|
Speaking
I speak on
topics related to business, strategy and technology. From conceiving and implementing
FAST strategies to pragmatic technology approaches, I seek to challenge traditional
assumptions and help uncover simple, yet profitable solutions best suited to
your company's situation. Get details >>
Papers
- Moving
from Push to Pull - Emerging Models for Mobilizing Resources
(PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Capturing
the Real Value from Offshoring in Asia (PDF)
John Hagel
- The
Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities
(PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Overview
of Working Paper Series (PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Break
On Through to the Other Side: A Missing Link in Redefining the Enterprise
(PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- The
Secret to Creating Value from Web Services Today: Start Simply (PDF)
John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Dennis Layton-Rodin
- Service
Grids: The Missing Link in Web Services (PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Some
Security Considerations for Service Grids (PDF)
Martin Milani and John Seely Brown
- Control
versus Trust: Mastering a Different Management Approach (PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Orchestrating
Business Processes - Harnessing the Value of Web Services Technology (PDF)
John Hagel and John Seely Brown
- Orchestrating
Loosely Coupled Business Processes: The Secret to Successful Collaboration
(PDF)
John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Scott Durchslag
|
|
|
Viewpoint
February 4, 2004
The
Agile Dance of Architectures
John
Seely Brown and I have focused for some time on the intersection
of new strategic architectures and new IT architectures. We are convinced that this intersection will
shape opportunities for significant strategic advantage. In fact, we believe that, far from diminishing
potential for strategic advantage, new generations of IT architectures
will actually increase the potential for strategic advantage. We
ran into so much resistance when we ventured forth with this point of
view that we decided to write a working paper to develop this perspective
more fully.
In
this working paper, “The
Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities,”
we discuss the opportunities created by a new strategic and a new generation
of IT architecture. I have written
about the new approach to strategy – which I call FAST
strategy - in a previous web posting. I have also briefly discussed
the importance of Service
Oriented Architectures (SOA’s)
– the new generation of IT architecture – in another web posting.
Our working paper explores the interaction between these two
developments since this shapes our view regarding the increasing potential
for strategic advantage.
One
architecture without the other is not sufficient to overcome organizational
inertia. The two together, however,
can create an engine to propel the organization forward. SOA’s will
help to enhance organizational capability while FAST strategies will
help to focus that capability and build momentum. Without the flexibility
provided by these new technology architectures, this approach to strategy
is very difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Conversely, migrating to these new IT architectures will be very
challenging without the focusing discipline provided by FAST strategies.
In short, it is the agile dance between these two architectures,
in which each partner enables and shapes the other, that provides the
power required to build significant strategic advantage.
FAST
strategies focus simultaneously on two very different time horizons
– a long-term horizon of five to ten years, creating a background for
executive decision-making, and a much shorter-term horizon of six to
twelve months, providing the foreground where operational and organizational
initiatives play out. In this approach, the one to five year time horizon
that has been the traditional focus of strategic planning processes
consumes very little management time and attention – all the effort
is focused on the near and distant margins of this traditional time
horizon.
The
key value of this strategic architecture is its focusing discipline.
By defining a high-level view of the kind of business that must
be created over a five to ten year period, it provides an effective
framework for launching aggressive waves of near-term operational initiatives
designed to accelerate movement towards this longer-term direction.
Rather than dissipating resources across a broad portfolio of
“experiments”, it mobilizes a critical mass of resources against a limited
number of initiatives designed to rapidly improve operating performance
(in contrast to financial performance, although obviously there is a
relationship between the two). These initiatives are incremental in the sense
that they are designed to yield near-term operational impact. They may
or may not be incremental in the sense of supporting the previous trajectory
of the business. When the business
faces severe competitive challenges or rapid shifts in customer preferences,
these near-term operating initiatives may represent significant departures
from the previous trajectory of the business.
This
focusing discipline and rapid waves of near-term operating initiatives
mean little if the organization lacks flexibility. IT architectures (or lack thereof) today represent
one the most significant barriers to flexibility. We are today locked in enterprise prisons,
seeing opportunity (and threats) on the horizon, but shackled with architectures
that traded flexibility for cost-savings. We have used IT to standardize and automate
operations and information within the enterprise, but the discipline
we welcomed in the name of efficiency had a price of its own. It gave us one-time operating savings, but then
locked us into hard-wired platforms that made any major changes in business
operations painful and expensive, if possible at all. IT architecture
has become a choke point for operational and organizational initiatives.
Fortunately,
service oriented architectures offer the potential to confront this
choke point head on. At one level, service-oriented architectures have been on the horizon
for quite some time now (the techies among you will immediately think
of the promise offered by somewhat related component-based technologies
like CORBA or COM). The name focuses on a fundamental shift in the
view of software resources. Software has traditionally been viewed
as functionality designed to support a specific business context and
installed at the site where it will be used.
In contrast, services are designed without knowing in advance
the exact tasks they will be called upon to support. They are accessed
when needed from wherever they reside.
Combine
this concept of services with the notion of loosely coupled connections
and you have the basis for a powerful, and much more flexible, IT architecture.
Loose coupling is a design philosophy. It seeks to enhance flexibility by creating
modules where all the information required to establish a connection
with the module is described in the interface of the module. This approach
delivers the full potential of the services concept.
