, web usage and mobile apps in the past decade led to exponential growth in the amount of data businesses collect. The sheer amount of data can be overwhelming: 2.5 quintillion bytes are created every day. To put this into perspective, 90 percent of all the data in the world was created in the last two years. Businesses often know they have “big data” but want help understanding what it means and how they can utilize it to improve their business. They’re often looking for a way forward; a pragmatic process for learning from big data that provides useful and actionable insights. Read more »
The Truth Behind Digital Transformation
Digital transformation has come to the forefront in recent business news, the increased exposure has caused its meaning to become convoluted and misrepresented. Contrary to common perception, digital transformation is not a one-and-done project; it is an ongoing, strategic, company-wide culture shift that lays the groundwork for growth and success. Digital transformation requires a unified and integrated approach — starting with alignment at the top — and a management approach that favors organization-wide goals over siloed departmental initiatives. It’s a team effort and it takes time. Read more »
5G innovations for new business opportunities
5G is the next generation mobile network that enables innovation and supports progressive change across all vertical industries and across our society . Through its Radio Access Network (RAN) design and its orchestrated end-to-end architecture, it has the potential to boost innovation and generate economic growth in the European economy. The 5G service models support agility and dynamicity, thereby impacting the granularity, duration and trustworthiness of business relationships. The ability to combine private and public networks and data centres across multiple domains in a secure and controlled way facilitates collaborative business processes. It reshapes the digital business ecosystem with new value chains linking stakeholders from the telecommunications world and the vertical industries in win-win situations. Read more »
Google Infrastructure Security Design Overview
This document gives an overview of how security is designed into Google’s technical infrastructure. This global scale infrastructure is designed to provide security through the entire information processing lifecycle at Google. This infrastructure provides secure deployment of services, secure storage of data with end user privacy safeguards, secure communications between services, secure and private communication with customers over the internet, and safe operation by administrators. Read more »
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Unpacking Collaborative Bidding
University of Tennessee researchers began exploring competitive bidding methods in 2012. The research led to two white papers. The first is a practitioner-oriented white paper that defines the what, when and why of the various competitive bidding methods.1 This white paper builds on the first, and includes the following six sections: Research Methodology, Changing Landscape of Strategic Sourcing, Unpack Various RFX Methods, Alternative Collaborative Bidding Process, Case Study Sharing, and the Conclusion to the Research Methodology. Read more »
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Unpacking Competitive Bidding Methods
Hundreds of organizations conduct competitive bids to pick the best supplier to meet their needs every day. Unfortunately, too many organizations are using the wrong tools for the wrong job – often resulting in selecting the wrong supplier or developing a contract that is misaligned with the organization’s objectives. Simply put, using the wrong competitive bidding method is like putting a square peg in a round hole. Forcing it to fit is myopic and inefficient. To further complicate things, newer more collaborative approaches have emerged which tout the benefit of allowing buyers to gain insight and improved supplier innovation. Read more »
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Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index
The 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index (GMCI) report is the third study prepared by the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) Global Consumer & Industrial Products Industry Group and the Council on Competitiveness, with prior studies published in 2010 and 2013. This multi-year research platform is designed to help global industry executives and policy makers evaluate drivers that are key to company and country level competitiveness as well as identify which nations are expected to offer the most competitive manufacturing environments through the end of this decade. The 2016 study includes more than 500 survey responses from senior manufacturing executives around the world. For more information concerning the specifics of this study and its participants, please consult the appendix. Read more »
Building Blocks of Success: Seven Tenets of Process Management Maturity Model
APQC’s Seven Tenets of Process ManagementSM are tools that can help organizations move from the “developed” stage and overcome the issues where so many organizations go wrong: stopping at the design stage or haphazardly conducting one-off process improvements. Strategic alignment, governance, and change management provide the foundation to establish clear goals and a strong infrastructure. These tenets, which act as guiding principles for prioritization, ultimately help reduce the risk of facing resistance because the organizations can clearly communicate the value and effectively assign their resources. Read more »
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Operational Excellence: Snapshots
In order to understand the future of Operational Excellence & Business Transformation, we need to understand the key priorities as aligned with where progressive leaders are taking Operational Excellence. With this in mind, BTOES Insights – in partnership with the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit – recently asked 150+ industry professionals what they considered to be pressing issues and future trends within Operational Excellence. This report presents a series of insights gained via the survey, ‘Pressing Issues in Operational Excellence’, all released exclusively by BTOES Insights. If you want to join the discussion, or wish to submit your own content regarding the most Pressing Issues in Operational Excellence, reach out to charlotte.kelly@btoesinsights.com and get your voice heard. Read more »
