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Generative AI / Generative IP (Part 3: Now What?)
My previous posts described the rise of Generative AI applications and their usability super-powers, as well as their implications for mass AI adoption, ethics and intellectual property, but the question remains – How should the average person respond to what some describe as a critical and transformative step in our collective human experience and cultural evolution?
Read more…Successful Innovation: Is it an Art or Science?
Shock, horror; learning STEM is not the answer! Well at least not according to Dr. Andy Harter in his thought provoking 2018 BCS/IET Turing Lecture. Thankfully, he also described the key qualities critical for success in the fourth industrial revolution. Read on to find out if you’ve got what it takes.
Harter kicked off the lecture with a poignant question about whether successful tech and innovation was down to an art or a science, giving much pause for thought, but more on that later. The following are the key qualities I took away from the lecture:
- Creativity – This is inherent quality in every individual is not always teachable. However, it is important to nurture and inspire ‘sparky’ individuals. Creativity often works best when one is able to focus on human element and harness seemingly random ideas, thoughts and visions to solve problems.
- Motivation is key – Necessity is mother of invention, therefore tapping into an area of need with real emotional connections to the individual can often lead to inspired breakthroughs
- Story Telling – This can capture the imagination and turn mere functionality push into consumer pull. Great storytellers have lasting impact e.g. Nicola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Steven Spielberg
- Timing – Being too early or too late is as good as being wrong. For example, the ‘way-ahead-of-it’s-time’ Apple Newton PDA was responsible for the ARM chip (aka Acorn RISC Machine) which is used to power so many mobile devices today. Timing is everything.
- Observation – Learn to observe carefully everything e.g. detail, structure, patterns. This is one quality which can be taught and which only gets better with practice.
- Time / space to think – The hare vs. tortoise approach to problem solving describes how frenetic pace can get in the way of deep-thought and meaningful insights. Prominent thinkers have used and recommend micro-naps as a boost for productivity.
- Simplicity – make simplicity a key principle. Know what to leave out and try not to solve problems that don’t exist. Jazz great, Charlie Mingus once said: “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity”
- Adaptation – this is key to survival in nature, business and tech innovation. There are far too many examples of failures to adapt to a changing landscape. Today’s enterprise must embrace the phoenix like business model approach
- Generosity – Abundance is a state of mind most relevant to the digital age / fourth industrial revolution. Free software, apps and information powered economy is driven by digital abundance on an unprecedented scale.
Aside from the above, I found it interesting that Harter prefaced the above points by showcasing the works of that most forward-looking polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci, whose ground breaking works combine and span the arts and sciences, and so much more besides. In a world chock full of incredible opportunities, with amazing breakthroughs in: A.I., Autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things and Cloud computing, it is plain to see that the most profound impacts will come from combinations thereof.
In conclusion, it’s become more obvious that the polymath mantra to: “study the art of science and the science of art” in full knowledge that “everything connects to everything else”, stands true more-so now than ever, especially for those seeking to succeed in the 4th industrial revolution. In my opinion, any education or training that features and applies both the arts and sciences will beat the rest going forward. Just sayin’.
Introducing a Framework for Multi-Publishing
I believe that in a highly connected digital world, the future of content publishing lies with creating interlinked manifestations of a core concept or theme. I like to think of this as “multi(n) publishing”, (where ‘n’ stands for any number of things, e.g.: aspect / channel / facet / format / genre / sided / variant / etc.), or multi-publishing for short. To this end, I’ve created a framework which could prove very useful for conceptualizing and executing multi-publishing projects. Read on to find out more.
- Why Multi-Publishing?
There is increasing evidence of an evolution in the way people consume digitally enabled content, e.g.: watching a TV show whilst surfing the web, talking on the phone to a friend and posting comments on social media – all of which may or may not relate to each other or a single topic. This has put enormous pressure on content creators and publishers to find new ways to engage their audience and deliver compelling content to people that live in a world surfeit with competing content, channels, devices and distractions. In the above scenario, broadcasters have tried, with varying degrees of success, to engage viewers with second or multi-screen, content (e.g.: show on TV, cast info on website / mobile site, plus real time interaction on Social Media – all related to the show). Furthermore, the average attention span of most users appears to have shrunk and many prefer to ‘snack’ on content across devices and formats. This doesn’t bode well for the more traditional long-form content upon which many creative industries were established. As a result, many in the content production, publishing and marketing industries are seeking new ways to engage audiences across multiple devices and channels with even more compelling content and user experiences.
- What is Multi-publishing?
