Irving Wladawsky-Berger

On Demand Three Years Later - A Personal Reflection

Recently, I was reflecting on our October 2002 announcement of On Demand and how it has played out in the IT industry in the intervening three years.

As I wrote in a recent blog story, when we announced the On Demand initiative back then, it felt very different from the launch of our Internet strategy in the fall of 1995.  The Internet in those days seemed almost magical, full of hope and possibilities that gave rise to a fever of expectations and entrepreneurialism founded on the wonderful engine of innovation that the Internet has been ever since.

Exorcising Baseball Demons

Well, the 2005 baseball season is now over and the Chicago White Sox won the World Series, beating the Houston Astros in four straight games.  I like how Tyler Kepner put it in his front page story in today's New York Times:  "The baseball gods were merciless once, inflicting decades of sorrow on a franchise for one fateful mistake."  And then he went on to say "All these years, it turns out the gods have a heart after all."  Last year it was the Boston Red Sox  that exorcised their demons after not winning the Series since 1918.  The White Sox demons lasted a bit longer - they last won the World Series in 1917.

Building Open, Collaborative Health Care and Education Platforms

I wrote in a recent blog that "the Internet showed everybody how much more valuable IT is when you can connect and access everything regardless of vendor, and started the IT industry on a whole new strategy based on embracing open standards."  The Internet enabled IT to become an open, global platform for innovation, in particular a platform for open, global, collaborative innovation.

Trust, Values and Business in the 21st Century

In the past few weeks I have been in a couple of meetings with Don Tapscott where he talked about his latest research project, which focused on IT and competitive advantage.  The project was just completed by a team led by Don and New Paradigm, the Toronto-based consulting firm he founded in 1993.  Don has extensively studied the impact of information technology on business strategy over the years.  He is an excellent speaker and prolific author, with ten books to his credit.  I have known Don for many years and have followed closely what he writes and says, because he has an uncanny ability to clearly articulate what is going on at the intersection of information technology and business strategy.

The HENAAC (Hispanic Engineer) Conference

Last week, I was in Anaheim, California to attend the Hispanic Engineer's National Achievement Award Conference (HENAAC) as I have for the last several years now. HENAAC's mission is "to enlighten our nation about the achievements of Hispanics in engineering, science, technology, and math; to motivate and educate more students to pursue careers in these fields; [and] to increase the role the Hispanic community plays in maintaining America's status as the world's technology leader." At its annual conference, HENAAC honors Hispanic engineers and scientists with awards in a variety of categories.  I was named Hispanic Engineer of the Year in 2001 and in 2004 was inducted into the HENAAC Hall of Fame.

The "Outside-In" Enterprise

Around ten years ago, just about everyone around the world began embracing a set of open standards for networking, content, e-mail and similar capabilities that we collectively viewed as "the Internet." But equally important, in an outside-in approach, businesses, governments and other institutions embraced these same standards internally, and built what we called "intranets," as well as reaching out to connect to their supply chains with "extranets."

Blogging Round Table in Mexico

I spent most of last week in Mexico City.  The main purpose for the trip was to participate in an "InnovatorsTour" with colleagues from IBM's technical community in Mexico and from our growing Hispanic technical community in the US.

We had a very good dialogue with faculty members and administrators from some of the top private and public universities in Mexico.  We discussed the increasing focus on innovation, the growing need for technical talent and the kinds of jobs where we can expect higher demand in the future, as well as the various programs we have in IBM aimed at universities, faculty and students.  The Innovators Tour also included meetings with groups of students in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Cuernavaca where we talked about some of our most exciting initiatives in IBM and tried to encourage them to pursue technical careers.

The Changing Nature of Technical Talent

A major theme that I keep touching on in my blogs is the importance of technical talent to any country or company that wants to be a leader in the 21st century.  We are living in an increasingly complex, fast changing, open, integrated and global world, what we in IBM have been calling an On Demand World.  In such a world, the ability to analyze and solve problems, even ones you never saw before is particularly important, as is the ability to quickly bring to market new products, services and integrated solutions of all kinds.  Innovation is absolutely critical to compete in such a world, and as the National Innovation Initiative and similar studies have repeatedly pointed out, talent, especially technical talent, is essential to innovation.