Emerging Management Paradigms, Spring 11

Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer and servicer of wind turbines is  a good example of doing well and doing good. Now, they have come up with a remarkable initiative. Fast Company’s February edition presents Vestas’ CEO Morten Albaek’s attempts to educate people about the energy used in consumer good production. Vestas’ initiative, WindMade, is intended to make it easy for manufacturers to demonstrate their sustainability commitments to potential customers. Windmade would be a trustmark to compel shoppers to consider products that have been produced with wind power.

Certification labels and trustmarks have proven to be effective. One of the representative examples can be Energy Star. Launched by the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) in 1992 with the goal of reducing greenhouse-emissions through energy efficiency is known by 87% of consumers and chosen by 56% of them. Also, USDA Organic, a government’s label that put together a set of standards that are followed by tens of thousands of organic farmers nationwide. Both of these labels are regarded as trustworthy, and it seems that people have the see government-backed labels as unbiased.

But Vestas’ case is different. If successful, it would be the first time that a multinational corporation drives a trustmark.

The question is, will people adjust their buying habits?

WindMade corporate info

In this article in NYT, Google’s analytical approach to management is explained. They use data to figure out what works.

H.R. has long run on gut instincts more than hard data. But a growing number of companies are trying to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions.

GOOGLE executives say they aren’t crunching all this data to develop some algorithm of successful management. The point, they say, is to provide the data and to make people aware of it, so that managers can understand what works and, just as important, what doesn’t.

I just got an invitation today to sign up for the Enterprise 2.0 conference that will take place in Boston in June. Some of the vendors that we have been talking about in class, such as Microsoft, Jive, Yammer and Spigit, will be presenting there.

Some of the workshops that will be happening there look interesting:

I was particularly intrigued by the concept of the Enterprise 2.0 Black Belt Practitioner. It reminds of the time Six Sigma–and that doesn’t look differentiating anymore.

Anyway, if you want to register for the expo you can do so here:

http://www.e2conf.com/boston/registration/?_mc=CPDNEB01

I had always thought of Lotus Notes as the good ol’ email and database software that big consultancies and professional services firms use. It seems to have stellar access control tools and traceability and that’s why auditors and consultants love (and hate) it.

Well, today received and email that made me change my mind. IBM is re-positioning Lotus as a “network for communities” to “work, share and innovate”. It’d be interested to see how this plays out. The folks that tend to use Lotus aren’t the most forward-thinking ones and I’m not sure if this will be a stretch for them. I guess I’ll watch their webcast and see if this is true.

Here is a good source on info on the new collaboration tools. Morten

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/32444/?p1=BI

My team and I have been doing some interviews recently for our final project. We are trying to understand how different organizations come up with innovative ideas. We wanted to see whether aha! moments are only happy accidents or a product of the process.

Interestingly enough, we found out that the single most mentioned innovation source in our interviews was the random hallway conversation. We discovered that creativity sparks during lunch conversations or when employees sneak into someone else’s screen. Once meetings are over, employees have a chance to quickly chat in the hallway and jump into others. It looks like virtual teams could miss a lot of these opportunities. Once the Telepresence meeting is over, there is no chance to quickly chat about something or grab something for lunch.

A few reports have been published on social software for business. Some indicate that social software improve business results a lot. I am skeptical. I am not sure the methodology is good. See for yourself.

I have uploaded the other reports for March 4 session.

Deloitte on results metrics.

Here is another article on doing well and good. Good ex of Pepsi. Good idea for a paper. Can even interview the person in the article.

This morning NPR reported on a California company, Solar City, that now has a leasing program for solar panels. This program focuses on our class taxonomy’s so-called “sweet spot,” providing a good value right away to light-green customers. NPR reports that electric bills plus leasing costs are lower than what customers used to pay for just their electric bills. But like most of the other programs that we studied in this segment, Solar City still can’t make this program profitable for the customer without subsidies. Currently the program only offers the leasing program in areas that have tax breaks and governmental rebates – NY, NJ, PA, CA, MA. The goal is for “economies of scale to eventually kick in and make solar panels affordable without the incentives.” This example seems pretty analogous to our in-class example of municipal subsidies for ZipCar.

The question remains: are economies of scale enough to make these companies profitable without governmental help?