Interoperability can be fun

I am so frustrated – I recently read an article in the FT by Michael Schrage entitled “Interoperability: the great enabler” (5th Feb). In his article, Schrage introduces the concept of IQ or the Interoperability Quotient but he does not describe how to measure it.  Here I am, in France struggling with interoperability every time I venture out of the house and I could conclude from his article that, with a low IQ, I might be  destined to underachieve. Perhaps willingness makes up a large part of the IQ measure; certainly buying food in a street market was successful and ultimately satisfying as was, at a much deeper level a guided tour of a country house by one of the family who could tell a story about every one of many ‘objets d’interet’ in the house and garden. Even if I could only understand one word in five, the personal intensity of the message conveyed all the meaning necessary.

So here is my real frustration with the article.  While it recognises the technological driving force behind interoperability and an economic context in which it can develop, it does not acknowledge the importance of culture and organisation in determining potential for the wider implemention of interoperability In my opinion, the  factors that will determine success in interoperability have more to do with people, organisations and culture than a quotient relating to components and systems. Alberts talks about this in his book “Power to the edge” where he discusses interoperability in the physical, information, cognitive and social domains. It is not that all these domains are relevant to every instance of operability as this is obviously not the case but Alberts also talks about the need for ‘jointness’ which I take to mean the responsibility of the people involved at each end of any ‘interoperation’ to take responsibility for effective interoperability. People with a shared intent and awareness working ‘jointly’ can provide resilience and adaptability in the deployment of interoperability and these underpin the evolutionary capacity that is a prerequisite for survival.

Technology landscapes

Are there times when the ground rules of our businesses seem to be changing around us yet we do not seem able to anticipate the nature of the change? Anything that can help us to understand the situation is useful and here is one model for you to consider.

Most of us are born with a set of capabilities and we spend much of our lives using those capabilities to interact with our fellows, sometimes collaboratively and sometimes competitively. Almost always we are seeking to use our capabilities to the best effect and mankind has a long tradition of discovering and developing tools to give us some sort of edge. Useful tools are widely and rapidly copied so we develop the capacity to produce the tools in greater numbers.Typically we will set up some sort of system for production, supply and distribution; historically these have often been fairly informal but as the pressure of demand has increased they have become more and more formal. Experience has shown that once capacity has been established and the consumer community becomes used to products or services they begin to demand the ability to customise them – the ability to meet this demand has led to the development of customisation . But there are instances where the consumer wants to exercise greater control of his or her own destiny and this has been shown to be possible where the necessary networks can be put in place to provide direct support to the consumer. There seems to be a progression; we use tools to add capability, then we apply a system to achieve capacity, then we develop logistical skills to meet the demand for choice and finally we use networks to gain control of the resource we have developed.

Basic landscape concept

Take for a simple example our ability to walk; how do we overcome the limitations of speed and range that our physical bodies impose? In the first instance, we began to exploit an animal which was physically capable of carrying us further and faster than we could walk or even run. Even so there are limitations as riding requires skill and is physically demanding. In due course a number of us opted for travel by carriage – but here economics steps in because by this time such an option was only open to the wealthy. The introduction of cabs in cities extended access and a gradual increase in demand led to the establishment of stage coaches that operated between urban centres.

Jump now to another, more recent development track. In the late 19th century the motor car came onto the scene. This promised great mobility to anyone who could afford one, subject to the availability of fuel and the reliability of the machine. It rapidly followed the evolutionary progress of the horse enabled movement, with motorised cabs and omnibuses quickly replacing their horse-drawn predecessors. What the motor car (or more properly the internal combustion engine) offered over the horse was the potential for series production and this over the course of the 20th century has reduced the cost of ownership so that car are available to almost any person in a developed economy who wants to own one.

Mobility/transport landscape

If there is a development track for the aids to movement there is also a development track for the production of such aids and for the complementary capabilities that make the widespread use of such aids possible – in the case of cars these include production lines, dealers, service stations, repair and service shops, roads, tyre depots, loans and insurance companies, etc.