In this context, the term “multi(n) publishing” (or multi-publishing) describes the manifestation of a core concept / theme as distinct but inter-linked works across multiple media formats, channels and genres. This is somewhat different from other similar related terms such as: multi-format (or cross-media), multi-channel, single source, or even multi-platform publishing. The last one being mainly used by marketers to describe the practice of taking one thing and turning it into several products across a spectrum of online, offline and even ‘live’ experiential forms. The key difference between these terms and multi-publishing is that the latter encompasses them all, and more. In fact, the multi-publishing framework is closer to the information science idea of conceptualisation. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the various manifestations of multi-published content are not necessarily brand identical to the originating (aka ‘native’) core concept, or to each other. However, each and every manifestation is intended to be unique and distinct, yet able to enhance each other and provide a fuller and more fulfilling experience of the overall core concept.
- How does it work?
In order to achieve the desired outcome of the whole being more than a sum of its parts, it makes sense for creators and publishers to bear in mind, right from the outset, that their works will likely be: used, reused, decomposed, remixed and recomposed in so many different ways, (including new and novel expressions of which they couldn’t possibly imagine at the time of creation). Therefore, they must recognize where and how each of their output content fits within the context of a multi-publishing content framework or architecture. The diagram below is just such a framework (in mindmap form) and demonstrates the narrative-like progression of a single core concept / theme across various stages and interlinked manifestations.
This is only an example of what content creators and their publishers must consider and prepare as part of their creative (inspiration) and publishing (exploitation) process. It requires the creation and/or identification of a core concept which is manifest in the expression of the art (e.g. in the: story, song, prose, images, video, game, conversations or presentations etc), and which can be used to link each and every format, channel or media in which the concept is expressed.
Finally, the use of multi-publishing frameworks can also enable easier setup and automation of tracking and recording of all usage transactions, and potentially any subsequent remuneration for creator(s) and publisher(s), in a transparent manner, (perhaps using a trust mechanism such as blockchain). I will explore this particular topic in a subsequent post on this blog. In any case, there remains one key question to be answered, i.e.: how can or should we consider protecting core concepts or algorithms at the heart of multi-publishing frameworks, and if so what form should such protection take?
IBM Innovation Labs – where old meets new, and everything in between…
If you’ve ever wondered how the big tech players do innovation then you might do well to head on over to IBM’s Hursley labs for a taste of their world class innovation facility. A few weeks ago, some colleagues and I were hosted to an executive briefing on innovation, the IBM way. Read on to find out more…
IBM Executive Briefing Day
We had a fairly simple and straightforward agenda / expectation in mind, i.e. to: hear, see and connect with IBM labs on key areas of innovation that we might be able to leverage in our own labs, and for clients. This objective was easily met and exceeded as we proceeded through the day long briefing program. Below are some highlights:
First of all, Dr Peter Waggett, Director for Innovation, gave an overview of IBM Research and ways of working. For example, with an annual R&D spend of over 5 Billion Dollars, and 1 Billion Dollars in annual revenues from patents alone, (IBM files over 50 patents a year), it quickly became clear that we were in for a day of superlatives. Dr. Waggett described the operating model, lab resources and key areas of focus, such as: working at the ‘bow wave’ of technology, ‘crossing the mythical chasm‘ and ‘staying close to market’. Some specific areas of active research include: Cognitive Computing (Watson et al), Homomorphic encryption, “data at the edge” and several emerging tech concepts / areas e.g.: Biometrics, biometry and Wetware / Neuromorphic computing with the IBM Synapse Chips. And that was just in the morning session!
The rest of the day involved visiting several innovation labs, as outlined below:
Retail Lab – demonstration of some key innovation in: retail back end integration, shopper relevance and customer engagement management (with analytics / precision marketing / customer lifecycle engagement). Also, touched on integration / extension with next generation actionable tags by PowaTag.
Emerging Technology & Solutions Lab – featured among other things: the IBM touch table (for collaborative interactive working), Buildings Management solutions (with sensors / alerts, dashboard, helmet and smart watch components); Manufacturing related IoT solutions (using Raspberry Pi & Node Red to enable closed loop sensor/analysis/action round trip); Healthcare innovations (including Smarthome based health and environment monitoring with inference capability) and of course Watson Analytics.
IOT Lab – Demonstrated various IoT based offers e.g.: from Device to Cloud; Instrumenting the World Proof of Concepts; Decoupled sensors / analysis / actuators; IoT reference architecture (incl. Device / Gateway / Cloud / Actuators ); and IoT starter kits (with Node Red development environment & predefined recipes for accelerated IoT).
