Toolkits, Platforms, Product Lines, and System Design & Management

Today I meant to write about Platforms, Product Lines, Product Line Architectures, and so on... I was especially fueled to do so after a particularly fruitful day back at the office, where I and a few other engineers at Raytheon NCS attended a rather interesting presentation describing a joint effort between Raytheon (my employer) and Microsoft termed "ASPEN" (Advanced Software Productivity Environments, I believe.) I hate to be a tease - but since it is almost all company proprietary, all I can tell you is that it had me thinking all day about toolkits, platforms and product lines... As if I needed that, after a week during which: a) "Mr Platforms" himself, Marc H Meyer (author of "The Power of Product Platforms" and "Fast Path to Corporate Growth") was a guest lecturer in one class. b) I started reading professor Cusumano's book, "Platform Leadership" c) Also started writing a paper related to software toolkits for Von Hippel's class "User Centered Innovation in the Internet Age."

But since I can't share my Raytheon-related thoughts with you, you're just going to have to trust me that it's some really cool stuff. Instead let me turn my ramblings towards the System Design & Management program (SDM) and try to start answering the question, nay cliff-hanger, I closed my first blog post with... It had to do with why I picked SDM -- Let me start with three simple facts:

1) System Design & Management is co-sponsored by the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering (SoE), and resides within the Engineering Systems Division.


2) SDM is not an MBA program, but a program that offers a master's in engineering *and* management.

3) SDM Fellows can take advantage of the best of all worlds via a rich curriculum in engineering and management provided by Sloan and the SoE and even the Harvard Business School.

Innovation and Disruptive Technologies

Today, in my Technology Strategy class, I was delighted by our guest speaker for the day: Irving-Wladawsky-Berger. He was here to tell us about IBM's survival story, which I will not attempt to convey here as he does a much better job of it in his own blog. In the late 80s and 90s, he led the effort to formulate IBM’s Internet strategy and to develop and bring to market leading-edge Internet technologies that could be integrated into IBM’s mainstream business. He subsequently led a number of companywide initiatives like Linux, Grid Computing and the On Demand Business initiative. Under the leadership the Lou Gerstener, these strategies pulled IBM back from the brink of extinction. Gerstner is credited with saving IBM from going out of business in the early 1990s. In his memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his arrival at the company in April 1993, when an active plan was in place to disaggregate the company. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed for obsolescence.

This was a great lecture and I wish we had hd even more time to pick Irving's brain. I came away from this class with the following points in mind:
- Innovation is not only about adapting to changes in the marketplace/environment, but it is also about positioning yourself such that those changes work in your favor.
- Today's high level of attention to Innovation is attributable to the fact that the world is changing at an ever-increasing rate.
- One should hold a Darwinian view of competition. Most companies do not buck the trend.

- Most companies die because they either failed to Innovate or chose to do so too late in the game.

- Sometimes managers, no matter ow highly paid, are in over their heads.

Some sobering statistics:
- Of the 172 companies that have appeared on the Fortune 500 list between 1955 and 1995, only 5 percent grew their revenue above the overall inflation rate.
- Only 16 percent of 1,008 companies tracked from 1962 to 1998 survived.
- The average lifetime of a firm is now one-third of what it was in the 1930s; on average, large companies in North America and Europe now fail within just 20 years .

What must a business do in order to not just survive but thrive when facing a disruptive innovation?
. . . embrace the disruptive innovative . . .
. . . become the disruptors rather than the disruptees . . .
. . . and ultimately win over the established competitors . . .

Much more on Innovation and Technology strategy later. Have I mentioned that my professor for this class is none other than the James Utterback, author of "Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation," and of "Design-Inspired Innovation" ??? Jim inspired a whole generation of Systems and Innovation thinkers, including Clayton Christensen (a former student of Jim's, and author of "the Innovator's Dilemma") who will also be making a guest appearance in our class. Every single book or article I have come accross which talks about Innovation, Corporate Strategy, or any sub-topic therein (e.g. Dynamic Capabilities) cite or reference Jim Utterback's work. Personally, I put him right up there with Joseph Schumpeter.

We all more-or-less had this idea of "staying relevant" and are pretty aware that companies must innovate to stay alive. I think that these days, most self-respecting large corporations have some sort of Innovation strategy (mine does.) But coming from a pure engineering "design it, buil it, test it, and manage the process" background, this class has broadened my horizons and opened my eyes to a whole new world of Innovation Theory, Disruptive Technologies, Creative Destruction, and how enterprises must take these into account. I am sure that I will be blogging much, much more about Innovation before my time is up.