Microsoft: looking internally for value...

Microsoft Dynamics is sponsoring an Economist Debate on intra-firm innovation.... (Do most businesses adapt too slowly to change?) They say in their marketing pitch:

At the heart of every business are the people who make things happen. People garner insight from business applications to drive decisions that advance the organisation. People manage relationships internally and externally to drive relevant actions forward. The most successful businesses are powered by individuals who are contributing fully, able to make a difference and committed to their company's success. Microsoft can help individuals—and organisations—realise their full potential and make a significant impact by offering an end-to-end business solution that is flexible and easy to use.

This focus internally on employees suffers from a balancing lack of focus on customers/consumers, their needs, finding what they are and servicing them ie customer value and value management...

Microsoft seems to see employees and their relationship with their firms as their core business, but not enabling a better link with their customers.... Even though their system is part CRM (customer relationship management)...  go figure....

Microsoft Dynamics is a flexible, powerful business solution for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) that enables you to be agile and progressive in a constantly changing world.

Most read posts

Top ten most read posts:

1. What's important in a (consumer) value theory of innovation? (943 views, Oct 2010)

2. Value as a resolution of forces (762 views, May 2011)

3. My Cost Benefit analysis of the NBN (685 views, May 2010)

4. NBN Value Management (487 view, Jan 2011)

5. Final Thesis Review presentations (366 views, May 2011)

6. The Overview Model: towards a (consumer) value theory of innovation (295 views, Sept 2010)

7. Updated NBN Pricing: iiNet breaks $1/Gb barrier (294 views, May 2010)

8. Beyond Innovation Management: Towards Value Management (154 views, Jan 2007)

9. Ten things I would do with 1Gbps NBN (138 views, Nov 2010)

10. Innovation: for profit or value? (124 views, Nov 2010)

My thesis 'tis done... the end of the beginning...

My thesis was signed off by the Uni thi week... (after 8.5 years; 1.5 years examination, 1 year break, 1 year coursework, 1 year figuring out I needed to learn to write an essay, commenced 22.06.04 - 07.01.13)...


...I am pleased to advise that you have completed the requirements for the award of your degree. Please accept our sincere congratulations on this achievement.

.. When I tell people I am studying PhD they roll their eyes as I am about to tell them the topic, and they suspect it will mean nothing to them. But when I say, "I am looking at how consumers buy mobile phones" they relax because it is something they can identify with.


My thesis in brief: How do consumers buy mobile phones? Why do innovations fail? Why do new technologies go unused? How do consumers decide if they want to buy a new technology? I interviewed 3G mobile phone consumers to find out. What came out was an emphasis on value. Value is tricky because it is so complex. Value is personal, social, and sensitive to new information. 3G consumers described 80 types of value I summarized to 12 value meanings. I developed a process model of value. A value perspective of innovation expands the innovation definition from new and different to new and useful or otherwise valuable.

An innovation fails, when it fails to create VALUE.



More summary at: http://www.valman.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/a-thesis-in-100-words.html

My blog had 12,000 views about my thesis: www.valman.blogspot.com.


Other info of interest:

1.Presented research to Open Innovation conference at Harvard Business School in 2008

( search:ferrers; p.399)

2. Submitted value perspectives to: National Broadband Network (2010), US Dept of Commerce Innovation Metrics Review 2008, Garnaut Climate Change Review 2008 (submissions responding to this), Harvard Business School/McKinsey 'Innovating Innovation' Challenge Jan. 2013.

3. Planned book of Case Studies on 'The Value of Value Management'.

4. Conference Paper, DRUID Innovation Conference 2008, Toward a value theory of innovation: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:171331

Currently employed by the Australian National Data Service, where I push my understanding of value to better help Universities serve the research data management needs of researchers. I am particularly interested in how measuring value impacts how we understand and measure innovation and how it might impact national innovation policy.

