Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The Complex Nature of Cloud-based Innovation

By now, most will agree that cloud computing is a major transformational force in the world of IT.  But, cloud has not the easiest concept to grasp.  Not that long ago, even people who agreed that something big and profound was going on, were not totally quite sure what it was they were excited about.  “There is a clear consensus that there is no real consensus on what cloud computing is,” was the overall conclusion of a June, 2008 conference on The Promise and Reality of Cloud Computing.  Cloud has continued to evolve and advance over the ensuing years.  People are no longer starting their sessions by saying: “let’s define cloud computing,” said an article on a 2013 cloud conference.

I find it helpful to look at cloud along two key dimensions: as a technology to improve IT productivity, and as a platform for enabling business innovation.  A 2012 survey of business and technology executives found that two thirds of respondents viewed cloud as a leading priority for their IT organizations, while one third said that it was a company-wide business priority.  Only one company in six viewed cloud as a way of fostering business innovation.

An increasing number of companies are now deploying cloud-based solutions.  Most are focused on improving the economics of IT.  They are looking to cloud to help them expand their current offerings without major investments in additional IT infrastructure.  Cloud offers financial flexibility, reducing fixed IT costs by shifting from capital to operational, pay-per-use expenses, as well as the ability to easily and economically scale business operations by provisioning IT resources on an as-needed basis.  In addition, cloud can help business users become more agile and keep up with the fast pace of technological and market changes.  Turning to an external cloud service provider is often a faster and less costly way of prototyping and deploying a new application than relying on the internal IT organization.

The Changing Nature of Globalization in Our Hyperconnected, Knowledge-Intensive Economy

In April, 2005, NY Times columnist Tom Friedman published The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century.  Friedman’s bestseller did much to explain to a wide audience the impact of the Internet and related technologies on the connected, global economy that was rising all around us.  

A few years later, Friedman was a keynote speaker at a 2011 conference commemorating IBM’s Centennial.  To illustrate the incredibly fast pace of change, Friedman noted that in the short time-span since World is Flat was published, we were already transitioning from a connected to an increasingly hyperconnected world.  Many of the companies and technologies that are now part of our every day conversations, - Facebook, Twitter, Cloud, Smartphones, Big Data, LinkedIn, 4G or Skype, - were not mentioned in the connected global economy he wrote about only 6 years earlier because they had not been born or were in their infancy.

What do we mean by a hyperconnected economy?  I recently found a really good answer in an excellent study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Global Flows in the Digital Age.  The study takes an in-depth look at the expansion of cross-borders flows in the economy.  It carefully analyzed these flows in 5 different categories:  goods, services, finance, people and data and communications.  It then developed the MGI Connectedness Index, which measures these 5 flows in 131 countries, examined how the flows had changed over the past 10 - 20 years, and predicted how they are likely to evolve over the next decade.

Is a College Education Still Worth It?

NY Times editor David Leonhardt recently wrote a column with the provocative title: Is College Worth It?  The question has been raised by articles which note that college graduates are still struggling to find meaningful work and often end up accepting jobs for which they feel overqualified.  Then we have the student debt crisis.  The average student debt for college graduates is over $25,000, and the aggregate debt for student loans now exceeds $1 trillion.

“The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014,” is Leonhardt’s succinct answer to his question.  He cites a recent article by MIT economist David Autor which points out that a college-educated worker can expect an additional lifetime earning of over $500,000 compared to one whose highest degree is a high school diploma.

“Over the long run, college is cheaper than free,” remarks Leonhardt.  “Not going to college will cost you about half a million dollars.”  Experts and journalists questioning the value of a college education are most likely obsessing to get their toddlers into an elite nursery school, so they are on-track for the right schools over the ensuing 20 years. 

Professor Autor’s article, Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”, was published in the May issue of Science.  “The singular focus of public debate on the top 1 percent of households overlooks the component of earnings inequality that is arguably most consequential for the other 99 percent of citizens: the dramatic growth in the wage premium associated with higher education and cognitive ability,” he writes in the abstract.

Technology, Media and Culture - the Best of Times or the Worst of Times?

USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) was founded in 2010 to study the transformational impact of technology on culture and on the media industries.  The Lab is involved in three main kinds of activities: research on the overall media landscape and its impact on society; design challenges to promote the development of innovative prototypes, applications and business ideas; and workshops that bring together students, faculty, artists, executives and entrepreneurs to discuss specific problems and come up with new ways of addressing them. 

The Lab has a number of industrial partners, including technology and communication companies like IBM, Verizon and Cisco, and media companies like Warner Bros, Paramount and BET.  I’ve been a member of AIL’s Advisory Board since its founding.  For a technologist like me, it’s been a unique opportunity to learn about the impact of technology on society through the lens of the culture being transformed.  It’s also been an opportunity to learn about the major changes underway in the media industries, - among the industries most disrupted by the digital revolution. 

A few months ago, AIL launched The Edison Project, to “explore how the new creators and makers, the new metrics and measurement, the new funding and business models, and the new screens are all combining into a new ecosystem – and how media and entertainment companies can reorient themselves to flourish in this emerging Imagination Economy.”