IOC Labs – IBM’s Intelligent Operations Centre (IOC) was shown to be highly relevant for smarter cities as it enables the deployment of fourfold capabilities to: Sense / Analyse / Decide / Act, thus enabling the ability to predict and respond to situations even before they arise. IOC capabilities and cases studies were also demonstrated to be relevant & applicable across multiple industry scenarios including: retail, transport, utilities and supply chain.
Finally, you cannot complete a visit to Hursley without stopping off at their underground Museum of computing. Over the years, this has become a special place, showcasing the amazing innovations of yesterday which have now become objects of nostalgia and curiosity for today’s tech savvy visitors. It is almost incredible to think that computers once ran on: floppy discs, magnetic tape and even punch cards. This is made even more poignant by the thought that almost every new innovation we saw in the labs will one day take their place in the museum, (particularly if they prove successful). Perhaps some of them may even be brought to life by other, newer and as-yet-undiscovered innovations, e.g.: see if you can spot the 3D printed key on this IBM 705 data processor keyboard!
Spot the 3D printed key.
Overall, it was a great experience and many thanks to our hosts, and IBM event team, for making this a most interesting event. The team and I are certainly look forward to finding out how other tech players, both large and small, are pursuing their own innovation programs!
The Business of Innovation.
In order to survive and thrive in a continuously evolving digital landscape, there is no escaping the fact that every organisation must place innovation as a core activity in their business model, but what is the best way to go about it?
Many organisations choose to address this by investing in an innovation capability (i.e. time, space and resources) in the form of an innovation lab / centre / hub, where they can participate and play “the innovation game“, as described in a recent paper by Capgemini Consulting and Altimeter Group. One key message is that successful innovation centres need to have: clear purpose, executive support and real autonomy to delivery outcomes. Brian Solis posted an excellent summary here.
Over time, I’ve come to understand that that innovation typically happens when a pressing need or challenge is presented to a diverse group of people, with the right mindset to recognise and seize the opportunity to affect change, in a sustainable and profitable way. Below are top five lessons I’ve learnt over the years leading innovation in my business unit.
Top 5 Innovation lessons learnt (so far):
- Innovation is much more than ‘Digital’ – It has been happening much longer than the digital transformation phenomena we see / hear about nowadays. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but digital is just one form of innovation, albeit one that is farther reaching that most.
- Ideation is necessary; execution is a must – Application is key. Good ideas are dime a dozen, but the real value lies in applying new and/or established ideas in ways that deliver said value to your business and clients’ in a sustainable / profitable way
- Start thinking about the IP in co-creation & ecosystem – this one will only get bigger and more urgent over time. Currently we see a frenzy of co-creation and new economic dynamics in the so called sharing economics, however evolution is driven as much by scarity as abundance therefore the role of IP ownership as a driver and benefit of innovation will not disappear anytime soon.
- Innovation is subjective – One person’s innovation is another’s business as usual. The definition of innovation alone is a minefield of individual viewpoints. However, one aspect which everyone seems to agree is that innovation “involves doing something in a new or different way which delivers some sort of added value”. Discuss.
- Innovation is a journey not a destination. (i.e. tradition vs. culture) – most innovation labs are concerned with creating tangible new, innovative products and services, the success of which they may be judged. However, not many innovation initiatives start out with a focus on how to create a culture, never mind tradition, for innovation.
Are you a CIO/CTO/CDO, Chief Innovation Officer, Innovation Director, Lab Leader or manager? Did you find any of the above to be true in your experience, and and how do they apply to your current organisation? I’d be very interested to know about it one way or the other.
In any case, it is relatively easy to reach a conclusion that organisations need to play the long game and not give into temptation of seeking quarterly results for their innovation initiatives. KPIs and other measures are necessary to track success, but they can also not constrain innovation. The true business of innovation is manifest in the long game needed for evolving a certain “point-in-time” innovation culture into longer term tradition for innovation.
IT’s At The Airport
Last month, I helped coordinate a BCS London seminar about the role of IT in the airport and air travel industry, and as you might imagine it proved a very popular topic, complete with sold out venue and 4 expert IT practitioners from one of the world’s busiest hub airport. Read on for highlights…
- Airport Operations – Heathrow operates 98% runway capacity which roughly translates to a take-off or landing event occurring every 45 seconds, thereby making it one of the most efficient 2 runway airports in the world. Speaker, Brent Reed (Airport Ops Lead Designer), described how Heathrow introduced a world’s first Time Based Seperation (TBS) system to further maintain / improve on this efficiency, particularly on windy days – every second counts!
