All Posts in Strategy and Tactics

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

The Senate just passed patent reform legislation.

So here’s a thought: Rather than reform the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO,) why not just outsource the sucker to the European Patent Office? It would be cheaper and far less risky than fixing the one we have.

This follows the usual but unadmitted reason businesses outsource. Shorn of all the academic fur that surrounds the subject, businesses outsource when they’ve given up on their own ability to be competent at whatever-it-is.

And so, they turn over responsibility for it to another company, figuring their shortcomings will be magically transformed into superior competence when the relationship they’re managing is with another company instead of a fellow executive.

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|In: Architecture|Last Updated:

It’s the Edison Ratio again — Thomas Edison’s famous explanation of genius as one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

The Edison Ratio is why I haven’t yet written about the subject suggested by long-time correspondent Bob Ballard, enterprise architecture.

Way back when I developed what I thought was an enterprise architecture methodology for my then employer, Perot Systems. Its goal was to rationalize and create a plan for the evolution of a client’s portfolio of installed technologies, strongly connected to the client’s business direction.

It worked well — well enough that I based the “Managing Technology” section of my old IS Survival Guide book on it.

Turns, out, though, that in the eyes of most practitioners I’d mistaken the tail for the dog and vice versa.

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