Predicting The Next Big IT Failure
from the disruptive-technologies dept
Clayton Christensen is taking his "disruptive technologies" theories on the road and is trying to predict what companies are at risk of missing the boat, thanks to a failure to understand the impact of disruptive technologies. He suggests that HP is making some huge strategic mistakes, and are opening themselves up to failure. He says they did things correctly in the past, by setting up separate subsidiaries who were designed to cannibalize the parent division's business, but they are now moving away from that plan. It's amazing that, in this day and age, there are companies that still can't grasp Christensen's ideas. I'm still waiting for the smart company to realize they need to hire someone in the position of a "Chief Competitive Officer", whose job it is to make sure that the strongest competitor to a company's offerings is coming from within the company. In the technology world, if you're not cannibalizing your own product lines, someone else will. Christensen also explains why the Oracle-PeopleSoft battle is really a reaction to disruptive technologies. However, he points out that it's focused on the wrong side of things, and no matter what happens in the end, both companies will still be facing significant threats from the low end.
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Punish The Smart
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Re: Punish The Smart
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Re: Punish The Smart
Other professions place more emphasis on ethics (helping society as a whole, rather than subverting the existing order) or on controlling the market itself, to protect the profession. IT people believe they are doing good by sabotaging market control (usually themselves, but occasionally other professions). In the process, they make a lot of enemies and end up losing their jobs, so they move on to the next new technology and repeat the cycle.
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Re: Punish The Smart
Who said anything about "victims"? I certainly wasn't implying that. In fact, I'm not implying anything that you're saying. I'm saying that in a competitive market (in any competitive market) this is what happens. It's not just tech. It's true of any open market.
Other professions place more emphasis on ethics (helping society as a whole, rather than subverting the existing order) or on controlling the market itself, to protect the profession. IT people believe they are doing good by sabotaging market control (usually themselves, but occasionally other professions). In the process, they make a lot of enemies and end up losing their jobs, so they move on to the next new technology and repeat the cycle.
Technology is not interested in "subverting the existing order". It's interested in improving things. Making things more efficient and enjoyable.
Are you saying you'd prefer to live in the stone ages? Man, once that metal stuff came along it really harmed the stone business.
I'm guessing you're just trolling because otherwise, your argument makes no sense.
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That depends on how you define "open". I'm not aware of any economic arguments that say companies should "cannibalize" their own business and harm other divisions, as opposed to coordinating the release of a new product so the company, customers, and market as a whole can function well. Although IT professionals are the least complacent people I know, they have a strange belief that existing IT professionals cannot be trained in new technologies, therefore new technologies should just be implemented without warning and the "old" IT professionals should be fired. I don't know of any other profession that makes such pessimistic assumptions about its members, or is so eager to fire competent people.
"Technology is not interested in "subverting the existing order". It's interested in improving things. Making things more efficient and enjoyable."
From my decade in the IT industry, I beg to differ. I look at the psychology of the kinds of people that go into IT. They are typically the outcasts who got picked on a lot growing up, so they harbor a deep grudge against society. There is a deep undercurrent of the hacker-terrorist mentality throughout the profession, of being able to get the ultimate revenge by causing massive disruption to society. It is a field dominated by angry young men who think in terms of short term profit, and slitting as many throats as possible in the process. They live in a world of violent video games, movies, weekends spent watching anime in their bedrooms. They are fed a religious dogma of free market economics, the notion of making money at all costs, because the weak deserve to be stepped on, and this makes the world a better place. Their childlike socialization manifests in the popularity of Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons. From the many hours spent over computer screens or model figurines, IT professionals develop chronic soreness of trapezius and sternocleidomastoid muscles, so this becomes a part of their cycle of anger.
"Are you saying you'd prefer to live in the stone ages? Man, once that metal stuff came along it really harmed the stone business."
This is the IT equivalent of the ultimate teen insult, "You must be gay." The IT business spins its wheels in the mud, making rapid changes that people didn't ask for. In the process, they alienate the non-IT world, so ITers end up mostly hurting themselves.
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Re: Punish The Smart
Oh, and it took thousands of years for metals to overtake stones. Stones are still used for plenty of things today, and stonemasons can make six-figure salaries. The use of metals may have had more to do with running out of good quality obsidian than metals being better. Neolithic obsidian blades were as sharp as modern surgical instruments, while Roman legions chronically suffered from bent swords. Roman legions had the advantage mostly in tactical bags of tricks, as well as siege weapons built out of wood and stone.
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Re: Punish The Smart
That's not only a widely inaccurate generalization, but its also insulting. I work in a large IT department and I'm proud to say I work with professionals, most of whom are competent, dedicated, experienced and whether they like Star Trek or not (most don't here) has no relevence.
None of us want to "disrupt" anything, our goal here is the improvement of lives (we're an IT department for a large health care facility).
You sir do not sound like a professional with a decade's worth of experience, you sound like a whiney arrested teenager with a chip on his shoulder who thinks its fun to insult people...that's YOUR childlike socialzation manifestation.
I just fed the troll I guess.
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Re: Punish The Smart
Sure, if you want to gamble your career on the notion that your employer will not replace you with a bunch of whiney teens with chips on their shoulders. When you get laid off, nobody will want to hire an old IT professional.
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If you have the skills and the know-how to keep up with IT and you love what you do (as opposed to the droves of programmer-analysts who got into it "for the money") I can say its not a gamble.
For me, the way things are going, definitely not a gamble...
I've found in my own experience that:
- companies who's managers keep laying off the experienced IT folk and replace them with "whiney" teenagers do not do well in the long run (been there, done that a few years back)
- the most talented folks (any age even in their fifties...around here, I'm in my early thirties and I'm the second youngest programmer...the rest are 45 and up) aren't in fear for their jobs.
The ones that ARE in fear are like the programmer we hired a couple of years back...I tried talking shop a bit and the response I got was "I hate computers, I don't even have one at home...when I'm out of here at night I don't want to see one til the next day"...so I asked why be a programmer analyst at all and he said "because its a really good career that pays well"...he lasted six months...got fired. I ran into him last month and he spouts pretty much the same lines as you, that we replaced him with a whiney teen (not true, we didn't hire anyone), that it was hard for a guy in his thirties to get a job in IT now..etc.. etc..
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Re: Punish The Smart
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This
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the next IT failure
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