Lessons Learned:
1. Patience, persistence and perseverance
2. Being in the same city with your Advisor's will speed things up
3. Learn to write. Not realising I couldn't write a five paragraph essay cost me at least a year's time - see notes here
4. Time and space are important to get your thinking straight.
5. A problem you really care about will keep you motivated but make you less flexible. Refusing to budge on some things will slow you down.
6. Letting go. My original topic was cut in half several times. See PhD blog 2004-7 here at Internet Archive.
7. Writing results didn't get traction until I found the right structure to tell the story (qualitative research). Might be different with a more formulaic quantitative thesis.
8. Write early. Write often. Not all the text fits in a thesis, so write a blog to store/archive/curate that text. My blog attracted close to 12,000 views. Now to turn those views into citations.
9. Use your time and writing to publicise your ideas into forums where the question you are answering will help others. See the list above to where I submitted a value perspective: corporate (NBN), government (US Dept of Commerce, Garnaut Climate Change Review), conference (DRUID), competition (HBS Innovating Innovation Challenge).
10. Keep healthy, exercising, get some time away from your desk. I got married, helped have a baby, and get my wife through a pregnancy and birth, moved cities, moved jobs. Yet the thesis kept on keeping on... until now... Perhaps the blog will remain the hearth that brings me back...
11. As webpages disappear... archive.org remembers them mostly...

Your comments as always welcome....

Real-time value management: tools to support hackfest

A.Feedback to The Age data #hackfest held Monday just gone - see The Age data #hackfest


My feedback:
1. Let players peruse data before #fest.
2. Online social tools[ie Value Management]; list of invitees (approved for release with signup; ie please share my twitter/email/name/blog)... live blog... live voting.... live project list.... live workspace... live wiki.... let's not compete, let's cooperate.... eg theagehackfest@googlegroups.com user: theagehackfest for docs etc...


B. Compare this to assisting meetings in real time.
Help meetings in real time... This week we had 16 in our weekly meeting... Planning for the year...

  

Old way

• Gather ideas in doc, www page
• Discuss
• Action Points

 New way

• Tweeting ideas (Anonymous if wish)
• Live voting: crowd vote
• Live commenting
• Issue: Will reading distract too much from listening...?

C. See similar comment on Prime Minister's talkfest roundtable (3:35:00 video; data but no video)
Tweet: 04.10.12 Talkfest at #pmdigital but where is the tweetstream... where are the online notes for each speaker, where is the real time voting +1

Next steps: Martin, we could build tools to integrate these functions....Thoughts...?

A thesis in 100 words

Motorola A920:
Early 3G mobile
2003
Motorola lost $4B 2007-9
Sold to Google.

Two versions of a 100 word abstract for the final thesis award:

1.In this thesis, I examine how mobile phone consumers understand and experience value in 3G mobile phones, from the perspective of innovation theory. Value is an important concept in innovation theory, but it is only partly analysed and defined. This thesis opens and explores the black box of value, to analyse and define value as fully as possible, to better understand innovation, particularly how and why consumers adopt innovation in the form of a new technology. A focus on value expands the way innovation is defined from something new and different to something new and useful or otherwise valuable.

2.Why do innovations fail? Why do new technologies go unused? How do consumers decide if they want to buy a new technology? I interviewed 3G mobile phone consumers to find out. What came out was an emphasis on value. Value is tricky because it is so complex. Value is personal, social, and sensitive to new information. 3G consumers described 80 types of value I summarized to 12 value meanings. I developed a process model of value. Value expands innovation beyond the new to the new and useful.

The peer reviewed copy

The informal explanation

A third version (follows what is it about; why it is important; what did you find; how does it change anything):

3.This thesis explains how and why consumers buy 3G mobile phones, to better explain how consumers understand innovation in a dynamic environment. Innovation theory has focussed to heavily on understanding how firms manage innovation, and on innovation narrowly as something novel and different. Value emerged from my analysis as a better explanation for and process of consumers' adopting new technology. I found 12 value meanings and practices which analyse consumer valuing as complex, subjective, social and sensitive to new information. A value perspective expands innovation definition from new and different to new and useful or otherwise valuable.

Which do you prefer?

iPhone 3G:
2009 advertisement for App Store
1B app downloads in first ten months
Largest public company in world 2011.
Grew from #300 (2003) to #5 (2013): Fortune 500. 

Nearly there:... "Once you have confirmed that your field of study and thesis title are correct and have added your 100 word abstract, you will be considered to have met the requirements of the degree..."