Jan Bosch
Another week; another ridiculous amount of hours on an airplane, so this post is coming from Bangalore. During last week, I noticed an interesting pattern that I had seen several times over the last year: many companies and their leaders are not clear on what business they’re actually in, especially as it comes to being … Read moreAre You a Product, Platform or Ecosystem Company?
Companies spend very large amounts of resources on functionality that is commodity and does not offer any differentiation to the company and its customers. Our research shows that the R&D investment in commodity could be as high as 80-90%. Although the companies that I work with do not dispute the 80-90% numbers and do not … Read moreNew Book: Impactful Software
During a conference in Vienna, I listened to a keynote from a researcher from a large industrial company. The talk was full of the promise of IoT, connectivity, cloud, edge computing and apps and the business benefits that could be realized. The presenter did a good job, but I have heard these presentations on the … Read moreWhere Is This IoT World That I was Promised?
Most of the software-intensive systems companies that I work with are in the process of converting from pure product businesses to product + service or pure services businesses. This is a huge change for any company and means changes at several levels and all functions of the company. Over the last months, I have been … Read moreThe End Of Product Companies
The vast majority of R&D leaders and especially consultants focus on the efficiency of R&D: how to convert requirements into software against the lowest possible cost and resource needs. Although anyone from agile and scrum experts to continuous integration professionals focus on this challenge, very few people focus on the effectiveness of R&D. Effectiveness refers … Read moreHow To Double Your R&D Effectiveness – Part I
This week I spent in Buenos Aires (Argentina) at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2017), which is the premier event in the field. As usual, I enjoyed the pre-events such as workshops, smaller co-located conferences and panels more than the main conference itself. Although many will disagree with me, I feel that the … Read moreThe End of Control
Software ecosystems and platform businesses are the new black and several of the companies that I work with are, in some form or another, working on more strategic engagements with their ecosystems. Although the ambition to position oneself as a keystone partner in a software ecosystems and to provide a platform for others in the … Read moreThe Five Traps of Software Ecosystems
Everyone loves order. Order gives structure, predictability, safety and comfort. Our brains are wired to seek order, either by shaping the world around us to maximize it or by avoiding situations where we might lose it. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting smack in the middle of our comfort zone. For the entire history … Read moreThe End of Order
Every week or so, I end up in a discussion about ecosystems, be it business ecosystems or software ecosystems. Interestingly, almost everyone I talk to takes a “descriptive” approach to their ecosystem of choice. They describe the ecosystem as a fact of life or a force of nature, like gravity, and often I get explained … Read moreOrchestrate Your Ecosystem (Or Be Ruled By It)
This week I ran a workshop at a large well-known company applying the three layer product model (3LPM). The 3LPM is a conceptual approach to categorizing the functionality in your product, platform or portfolio. As the name suggests, the functionality in the system is put into three boxes, i.e. commodity, differentiating or innovative. The model … Read more9 Out Of 10 in R&D Work On Commodity