Think of each service as a module.
With loose coupling, the services can be accessed and connections
established without deep knowledge of the functionality embedded in
the services. My earlier web posting on loose coupling went into more
detail on the importance of this concept, not just in the technology
world, but also in the business world.
There
is one more piece to the puzzle required to make SOA’s really viable.
We talked about information in the interfaces of loosely coupled services.
If that information is presented in a proprietary language, it
may be very expensive to translate, if it can be accessed at all.
What we need are standardized ways of presenting this information
so that it can become more broadly accessible.
Web services technology provides this final piece to the puzzle. Using XML and a variety of derivative standards,
Web services technology helps to make services broadly and much more
inexpensively available. For a more in-depth discussion of the importance
and business value of Web services technology, see my book Out
of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow
through Web Services
Of
course, SOA’s are only beginning to emerge. But we are optimistic that
they will rapidly spread given their attractive economics. These architectures
effectively leverage large parts of the legacy IT platforms that are
already in place.
What
are the business benefits of SOA’s?
Well, we have
already talked about enhanced flexibility.
But that is only part of the story.
The real benefit is strengthening the capacity for business
innovation. Loose coupling in particular creates far more
degrees of freedom for experimentation and innovation, both at the local
level and higher levels of business activity.
In particular, loose coupling expands options for reconfiguring
business processes, not only the level of individual enterprises but
across broad networks of enterprises.
Which
brings us back to FAST strategies. Without the discipline of the FAST strategic
architecture, enhanced flexibility and potential for business innovation
can be rapidly undermined by lack of focus. It is the interplay
of SOA’s and FAST strategies that offers the opportunity to overcome
organizational inertia.
So,
what does this mean for strategic advantage?
At one level, the basics of SOA’s and even FAST strategies are widely
known and available. But, as we all know, there is a very long distance to be traveled
between concepts and execution. Few will make that journey successfully.
Those who do venture down this road will soon discover something
quite remarkable.
Strategic
advantage will emerge from the waves of operational and organizational
initiatives launched as part of a FAST strategy.
Any individual initiative will be unlikely to provide significant
strategic advantage, but the cumulative effect of multiple initiatives,
all focused by a clear longer-term view of the destination and reinforced
by a myriad of refinements in practice at the local level, will be much
more significant. Advantage
will come from path dependence. Companies
will not be able to copy the end-state because its performance will
depend on countless subtle practices – often that cannot even be articulated
- shaped by the specific path taken.
To
borrow another metaphor from our working paper, the continual interweaving
of SOA’s and FAST strategies will produce a unique organizational DNA
that will re-shape mindsets and organizational culture. These two architectures are ultimately learning
architectures. Properly deployed,
they provide capability for rapid learning at multiple levels. To
use a phrase of John Seely Brown’s, they provide a context for “creative
abrasion across specializations” and the mechanisms for rapid integration
of the learning that results into the operational performance of the
business. Companies that master these techniques will become moving
targets that will be hard to track, much less copy.
register
for site updates >>
|
|
|
register
for site updates >>
Blogs
- The Big Shift (HBR)
- EdgePerspectives blog
Books
The
Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison
ALSO
The
Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction
and Dynamic Specialization
by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown
- Out
of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow through
Web Services
by John Hagel III
- Net
Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules
by John Hagel, III and Marc Singer
- Net
Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities
By John Hagel, III and Arthur G. Armstrong
Deloitte
ongoing
research:
The 2009 Shift Index
The Big Shift Index: Uncovering the Emerging Logic of Deep Change
www.edgeperspectives.com
Cloud Computing working papers
BusinessWeek
The Next Wave of Open Innovation
April, 2009
Does the Experience Curve Matter Today?
April, 2009
Peer-to-Patent: A System for Increasing Transparency
March, 2009
How World of Warcraft Promotes Innovation
January, 2009
Harrah's New Twist on Prediction Markets
December, 2008
Innovation for Hard Times
November 2008
How SAP Seeds Innovation
July 2008
Student Activism Can Change the World
May 2008
Myelin Repair Foundation's
Institutional Innovation
May 2008
Learning from Facebook
April 2008
Learning from Tata's Nano
February 2008
Catching the Innovation Wave
January 2008
Phoning from the Edge
January 2008
Embrace the Edge - or Perish
November 2007
Funding Invention vs.
Managing Innovation
February 2006
Articles
- Creation
Nets: Harnessing the Potential of Open Innovation (co-authored
with John Seely Brown) April, 2006
- Connecting
Globalization & Innovation: Some Contrarian Perspectives (Prepared for the
Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 25
– 30, 2006; co-authored
with John Seely Brown)
- "The
Benefits of a Long Distance Relationship" (co-authored with John Seely Brown),
August 9, 2005
- "Feed
R&D - Or Farm It Out?" (HBR Case Study with Commentary co-authored
with John Seely Brown), July 2005
- "Productive
Friction: How Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation"
(co-authored with John Seely Brown), February 2005
- "From
Push to Pull: The Next Frontier of Innovation" (co-authored with John Seely
Brown), 2005, No.3
- "Innovation
Blowback: Disruptive Management Practices from Asia" (co-authored with John
Seely Brown), 2005, No.1
more
articles >>
|
|