Market Reconstruction 2.0: A Financial Services Application of Google Cloud Bigtable and Google Cloud Dataflow
The FIS Market Reconstruction Platform (MRP) is a market surveillance and forensics utility designed for the daily ingestion, linkage and analyticsof U.S. equity and equity options market events over multi-year periods. In May of 2015, FIS’ Advanced Technology group (formerly SunGard)released a white paper detailing its experiences using Google Cloud Bigtable in prototyping the MRP. In the months that followed, Google openedseveral other services within its Cloud Platform suite to general availability (GA), among them Google Cloud Dataflow. The solution architectureis revised to include both Cloud Dataflow and Google’s BigQuery service in addition to Bigtable. With the combination again considered inthe context of the MRP requirements, we conducted additional experiments measuring the speed and scalability of the revised architecture.We have found that while it is imperative that engineers adopt specific approaches that capitalize upon cloud and parallel computing paradigms,employing these services together does yield the potential for extraordinary computing performance. Read more »
Internet of Things Research Study
Suddenly, everything from refrigerators to sprinkler systems are wired and interconnected, and while these devices have made life easier, they’ve also created new attack vectors for hackers. These devices are now collectively called the internet of things (IoT). IoT devices are poised to become more pervasive in our lives than mobile phones and will have access to the most sensitive personal data such as social security numbers and banking information. As the number of connected IoT devices constantly increase, security concerns are also exponentially multiplied. A couple of security concerns on a single device such as a mobile phone can quickly turn to 50 or 60 concerns when considering multiple IoT devices in an interconnected home or business. In light of the importance of what IoT devices have access to, it’s important to understand their security risk. Read more »
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The Algorithm of You: How IoT Transforms and Differentiates Customer Experience
The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to revolutionize the way business is run and to create differentiated customer experiences. IoT allows for the processing of massive numbers of device events and for commingling those events with business and customer events. This combination generates the next-best, in-context business actions, and thus, smart, differentiated IoT-driven customer experiences. Companies use “the algorithm of you” to collect and process a myriad of data on each customer and potential customer via the IoT. This allows companies to know customers and prospects better and to deliver offers, products and services that are relevant and in context to clients’ real-time needs and desires via channels and devices customers prefer. Read more »
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In February 2016, APQC and its research partner Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) conducted a survey to gauge organizations’ agility and what strategic planning practices (i.e., planning activities, internal and external assessments, and implementation practices) affect that agility. Organizational agility allows organizations to overcome such obstacles. This report looks at which factors drive or deter organizational agility, what are the top obstacles, and what are some solutions to address the obstacles. Read more »
A Manufacturing Network Fabric Maturity Model
The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to connect an astonishing 50 billion devices by 2020. In the manufacturing world, this increase of devices is providing deeper insights into operations and new opportunities to improve quality, productivity, efficiency, and security. The demand to collect and analyze production information in real time is driving the need for manufacturers to converge their historically disparate industrial and enterprise networks into a single network architecture. This white paper discusses the importance of the network fabric in today’s information-enabled manufacturing environments, outlines the steps that proactive manufacturers can take to capture its full value for years to come and describes a four-stage methodology for improving an existing network to a higher maturity level. Read more »
This white paper was inspired by a discussion between Phil Coughlin, President of Global Geographies and Operations, Expeditors International of Washington, Inc., and Kate Vitasek, faculty member, the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business Administration, about poor contracting practices in the logistics and transportation sector. The discussion expanded and the concept of a white paper challenging better contracting practices for 3PL services was born. Passionate industry leaders joined in the discussion, becoming authors and contributors. All felt strongly that the entire industry—buyers and suppliers—will benefit from this paper. Read more »
Social Insights: CFO Edition. How CFOs Engage with People, Brands, and Content on Twitter
There is a persistent belief that CFOs don’t participate in social media; even as they are leading organizations that are increasingly being challenged by social media and the disruption it enables. As a matter of fact, best in class financial executives are now actively getting social, both so they can better understand social media’s implications and to benefit from all it can offer. BPI partner Leadtail, in collaboration with Intacct, developed this report: “How CFOs Engage on Twitter,” using their Social Media Insights Technology to analyze data from Twitter and share what real CFOs are really doing on social media. Read more »
Innovative Techniques for Engaging Employees in Process Improvement
Many organizations struggle with establishing a culture of continuous improvement. Employees are disengaged and resist the traditional checklist approach to identifying improvement areas. As practitioners of benchmarking and purveyors of best practices, we all know one way to move past a difficult problem is to look externally for answers. This article discusses how process and performance management departments can leverage open innovation tactics and tools like crowdsourcing, hack days, and communities of practice to engage employees and tap into ideas for process innovations or improvements. Read more »
Why Are Big Businesses Looking to Start-Ups for Innovation?
