Mixing up my James'.
One is James McGovern and the other is James Governor of RedMonk.
Anyway .... in total I thought the James' had very good questions.
1 - McGovern. "When will we stand up and have enough courage to ask ourselves whether we should be pursuing SOA, BPM, ECM, CMMi, Six Sigma, IT outsourcing, Business Rules, ESB, etc strategies all at the same time?"
Well I happen to believe the issue is not that we are pursuing such strategies but whether we are pursuing them across a function or for the correct stage of an activity.
In July last year I blogged about commoditisation as a force for change, the cost / value relationship being broken in IT and how the main issue was that not all IT was the same. Over the last year I've come back several times to that theme of managing two polar opposites in focus and the transition from static to dynamic - however it was my exploration of the XaaS stack and discussions with Jenny Ambrozek that finally convinced me the issue was purely organisational.
2 - Governor. "don't we need to stop for a moment and consider the learning curve of both producers and consumers of our grand strategies?"
Yes, I believe we do (examples see the extended S-Curve and my talk at Web 2.0 Berlin.). The transition from idea to commodity and from source of competitive advantage to cost of doing business, not only affects the characteristics of any activity but also how it should be managed.
3 - Governor. "Could it be that Mcafee’s thesis, often used as a pushback against Carr, actually supports it?"
In May, I blogged about how the effects of open source and commoditsation drives innovation and causes more disruption and hence how McAfee's thesis support this. I see no reason to change that view.
These are three outstanding questions that the James' have raised, and they deserve serious attention. I've summarised my viewpoint before in my Web 2.0 Berlin and FOWA talks.
Those who know me, have heard me going on and on an on about commoditisation (from manufacturing to IT) for almost a decade ... I promise, once I've finished the book .... I'll change the record completely.