What is interesting here is that in a developed industrial and urbanised economy, the universal ownership of a horse as a means to mobility never materialised – possibly because a network for supplying, feeding, maintaining (blacksmiths, vets, etc), housing and managing waste was not economically sustainable. However there is virtually universal access to car ownership in such economies and established a new basic skill level – we learn to drive almost as automatically as we learn to walk. I will add a couple of observations, for what they are worth. From a cultural perspective walking, owner ridden horses and owner driven cars all offer mobility whereas the omnibuses and cabs (and trains, planes, etc) offer transport – so they result in a very different user experience. Secondly, another interesting element of the landscapes is that established capabilities in one area may become a key enabler of the emergence of another – so mass production has become a key enabler of, for instance mass ownership of cars that gave individuals back control over their movements at a greater level; likewise the mass production of electronics has brought computing power and communications capability to individuals – and the model does not apply only to manufacture but also to service industries.

So why is this of any interest or of anything more than passing interest?

Where is your product? Where are your products? Are they mass produced? If so, are your customers about to demand choice, customisation? Are you able to respond to such a demand? Can you anticipate it and drive it to gain a competitive edge? What might it cost to do so? Is the time right? Are you providing a service that supports a product or products? If you changed the way that the service is offered, what might happen? Where are you on the capability, capacity, choice, control continuum? Is the infrastructure in place to support a move from one corner of the square to another? If you don’t know, how can you be sure what impact any changes you make to your business model will have?

Please let me know if you find the model useful or if you think it is worth improving, extending or both and would like to discuss ideas of how to do this.

Organisation, technology, culture and their impact on the implementation of innovation.

In the 1980’s leading research into the successful introduction of new technologies identified the need for mutual adaptation of technology and organisation. There needs to be explicit recognition of the major influence culture has in determining success.

Dorothy Leonard-Barton asserts  in a paper* that “The major point in this paper is that implementation is innovation.” She is a writer whose work I regard highly even if the way that she writes and the way that I read are not well aligned and I usually make heavy weather of her texts. The important thing is that in this instance perseverance is well rewarded. If I were to change her assertion, it would be to say that innovation is the implementation of invention.

This 20 year old paper is interesting in its continued relevance to the business world of today. Leonard-Barton studied 12 instances of the introduction of new technologies into the operations of large corporations in the 1980’s, with outcomes that ranged from ‘Highly successful’ through degrees of  moderate success and partial failure to ‘Total failure’. She states that ” … a technology almost never fits perfectly into the user environment” and this situation she describes as misalignment. However there is not a single misalignment but a combination of misalignments which create complexity and which must be addressed by what she calls ‘mutual adaptation’. This involves “… reinvention of the technology and the simultaneous adaptation of the organization.” There follows a discussion assessing:

1. the significance and impact of misalignments at different strata of the organisation
2. the nature of adaptation cycles, both large and small; their impact on the business and the implications of committing to them

Some examples of adaptation options are presented and Leonard-Barton concludes that a degree of ‘mutual adaptation’ is an essential part of successful implementation. She also comments in her conclusions that “… research on survival in highly competitive industries suggests that the surviving companies are those that are open to advances in process technology – even if the price of that openness is expensive technical experimentation and costly organizational shifts.” There is no reason to think that the situation is any different now; indeed, I would argue that this broad conclusion can be applied much more widely to innovations in any aspect of  business.

One dimension in the process of implementation that is implicit in her discussion  is the influence of culture. At several places in the paper, the behaviour of individuals and groups and the effect those behaviours have on outcomes is described.  Behaviour is not a factor of technology or organisation so while it has been observed it has not been considered as a variable in this study. If you accept, for the sake of argument, that behaviour is driven by culture then the interfaces between organisation, technology and culture must all be taken into consideration and included in the process of adaptation if probability of success in the implementation of change is to be maximised. I will come back to the relationship between culture and behaviour in future posts.

* “Implementation as mutual adaptation of technology and organization”, Dorothy Leonard-Barton; Research Policy 17, 1988, pp251-267; Elsevier