Businesses today face a market of constant instability and disruption due to significant changes in customer behavior, technology, regulation and demographics. This demands an innovative response from business otherwise they risk losing revenue and market share to more forward thinking, innovative and agile competitors. The question is no longer, why should your business innovate, but rather, in what ways are you innovating and how fast? Read more »
Fostering a Start-Up and Innovation Ecosystem
Having the right talent is essential to support business growth. Countries need to invest in human capital to build and retain a workforce not only with the skills startups seek but also to help build businesses and innovate for the future. Countries can kickstart investment in human captial by creating flexible labor markets that attract people with a variet of skills and experience. Read more »
How Delta Uses Microsoft Dynamics and Avanade to Create Next-Generation Customer Experiences
Delta Air Lines’ legacy in-flight point-of-sale system (POS) system could only provide very basic transaction data for items like meals, headphones and duty-free items. Declines in credit card purchases remained undetectable until the flight landed, leading to lost revenue. In addition, the in-flight POS system lacked the ability to communicate in real time with Delta’s CRM system, resulting in a disjointed customer experience. Learn how Delta Air Lines enhanced customer experience and reduced lost revenue by implementing a mobile, in-flight POS system powered by Microsoft Dynamics and Avanade. Read more »
New Belgium Brewing Creates Great Customer Experiences Using Microsoft Dynamics
New Belgium Brewing Company is a company that prides itself on being a customer- and employee-centric business. When rapid growth threatened New Belgium’s ability to adhere to these principles, the company implemented Microsoft Dynamics AX for ERP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Supply Chain application. The implementation resulted in an improvement in supply chain management, enhanced sales and support, and higher employee productivity–all cumulating in a 33% increase in sales. Read more »
The Industrial Internet of Things: An Evolution to a Smart Manufacturing Enterprise
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is not about ripping out current automation systems in order to replace them with new ones. The potential lies in the ability to link automation systems with enterprise planning, scheduling and product lifecycle systems. This paper analyses how the linkage can be implemented across the complete enterprise value chain in order to enable greater business control. Experts also offer perspectives regarding key aspects of IIoT deployment. Read more »
Java and the Internet of Things: Automating the Industrial Economy
Industrial automation results is an intelligent manufacturing infrastructure for increased safety and efficiency, and lowered costs. However, it comes with its own set of challenges. These include the need to connect multiple proprietary control systems, maintain end-toend system uptime, reduce energy consumption and total costs, adhere to regulatory requirements, and increase safety and security at every phase. At its core, industrial automation aims to bring together the advances of two transformative revolutions: the machines, facilities, fleets and networks that arose from the Industrial Revolution, and the powerful advances in computing, information and communication systems established via the Internet Revolution. The intersection of these two diverse and disparate sets of technologies often results in a mixture of individual solutions. Read more »
Twelve Search Strategies That Could Save Your Organisation
By looking at what some leading organisations are doing in this area, Bessant and von Stamm suggest 12 different strategies for developing a search capability to detect triggers of discontinuous innovation. These strategies are also useful for more conventional innovation. It is imperative that at least some of the strategies should be employed if a company’s aim is to remain both competitive and durable. Read more »
Acquiring Innovation: Strategic Deal-Making to Create Value Through M&A;
In a survey of tech companies, 76 percent of innovation-focused acquisitions met or exceeded expectations, meaning that M&A in pursuit of innovation is a high-potential source of growth. Led by the right inorganic growth strategy and accompanied by a holistic approach to deal execution, business leaders in all industry sectors can apply key lessons learned from innovation-intensive industry sectors to their own business and accelerate growth. Read to explore the key success factors in acquiring innovation. Read more »
How Do I Create a Distinctive Performance Culture?
