Our principal consultants have been busy in September and October attending workshops and conferences and taking the opportunity to meet with New Zealand IT and Business thought leaders.
Will You Disrupt or Be Disrupted? Tony Seba Workshop
At a workshop in September, Tony Seba presented many of the digital opportunities and disruptions that are already being felt, and that will continue to be experienced in the coming decades.
This blog post from CallaghanInnovation's web site provides a good overview of his disruptive technology messages.
One of the emerging technologies he highlighted – electric cars and the capacity for autonomous or driver-less car - was also recently featured in the NZ Herald (see our blog article Featured in the NZ Popular Press in October 2014).
A key point made in the workshop was that digital businesses, and other businesses based on new technologies, are not only changing how we deliver goods and services, but also spawning new products and services and whole new value chains and business models to support them.
ITX 2014 focus on IT Governance
In October, we took comfort from the growing business leader and government awareness of, and focus on, the important area of IT Governance. Great presentations at ITX:
- In “Raising the ICT Game for Boards of Directors” Robin Johansen detailed his work with the Institute of Directors and Government in raising the profile of IT Governance responsibilities.
- In “ICT Transformation: More than meets the eye” Mei Fern Johnson discussed the pitfalls of implementing business projects that have a high IT dependency. Poor IT Governance (e.g. poor evaluation criteria and processes, poor contract management, and an absence of project governance and methodologies) is often at the root of all spectacularly terrible and costly failures. The recent NZ government example she presented does not need to be named here.
How are these two topics related?
Digital technologies are breaking down geographical and cost barriers, delivering powerful business solutions at increasingly lower costs to organisations and businesses. The resulting: speed with which smaller players can overturn established businesses, rising customer expectations, and friction free global opportunities are driving New Zealand business leaders and governments to take notice.
The primary objective of IT Governance is good decision making.
Good IT Governance firstly commits the organisation to make decisions, and then ensures that the leadership teams make well informed and well considered decisions about their IT investments and digital assets (and for example, put in place good project implementation processes) - for the betterment of their business or organisation.
Whether from a government or business perspective, there is growing recognition that IT Governance is a business leader imperative: a non-negotiable area of organisational and business responsibility and capability.
Many Thanks to:
- CallaghanInnovation for bringing Tony Seba (a lecturer from Stanford University and a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur) to our shores in September 2014.
- IITP for an excellence conference - ITX 2014 - New Zealand’s Conference of IT Innovation, Technology and Education, October 2014.