I have been reading a few articles about serendipity and serendipitous discoveries of treasure that intrigue me.
The chemical Minoxidil was originally used as a vaso-dilator to treat high blood pressure. But more than its desired effect on blood pressure, it had the interesting side effect of reversing or slowing down the process of baldness. And lo and behold: the drug was marketed by the Upjohn Corporation as a treatment for baldness and hair loss and went on to gain fame as the brand name ROGAINE. And until its patent expired in 1996, it went on making money for its parent corporation.
3M is a corporation whose business formula is to layer one material or coating over another. With this simple business model 3M has been producing and selling everything from cellophane tape to magnetic recording media.
In 1968, two scientists at 3M accidentally developed a "low-tack", reusable pressure sensitive adhesive that apparently did not do what adhesives are supposed to do – stick two items together permanently. On the contrary, the adhesive paper was reusable and did not leave any sticky residue when pulled off. And lo and behold: Post-It notes were born. And it later became so commercially successful that even the United States Postal Service uses it for redirecting mails using sticky reusable labels that come off when pulled out.
In enterprise architecture circles, there is an obsession towards achieving “Line of Sight” (LOS) - another precise engineering term that met its management abuse Waterloo. What is this LOS? The ability to trace a business problem to an IT Investment and then to an IT capability and then to an IT Requirement and then down to a piece of code that implements the IT requirement as a software service. LOS has become a mantra in the Federal Government and all of our faculty members teaching EA declare high and low that the crowning glory of enterprise architecture is Line of Sight!
The chemical Minoxidil was originally used as a vaso-dilator to treat high blood pressure. But more than its desired effect on blood pressure, it had the interesting side effect of reversing or slowing down the process of baldness. And lo and behold: the drug was marketed by the Upjohn Corporation as a treatment for baldness and hair loss and went on to gain fame as the brand name ROGAINE. And until its patent expired in 1996, it went on making money for its parent corporation.
3M is a corporation whose business formula is to layer one material or coating over another. With this simple business model 3M has been producing and selling everything from cellophane tape to magnetic recording media.
In 1968, two scientists at 3M accidentally developed a "low-tack", reusable pressure sensitive adhesive that apparently did not do what adhesives are supposed to do – stick two items together permanently. On the contrary, the adhesive paper was reusable and did not leave any sticky residue when pulled off. And lo and behold: Post-It notes were born. And it later became so commercially successful that even the United States Postal Service uses it for redirecting mails using sticky reusable labels that come off when pulled out.
In enterprise architecture circles, there is an obsession towards achieving “Line of Sight” (LOS) - another precise engineering term that met its management abuse Waterloo. What is this LOS? The ability to trace a business problem to an IT Investment and then to an IT capability and then to an IT Requirement and then down to a piece of code that implements the IT requirement as a software service. LOS has become a mantra in the Federal Government and all of our faculty members teaching EA declare high and low that the crowning glory of enterprise architecture is Line of Sight!
This obsession with measurement precludes any kind of serendipitous epiphany that precedes a long lived brand name and unlooked-for revenue streams. Phew! That was a long sentence.
Basically all I am saying is that maybe entrepreneurial organizations should not be as worried about measurements as they are about finding new benefits stemming from their efforts that create new wealth, new health or new strategies. Each of these brings competitive advantage. Pursuing line of sight does not.
The LOS thinking was carried to the extreme in the Army’s Future Combat Systems initiative – New weapons systems will be firing BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight). While the enemy is sharpening its skills to shoot straight at stuff they can see, we are busy building weapons that bring down targets we cannot even see! This wizardry will be accomplished by satellite imagery, remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicles and a host of automated surrogates who will be passing back images and information for our artillery to consume. Is this a great country or what!
My own personal belief is that we are building larger and larger systems with ever increasing complexity where measurements mean less and less because there are so many assumptions built into the numbers. Our numbers are becoming less meaningful as we struggle harder to measure them. The smaller systems of yesterday, measured by compact and meaningful numbers by people who understood very nuance of those systems are gone. And LOS is one such concept.
Micro-financing, Micro-enterprises, Micro-markets, Micro somethings – this is where the future is headed – if not headed towards humongous corporate profit, then towards tremendous personal satisfaction, involvement and sense of accomplishment. And these micro-somethings will not be looking for line of sight – they already know what it is - because their enterprise is so bounded!
No comments:
Post a Comment