Performance culture is the heart of competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. Thanks to globalization and the instant flow of information, competitors can ultimately mimic a successful strategy. What they cannot reproduce quickly, however, is a superior performance culture. There are four key lessons: “hard” problem-solving rigor can and should be applied to the “soft stuff”; organizations should focus on only a few vital cultural themes; leaders have five basic levers they can use to influence culture; and the work of cultural change is less about doing different things than doing things differently. Read more »
The Eight Essentials of Innovation Performance
The “Eight Essentials” are critical to helping management drive innovation performance across their organization. This article outlines each Essential in detail with suggestions on how to master it as well as examples of companies that excel at it. This study includes experiences working with companies and quantitative research that uncovered a set of practices that really do matter. Read more »
Innovation Champions: How CFOs Can Keep Companies Vital
In today’s fast paced and constantly changing market, continuous innovation is critical to any company’s success. Timely innovation boosts market share, sharpens competitiveness, lifts earnings and propels careers. CFO’s can play a critical role, but for them, supporting innovation presents a particular challenge—and opportunity. Hear what PwC and Wharton faculty have to say about the importance of the CFO leading the charge for innovation. Read more »
Radical Innovation:Making the Right Bets
In a complex and uncertain world, a strategic framework for innovation shouldbe flexible enough to help monitor and adapt projects over time as ideas move towardsmore concrete solutions, but rigid enough to justify continuation or termination of aproject as uncertainties and risky guesswork become replaced by actual knowledge. This study goes into depth on making the right bets. Read more »
Preparing for Discontinuous Innovation : How Are You Doing?
A fully comprehensive 12 step checklist for referencing how well you are doing with dicontinuous innovation. Read more »
Industrial Internet of Things: Unleashing the Potential of Connected Products and Services
Dubbed the Industrial Internet (of Things), this latest wave of technological change will bring unprecedented opportunities, along with new risks, to business and society. It will combine the global reach of the Internet with a new ability to directly control the physical world, including the machines, factories and infrastructure that define the modern landscape. However, like the Internet was in the late 1990s, the Industrial Internet is currently in its early stages. Many important questions remain, including how it will impact existing industries, value chains, business models and workforces, and what actions business and government leaders need to take now to ensure long-term success. To address these and other questions facing business and government leaders, the World Economic Forum’s IT Governors launched the Industrial Internet initiative at the Annual Meeting 2014 in Davos, Switzerland. Read more »
The new 2015 Edition of O’Reilly’s Women in Data report reveals inspiring stories of success and insights from four women working in data, across the European Union. Now featuring a total of 19 interviews with women who are central to data businesses, authors Cornelia Lévy-Bencheton and Shannon Cutt uncover strategies for success for women in the field of data, and anyone interested in pursuing or advancing their career in data Read more »
The Essential of the Cloud 2015
The Essentials of the Cloud, brings together the latest in information, coverage of important developments, and expert commentary to help with your Cloud related decisions. Read more »
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Smart Connected Operations: Capturing the Business Value of the Industrial IoT
Smart Connected Operations is a future looking vision that describes what the factory or production line of the future will look like. It will involve Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enabled MOM applications integrated with IIoT enabled assets and IIoT enabled business systems. It is an elemental part of creating the Smart Connected Enterprise and is often where companies have breaks in the strands of the digital thread. In moving towards this vision, both solution providers and manufacturing organizations are going to have to up the game when it comes to investing in IIoT. These investments will include the creation of new organizations that bring together IT, OT, and business leaders, new technologies that enable connectivity, cloud, big data analytics, and the development of new applications, along with the foresight to see that small pilot projects today could transform entire industries tomorrow. Read more »
Winning with the Industrial Internet of Things
