Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The Employment Challenge in the US Economy

A couple of years ago, McKinsey, the global management consulting firm, launched a new website called What Matters.  It asks a big question and invites a wide array of people to write essays giving their points of view on the topic.  In 2009, for example, What Matters addressed Innovation, and asked, Where will the world’s primary centers of innovation be?  I was invited to participate and contributed an essay, “What’s Next in the Knowledge Economy?”

Earlier this year I was once more invited to contribute an essay on the topic of Growth and Productivity, focused on the question: Has the US passed peak productivity growth?  I wrote “The next golden age of innovation”, which was posted last month.

A number of eminent economists also contributed essays on Growth and Productivity.  I was truly humbled to have my essay posted alongside theirs.

Two of the essays in the section revolve around recent work by Michael Spence to try to understand the reasons for the current jobless recovery in the US economy, a fairly unique situation where business conditions have significantly improved while unemployment remains high.  Professor Spence is the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics.  He is currently in the faculty at  NYU’s Stern School of Business, as well as professor and dean emeritus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The Modernization of the State

I spent the first week of June in Chile, my fourth visit in the last five years.  I was there at the invitation of Fernando Flores, President of the National Innovation Council for Competitiveness, to assist in the Modernization of the State initiative, one of the major projects in the administration of Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera. 
 
The Modernization of the State initiative is being led by Rafael Ariztia under the General Ministry of the Presidency.  It has four major objectives:

• Improve in the overall services that the government provides to all its users
• More effective and efficient government institutions
• Improve the effectiveness of government employees
• Facilitate the decentralization of the country

I first met Fernando Flores during a trip to Chile in August of 2006 to attend an international conference.  He was a Senator then, a position he held from March of 2002 until he was appointed by President Piñera to his present position in March of 2010.  We discovered that we had a lot of common interests and have since become friends.  I continued to meet with him during subsequent visits to Chile.  He knew about my strong interests in cloud computing, and last year I invited him to a briefing on the subject in IBM’s headquarters in Armonk, New York.

Flores has been very involved in the Modernization of the State initiative, both because of his position as president of the Innovation Council as well as his personal expertise in technology and management.  He holds a Ph D from UC Berkeley, has worked extensively in the fields of organizational leadership and human cognition, and written a number of books, including Understanding Computers and Cognition: a New Foundation for Design and Building Trust: in Business, Politics, Relationships and Life.

Flores feels that cloud computing has a major role to play in helping to achieve the objectives of the Modernization initiative.  We talked about his ideas earlier this year, which I thought were right on the mark.  He later invited me to assist in these efforts by coming to Chile for meetings with Rafael Ariztia and the key groups woking on the initiative, as well as to give a seminar explaining cloud computing and its potential to Chilean government officials.

IBM's Centennial

IBM is turning 100 years old on June 16.  The company is commemorating its 100th anniversary with a year-long set of activities around the world.  It is using the opportunity to reach out to many of its constituents in business, government and academia and engage with them in a variety of celebratory events, such as seminars and conferences.  In addition, IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano is inviting all members of its extended family - employees, partners, retirees, families and friends - to pledge at least eight hours of community service during 2011.

If you look at the fast changing IT industry, it is hard enough to find companies that have survived thirty years, let alone one hundred.  It is even harder to find a company that has survived this long, is in great competitive shape and continues to be among the leaders in its industry.  So, as The Economist observed in 1100100 [100 in binary] and Counting in its June 9, 2011 issue:      

“The firm’s centenary is an occasion to reflect on many things digital, but one question stands out: why is IBM still alive and thriving after so long, in an industry characterised perhaps more than any other by innovation and change?  This is not just of interest to business historians.  As IBM enters its second century in good health, far younger IT giants, such as Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft and Nokia, are grappling with market shifts that threaten to make them much less relevant.”

The Evolution of My Complex Relationship with Blogging

From time to time, I like to reflect on my feelings about blogging, and then write about them in an entry in my blog.  I have not done so in a while, and it has now been just about six years since I started this blog, so I thought that it would be a good time to return to the subject.

I started blogging at the urging of colleagues at IBM.  In the Spring of 2005 the company was getting ready to launch a major blogging initiative to encourage its employees to participate in the rapidly growing blogosphere.  My colleagues felt that as someone closely associated with IBM’s Internet strategy, it was important that I personally become an active blogger.
 
For several years my friend and colleague John Patrick had been urging me to start a blog.  John has always been a pioneer in embracing new technologies.  He was one of the first people I knew who had a blog, - which is still going strong after all these years.  I resisted John’s exhortations, partly due to the commitment of time and energy it entailed, and partly due to fears that I would not have enough interesting things to write about every week.  But, the excitement building up in IBM around the new blogging initiative finally pushed me over the edge.  I posted my first blog on May 16, 2005.