| F
R I D A Y , F E B R U A R Y 2 7 , 2 0 0 4 |
|
| Topic |
LEADERSHIP
OF INNOVATION Relevance to Georgia's Geospatial Community |
| T A L K I N G
P O I N T S * Today when most of products (if not almost all) in our stores are "Made in China" and more and more white collar jobs are being outsourced to India, Philippines, Romania, etc. the only thing left for keeping our economy and global competitiveness going (perhaps excluding Hollywood, rap music, and the like) is the INNOVATION in business process management, new technologies, new social structures, etc. * The challenging part is managing innovation, its leadership, and setting the overall directions. * The conventional wisdom: "if you don't have a good fix on your destination — be it a product or service, a strategic or competitive outcome, or anything else — you may as well not start the journey" - is wrong. Why? Because any journey usually involves exploration, adjustment, and improvisation. Situations in which you don't or can't know the results in advance are common and could have a significant consequences. All businesses face similar challenges. * Managers should look to collaborative artists rather than to more traditional management models if they want to create economic value in the 21st century. * It’s a simple fact that in this century you often don't know where you're going when you start a journey. A manager who needs to be handed a clear set of objectives or a process specification is only half a manager, and not the most important half. * It appears, that with fast advancing technologies, and most of us becoming super experts in more and more narrowly defined professions, - we are all sinking in a new "dark age" of disconnect, fragmentation, redundancies, lack of tolerance & cooperation, lack of very basic knowledge about simple aspects of every day life. * The geospatial user community in Georgia is a prime example of growing disconnect, very costly fragmentation & redundancies, lost business opportunities, etc. • The "geospatial industry" appears to be still technology (vendor) driven. However, information technology alone cannot generate productivity benefits. To obtain measurable productivity improvement, investment in information technology must be combined with innovative business processes. * What type of innovation and leadership is needed to put us on a better track to a brighter future? * What type of new institutional structures and collaborative business processes need to be invented? * How could we better utilize the vast amount of knowledge generated by society, but again, maintained (or often lost) in disconnected islands of information by fragmented institutional structures? |
|