The potential economic benefits of the IIoT may be massive, but they are by no means guaranteed. Realizing returns begs two key questions: Are companies prepared to take full advantage of this opportunity? Are governments putting the right conditions in place to facilitate progress and capture benefits? Although a few pioneers are reaping rewards from their early investments, widespread adoption is hampered by major challenges. Accenture analysis reveals that many CEOs may be overconfident about their readiness for the IIoT. It also shows that many countries lack the full spectrum of enabling conditions required to spur the application of these new technologies across their economies. Read more »
Proven Paths to Innovation Success
The success of corporate R&D is on every C-suite agenda. Yet wide disparities persist in how well innovation investments actually pay off. As a consequence, R&D is often seen as a black box, where large sums of money go in and innovative products and services only sometimes come out. One of the aims of the Global Innovation 1000 study, our annual analysis of R&D spending, has been to demystify the process—and to find universal principles that can be applied by any company, in any industry. Read more »
A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work
Burstein and Black examine the recent trend toward the creation of innovation offices across the nation at all levels of government to understand the structural models now being used to stimulate innovation—both internally within an agency, and externally for the agency’s partners and communities. Read more »
The Future of Data Driven Innovation
It is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s mission to explore America’s long-term competitiveness andeducate the public on how the free enterprise system improves society and the economy. Part of that mission charges us to explore the emerging issues that are changing the ways we do business in this country and aroundthe world. There is arguably no bigger emerging issue in today’s business environment than the rise of data driven innovation. Read more »
Drivers of Innovation Performance
In 2014, APQC conducted joint research with Stage-Gate International to study the four drivers in Stage-Gate International’s Innovation Performance FrameworkTM: Product innovation strategy, Portfolio management, Idea-to-launch process, and Culture and leadership. This infographic looks at the impact of these drivers on product innovation performance. Read more »
Innovation Success Rates and Profits
In 2014, APQC partnered with Stage-Gate International to study the performance results of innovation programs at leading organizations. This infographic presents benchmarks on the success rate and amount of profits generated by organizations’ new products or services. Read more »
Innovation Performance: Critical Drivers of Success
Innovation Performance: Critical Drivers of Success presents research undertaken jointly by APQC and Stage-Gate International. The report explores current benchmarks for product and service innovation performance. Through in-depth analysis of survey data, this report compares the performance of top-, average-, and bottom-performing organizations. BPI Members: use discount code INNOV50 to download the full report at a discounted price of $50. Read more »
Becoming a Leader Who Fosters Innovation
Innovation is a tricky thing to bring into an organization because it’s so multi-faceted. There are many types of innovation, there are many people to consider, and there are many processes to use, all happening in a complex environment that is constantly changing and evolving based on what your competitors are doing. Read more »
Applying Agile to Marketing: EMC Corporation Case Study
Agile’s strong customer and quality focus is a natural fit with marketing’s priorities. The iterative nature of Agile can facilitate managing the ever-changing needs of the external environment. This case study explores how EMC Corporation implemented Agile in its marketing department to overcome several external (e.g., overwhelming amounts of information and rapid pace of change) and internal challenges (e.g., business silos and mixed communications). Read more »
How Organizational Culture Shapes Agile
APQC recently conducted a benchmarking study exploring how selected organizations adopted and support Agile, an iterative, collaborative, customer-centric project management paradigm. This article examines how the dynamics of work environment, organizational culture, and communication styles impact the effectiveness and speed of Agile adoption. Read more »
Enhancing Europe’s Competitiveness: Fostering Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship in Europe
Fostering Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship in Europe provides an analysis of Europe’s lagging innovation capabilities, the challenges associated with scaling entrepreneurship in the region and the conditions needed to create an enabling environment for ambitious, serial entrepreneurs. Developed in collaboration with A. T. Kearney, this new report draws on extensive input from the Forum’s Members, Global Shapers, Young Global Leaders, Network of Global Agenda Councils and leading policy-makers across Europe. Read more »
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Internet of Things (IoT) Enables $3.88 Trillion in Potential Value to Manufacturers