- The Automated Passenger Journey – Heathrow is actively implementing the IATA Fast Travel Program strategy which aims to provide 80% of global passengers with a complete and relevant self-service suite by 2020. According to Capgemini’s Don Grose (Lead Solution Architect), this program will deliver multiple benefits for: passengers, airlines and airports, and Heathrow has already delivered or trialled several self service capabilities, including: Self Boarding, Automatic Ticket Presentation and Kiosk self service bag tags, Self Service Bag Drop trials, as well as biometric enrolment & verification.
- Shadow IT at Heathrow – Andrew Isenman (Passenger Experience Design Lead), described how Heathrow employees are starting to engage their colleagues and digitally enabled passengers in different ways, sometimes even bypassing the IT departments. As a result, the latter have proactively started encouraging and shaping how this engagement happens, at the same time they’re addressing the usual questions around: support provision, reduced Total-Cost-of-Ownership (TCO), increased security and minimal technical debt.
- Airport Innovation – Heathrow has embraced the drive for innovation with various initiatives, some of which were presented by Richard Harding, (Head of strategy and innovation at Heathrow). They included: the Heathrow innovation Process, Crowd dynamics (detecting / measuring / alerting via CCTV), WiFi digital finger printing, Airfield Asset inspection, Mobile Display units and treasure hunts. Key insights gleaned from Heathrow innovation highlight the need for: open innovation, active promotion, new governance processes, skills enablement and innovative culture / process metrics.
What makes a good chief innovation officer?
The role of Chief Innovation Officer, or Head of Innovation, is fast gaining traction and attention within various organisations and industries, but why is this happening now, what does it entail and who is best suited to fulfill the role? These were some of the questions I had in mind when I got an opportunity to spend the afternoon at a recent Chief Innovation Office Summit in London, UK.
The 2 day summit featured a host of speakers and topics related to innovation, including networking and hands-on workshops – because, after-all innovation is about deeds, not just words and ideas. The attendees list read like a who is who of Innovation leadership from new and established organisations. Some key takeaways include:
- The right Culture for Innovation – many more companies and individuals have recognised and are making tangible efforts to identify and address the need for innovation leadership in their industry. This will help nurture and promote desired behaviours to create and benefit from an innovation culture.
- Connecting people and ideas – It takes a combination of business, social and technology innovations to really make an impact – for example, a clean tech solution provider described how it’s solar power product creates income streams (business innovation) for roof owners who chose their aerodynamic solar panels (tech innovation) which can be installed without risky invasive fastenings onto rooftops. Also, they’re the biggest distributor of solar powered lamps in Africa (social innovation).
- Communication is key – the summit presentations provided a balanced a mix of vendors / service providers and end user organisations with real case studies to provide a fertile ground for sharing progressive thinking about innovation. Some of the presentations, innovative products, services and initiatives described or demo’ed at the event were indeed amazing to behold.
- Seeing is believing – For example, one of the sponsors demonstrated a 2 sided innovation approach with a workshop designed to allow participants to appreciate the need to address both external (your customers) and internal (your organisation) requirements for innovation. This is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of innovation efforts, in my opinion. The question of ROI, aka what’s in it for your firm, will always trump even the most innovative customer solutions.
- The cool tech factor – Of course, the usual collection of toys and gadgets were on display from sponsors, vendors and attendees – e.g. I even had a photo op with Google Glass at lunch, courtesy of a fellow attendee – it seems wearable computing devices are de rigeur for every tech innovation conversation these days.
In conclusion, and to answer some of my initial questions, it is obvious that more people and organisations are looking to innovate in order to survive and thrive in today’s business environment, and this event highlighted the continuous need for dialogue and cross-fertilization of ideas between all stakeholder. Therefore the role of a Chief Innovation Officer is suited to someone who understands the need to nurture the culture, make connections and communicate with all stakeholders about innovation. In Capgemini, our innovation groups understand the triple need to nurture, connect and communicate innovation across an ecosystem of partners, clients, employees, suppliers, and even competitors, in order to realise the full benefits from innovation.
Full marks out of ten for the summit organisers and I certainly look forward to participating, and perhaps even presenting, at another one of their excellent series of events.
