Podcast about Sun Tzu and IT

Found interesting podcast today. Allthough it has been published couple of weeks ago, so some of you might have listened it already. Anyway, it is titled Intel's Former Innovation Manager Applies Sun Tzu's Art of War to Business and can be found here.

Executive summary is pretty generic and doesn't really describe contents of podcast so listening to it is needed and I do recommend listening it. Platt has in my opinion really intelligent approach to IT, he doesn't see it as be all end all solution but rather as an enabler. Also included are examples of mission type orders and cheng/chi transients.

Cheng/Chi is in my opinion one of the most difficult concepts to translate into business. In this podcast there is an example of turning certain department from cost center (cheng) which it has traditionally been to revenue center (chi). I think that is one way of applying maneuver conflict to business.

There is also companion slideshow, but page returned error when trying to download it, hopefully it will be fixed soon.


Edit: Actually, you don't have to listen to it, full transcript can be found from here.

Push and pull systems (1)

http://www.johnhagel.com/creationnets.pdf

An interesting article on open innovation and creating "creation nets" to capture value -

but one of the most interesting parts is a table on page 15 where "traditional" and "creation net" approaches to innovation are compared.

Creation nets are, when compared to traditional organizations (I'm paraphrasing here, read the whole article - it's good!)

1) focused
2) have multiple participants, which can be individuals as well as institutions
3) dispersed, rather than concentrated
4) pursue parallel innovation
5) coordinate through integration events, not stage gate reviews
6) use "constitutions" and norms for governance, rather than process manuals
7) outcome definitions tend to be high level performance specs ("prevent x from happening") rather than detailed blueprints ("use part y")
8) mobilize using pull, not push systems
9) review performance via appropriation and re-use (if something is good, it is used again)

Is it just me, or does this sound remarkably like Boyd's concepts for manouver warfare, blitzkrieg etc?