ARC Advisory Group believes that the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) will offer value across multiple industrial sectors and applications. Cisco predicts that the IoE could enable manufacturers to generate $3.88 trillion of value through a combination of increased revenues and lower costs over the next ten years. Key findings from this briefing involve: Accelerating time to IoT value by connecting IP-enabled devices, Reduced costs associated with converged IP networking, and Reduced risks associated with the right technology platform. Read more »
Many industries are contending with shortages of experts in scientific, technical, engineering, and math (STEM) specialties. Rather than revisit the well-known efforts of companies to recruit STEM talent, APQC turned the problem on its ear and asked: How can organizations leverage the experts they have while, at the same time, accelerating the rate of learning for new hires and mid-career employees? Read more »
Releasing the Value Within the Industrial Internet of Things
The market associated with this Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is poised for tremendous growth. General Electric has predicted that the Industrial Internet could increase global GDP by $10 trillion to $15 trillion over the next 20 years. Deriving useful analytics from the Industrial Internet of Things can be simplified into three basic steps: (1) collect data from machines, (2) send data to a central storage location, and (3) analyze information and achieve real-time insights. However, technical hurdles often arise related to low-bandwidth network connections, the need for real-time data replication to support timely analytics, and flexible data collection tools. Leveraging Attunity tools and using an ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) model for data aggregation can help. This approach enables real-time data replication which translates into access to faster, better business insights and more sustainable sources of competitive advantage. Read more »
Innovation through Strategic Execution
In today’s competitive environment, the push for innovation and the next big success is a common quest among forward-thinking organizations. But in reality, emphasizing idea generation alone does little to guarantee improvement to your bottom line or market share. Read more »
Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead
Progress in information technology is transformative. Every year brings faster processing speeds, greater storage capacity, bigger data sets, and more advanced software. Ways of connecting, sharing, collaborating, and doing business become richer, more varied, and more powerful, enabled to a large extent by expanding IT capabilities. Read more »
This ICF International white paper explores best practices in healthcare payer and provider innovation in response to market dynamics brought about by healthcare reform. Read more »
The HOW Report: New Metrics for a New Reality: Rethinking the Source of Resiliency, Innovation, and Growth
The HOW Report looks at how governance, culture and leadership influence behavior and impact performance. The findings are derived from a rigorous statistical analysis of observations from over 36,000 employees at all levels in 18 countries. Read more »
Mobile Innovation: Thinking Beyond the App
Mobility promises to drive fundamental changes in how businesses compete in their marketplace and interact with their employees and customers. Whether it is retailers seeking more personalized interactions within the store, media companies transforming the way we consume content from anywhere on any screen, or enterprises getting their field employees more connected and empowered, mobility can unlock completely new opportunities. Read more »
The Datacenter’s Role in Delivering Business Innovation: Using DCIM to Enable a Common Management Ap
Read this IDC white paper and learn how increasing needs for power, space and cooling capacity in the data center, the criticality of IT to the business and the continued adoption of virtualization, dynamic provisioning and cloud computing mean that data center facilities and IT systems and teams need to work effectively to deliver. Read more »
The white paper, Outcome-Driven Innovation, is a must read. It reveals the flaws in traditional innovation theory and explains how they are addressed with Strategyn’s thinking and our innovation process, Outcome-Driven Innovation. Read more »
How to drive innovation and business growth: Leveraging emerging technology for sustainable growth
To be competitive in the global marketplace, organizations need to be driving more innovation in their products and services. They need to innovate rapidly and they need to do it cost-effectively. This has been a need that has grown over the last several years. Read more »
Innovation – “Just Like Starting Over?”
The success of start-ups particularly in the technology industry over the past decade has left many senior executives of traditional firms pondering whether they can truly compete in terms of innovation. Elix-IRR’s latest white paper examines the key factors that start-ups need in order to be successful and sets out a framework for how established businesses can re-apply these to their own organisations to cultivate innovation. Read more »