Creative Technologist – Division of labor vs the return of the generalist? - Anders Wahlquist - CATScan - Creativity Online

What happens to roles as a small technology organisation evolves and grows from B-Reel co-founder Anders Wahlquist Starting B-Reel 11 years ago, we three founders had clear roles. Petter [Westlund, left]: designer, programmer, motion artist; swiss army knife in all things digital production. Pelle [Nilsson, center]: producer, director. Swiss army knife in all things TV and TVC production. Anders [Wahlquist, right]: business / key account. Swiss army knife all things Sales / HR / Business / legal / admin. Like a cell structure B-Reel has since developed organically looking for people beeing very allroundish. Generalists. Basically we have been happy with that. People overlap. Starting projects, we brought the whole team to the brief and collected ideas from all angles. Team effort.

Click to read more ...

Strategy by Design and the Importance of Enterprise Architecture - Booz and Co

For years, many companies have experienced a problematic tension between their IT departments and business units. On the one hand, IT works best when it is tied tightly to the company’s overall business goals. That’s why chief information officers have long worked to get a seat at the executive table — to help set the company’s strategic mandate and align IT with the organization’s aspirations. On the other hand, business unit executives remain doubtful about IT’s ability to support them in creating value. And despite the best intentions of managers on both sides of this gap, companies continue to struggle to integrate IT systems and to determine whether IT actually improves performance, and if so, by how much.

Click to read more ...

How Can Social Networks Constructed by Technology Understand Friendship?

When Google launched Buzz, a microblogging social network, several months ago, the company boasted that the network had been generated automatically, by algorithms that could connect users to each other based on communications revealed through Gmail and other services. However, many users balked at having what they perceived as mischaracterized social connections, forcing the company to frantically backpedal and make the Buzz service less automated and more under users' control. This incident notwithstanding, many companies are increasingly interested in automatically determining users' social ties through e-mail and social network communications. For example, IBM's Lotus division offers a product called Atlas that constructs social data from corporate communications, and Microsoft has investigated using such data to automatically prioritize the e-mails that workers receive. But researchers say there are a lot of unsolved problems with generating and analyzing social networks based on patterns of communication.

Click to read more ...

Creating Collaboration Takes More Than Technology - BRW - Evan Rosen

Wikis, Web conferencing, and the like won't help people work together if the corporate culture is internally competitive and hierarchical, Why should any organization adopt collaboration? There's only one reason—value creation. After all, if we're not creating value, what's the point? With a growing consciousness for collaboration, many companies are investing in collaboration tools and technologies. These range from enterprise instant messaging and unified communications, wikis, and enterprise social media to virtual worlds, Web conferencing, and telepresence. In a typical scenario, the months fly by after the collaboration tools are implemented. As the seasons change, decision-makers anticipate reaping the benefits of collaboration. And perhaps they can even point to successes within particular business units or functions. Often, though, it's the same old story.

Click to read more ...

And Google Begat...

The search giant's former employees are seeding tech startups—and shaping another wave of innovation During the holidays last year, Aydin Senkut and Elad Gil gathered 50 of their friends at a health-food restaurant in Palo Alto. Over turkey burgers and tofu wraps, they talked about tech trends and how to get rich. Or, more precisely, how to get richer. Senkut, Gil, and their dining circle are alumni of Google (GOOG), one of the greatest engines of wealth creation the U.S. has ever known. Since going public six years ago, Google has generated more than $170 billion for its employees and investors. Many of the millionaires the company has produced are young, wired into the latest developments in tech, and at ease with risk. Which explains why so many Google alums—including many of those at Senkut and Gil's gatherings—are active angel investors, attempting to add another zero to their bank accounts and another innovative company to their list of accomplishments. "I feel like we have such a strong network, it's almost like we've recreated Google outside of the Google walls," says Andrea Zurek, a 39-year-old backer of 26 startups.

Click to read more ...