I was recently invited to speak at and help facilitate an executive roundtable by a firm called Denali Group, who specialize in procurement and supply chain consulting. The audience was made up of high level procurement executives from a variety of companies, some well known (such as Johnson & Johnson, Duke Energy, PG&E) and others less so.
IBM has just released its fourth annual survey based on 1500 face-to-face interviews with global CEOs. Past studies have been rich sources of understanding the trends that company leaders are seeing shaping their businesses. The opening statement by IBM's own CEO, Samuel J. Palmisano, sets the stage for this year's study:
We need to rethink the traditional combination of CEO, COO, CTO, CMO and CFO. Back when companies were about routinization and optimization for efficiency and profit in stable industries perhaps this combination made sense, but in today's complex world it is woefully inadequate. As Dan Pink writes in his new book Drive, most organizations today are less based on procedural algorithms and must run on ad hoc heuristics. The tidy C-suite club of old just doesn't cut it in today's messy, disruptive, complex world.
We had a great launch party for Innovation X in San Francisco a couple of days ago. Thanks to all the hundred or so people who came out to welcome Innovation X into the world. We had a terrific panel discussion with Don Norman, Eric Ryan (co-founder of Method Home), Jon Pitmann (VP at Autodesk), and Quentin Hardy (National Editor, Forbes) moderating, in addition to myself.
I gave a brief presentation to talk about the book and set up some themes for the topic of the panel, "The pitfalls of customer-led innovation". Here's a Slideshare version of it with some extra annotation to make it easier to follow without the voiceover.
I got the very first copy of Innovation X today. It looks great, with embossing and matte silver. Full production copies will be landing in stores within the next two weeks.
