Jan Bosch
Recently, I participated in a discussion set in the automotive realm. At some point, the conversation turned to platforms. After a while, I realized that there were several definitions of platform getting mixed up. Having worked with platforms since the 1990s, it has been really interesting for me to see how the very notion of … Read more
Recently, in one of the company boards that I’m part of, we approved the new product strategy. This strategy is quite a deviation from the previous one in that we balance much more between investing in the current, main product, which used to get virtually all investment earlier, and new product initiatives to serve adjacent … Read more
Recently, the Netherlands experienced some inclement weather including snowfall and strong winds. Interestingly, the entire country shut down with trains not running, highways closed off and recommendations of staying at home. It led to a bit of hilarity in our Swedish household as we experience this kind of weather regularly during the winter months and … Read more
It seems that much of my work these days is concerned with bringing AI to the embedded-systems domain, understanding what the implications are and how companies should deal with it. In the discussions with technical experts and business leaders, however, I constantly run into several misconceptions. First, there are still several people out there who … Read more
Occasionally, I enjoy playing computer games and during the Christmas break, I spent some time in Eve Online. It’s an open-world game, set in space, where you’re free to do any activity that you like. As I was spending time in this game, I realized something interesting: the return in terms of in-game currency that … Read more
Last week, I gave a presentation to a company that’s in the midst of a strategy revamp. I always admire leadership teams that take on the incredibly difficult challenge of taking a step back and reviewing how the organization is operating right now and what change in direction is required to achieve future success. As … Read more
During the Christmas break, I read several books including “Sense & respond” by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. The authors frame the difference between traditional and digital companies in terms of the absence or presence, respectively, of a continuous dialog with the market and the customers. Of course, traditional companies interact with the market and … Read more
Many years ago, together with a few colleagues, I wrote a paper on the BAPO model. The BAPO model says that business and business strategy should drive architecture and technology choices (A). These should, in turn, drive process, ways of working and tooling choices (P). Finally, these should be used to define an organization that … Read more
In many industries, there’s an implied, often underspecified, architecture of how the different stakeholders in the ecosystem interface with each other. By defining their mutual interfaces, it allows for better alignment. For the typical interactions within the ecosystem, this is very helpful as the different parties have predefined expectations about one another, and transactions and … Read more
2020 will go into the annals of history as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people have seen their lives disrupted, gotten sick or worse and suffered from mental health issues due to isolation and loneliness. All the mayhem caused by the pandemic, though, easily makes us lose sight of all the good things … Read more
