Leading through Disruption (or not)

One of the ongoing questions in my mind is why large companies have such a difficult time managing disruptions and, as a consequence, why the average tenure of companies on the Fortune 500 has now decreased to 10-12 years. My thinking around this question got triggered recently, when I received an email in response to … Read more

On Hierarchy, Micro-Management and Leadership in R&D

Over the last years, I periodically visited a company that I have really admired for a long time for their focus on autonomous agile teams. These teams have a lot of freedom within their area of responsibility and can choose virtually anything from the platforms to use, the tools to use, when to release, what … Read more

Speed, Data and Ecosystems

As Marc Andreessen so eloquently wrote in his Wall street Journal OpEd, software is eating the world. In virtually every industry, ranging from banking to retail and from mobile phones to self-driving cars, the companies that are winning are the ones who are best at software. Many, however, wonder what it means to be best, … Read more

Explaining the Ecosystem Dimension in Short

Introduction to Ecosystems The transition from internally focused to ecosystem-centric ways of working brings with it many advantages. It allows for companies to focus on their core competencies, to outsource all activities that are not strategic for the company and to employ ecosystems of third party developers to complement the core functionality provided by the … Read more

Explaining Data Dimension in Short

Introduction to Data The ability to continuously deploy new versions of software to some or all customers leads to another major evolution concerning the radically changed ability of companies to measure how users are using the software. Although software companies have often used technique to collect usage and quality data, continuous, deployment demands continuous connectivity … Read more

Explaining Speed Dimension in Short

Introduction to Speed Over the last decade, one of the main development sin software products is the broad adoption of continuous deployment. This development started in the cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. This is due to the fact that the cost of deploying new versions of software in a SaaS environment is very … Read more