Innovation through Collaboration
Dave Chapman, Dean Mohammedally and Simon Elliot
Speakers, Dave Chapman and Dean Mohammedally, from the University College London (UCL) provided an inside view of the workings of IDEA London (including a tour of the facilities afterwards), as well as their innovative Computer Science & Software Engineering programmes which feature students undertaking real world projects with various sponsoring or client organisations. Simon Elliott, Head of Innovation at Worldline (an ATOS company) described how traditional enterprises are like walled gardens which benefit greatly by collaborating with universities which are like a small sprawling village or kibbutz (with flowing porous boundaries), to mutual benefit in tackling major challenges such as aging population, mobile working etc. He also described the innovation process within his organisation and how they work in collaboration with universities such as UCL and IDEALondon.
One cool collaboration Pod at IDEALondon
Business Transformation at the Open Group Conference
The last Open Group Conference in London provided an opportunity to hear about latest developments in Health, Finance and eGovernment. It also featured major milestones for the Open Group, e.g. the successful conclusion of the Jericho forum (on de-perimeterised security), and the rise of Platform 3.0 (aka Digital). Read on for some highlights and headlines from the event
eGovernment – According to one keynote speaker, the transition towards egovernment is reflected in growing demand for the IT industry to help implement or enable such major initiatives as: open data, global tax information exchange, as well as an enterprise architecture plus supporting data structures to cover all human endeavour. The Global Risks 2013 report illustrates pressing issues to be addressed by world leaders, particularly in the G8 and G20 countries which together represent 50% – 95% of the global economy. Some IT enabled scenarios, such as massive disinformation and the dangers of starting “Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world”, illustrate the hurdles that need to be overcome with vital input from the IT industry. According to one attendee, “…government is just the back office for the global citizen”. Overall, these initiatives are aimed at connecting governments, by enabling better information exchange, and providing much needed support for an emerging global citizen.
Platform 3.0 – The conference provided updates on Platform 3.0, (aka the Open Group’s approach to Digital). Andy Mulholland (Ex Global CTO at Capgemini) set the scene in his keynote speech, by discussing the real drivers for change and their implications, plus the emerging role of business architecture and innovation, as well as the Platform 3.0 approach to Digital. Subsequent sessions provided a summary of activities outlining key Principles (and requirements) for Platform 3.0, including: the role of the IT organisation in managing digital (i.e. brokering anywhere / anytime transactions), Inside Out vs. Outside In approach to interaction, and the challenge for Enterprise Architects to acquire key skills in organisational change & behaviours, in order to remain relevant.
eHealth – Several sessions were dedicated to the trends and impact of technology on healthcare. Topics discussed include: Big Data in healthcare and the growth in Smartphone or smart device capabilities for health care. Also discussed were:
- Shrinking R&D budgets leading to collaborative efforts (e.g. Pistoiaalliance.org ),
- Explosion of health monitoring related services and offerings e.g. self help health websites, bio telemetry wristbands etc.
- Personalized Ambient Monitoring (PAM) of mentally ill patients, using multiple devices and algorithms. apparently 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience some kind of mental illness within the year.
- Unobtrusive Smart Environment for Independent Living (USEFIL) aimed at senior citizens
- Trends in life logging (e.g. quantified self and life slices), heading towards embedded or implanted devices (e.g. digestible RFID chips)
- IPv6 and ubiquity of information points – ID management for tomorrow will include a surfeit of personal data.
However, key challenges discussed include privacy issues regarding the collection, storage and access to personal / health information. Also, who will monitor all that data gathered from sensors, monitoring and activation from the Internet of things for healthcare?
Innovation – These sessions focused on various aspects of future technology trends and innovation. It featured speakers from KPN, IBM, Inspired and Capgemini (i.e. yours truly), discussing:
- Smart technologies (e.g. SMART Grid) and interoperability constraints, plus the convergence of business and technology and fuzzy boundaries of “outside in” versus “inside out” thinking
- New technology architecture opportunities to leverage world changing developments such as: Semantics, nano technology, 3D printing, Robotics and the Internet-of-things, overlaid with exponential technologies (e.g. storage / processing power / bandwidth) and the network effect
- Effects of Mobile and Social vs. traditional MDM, plus emerging trends for incorporating new dynamic data (sentiment analysis / IoT sensors plus deep / dark data).
- Use of big data to enable the Social enterprise, via smarter workforce, innovation and gamification.
- Case study of Capgemini internal architecture and innovation work stream – illustrating key organisational trends and cross sector innovation, plus challenges for internal innovation, and the emerging role of business model innovation and architecture
As you can probably surmise from the above, this multi-day conference was jam-packed with information, networking and learning opportunities. Also the Open Group’s tradition of holding events in the great cities of the world, (e.g. this one took place just across the road from the UK Houses of Parliament), effectively brings the latest industry thinking / developments to your doorstep, and is highly commendable. Long may it continue!
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