employee productivity monitoring

 I ask myself why I am aware so little of the policy issues, product discussions, and even general news coming out from the tech world employee productivity monitoring. That's my problem. I must repair it by doing what Jack Welch asked every one of his senior colleagues at GE to do: look for a mentor no more than 30 to help me update my tech skills and knowledge.

Can it be my imagination, or has the planet of information technology become so inbred it is losing touch with users, particularly those of a certain age? If it's not my imagination, that's the tech world's problem and opportunity. At the chance of employing the most overused and misused term of the decade, are the masters of disruption themselves providing attractive opportunities to people who would disrupt them?

Clay Christensen's original idea of disruption is very simple. It concerns the successful development of products and simple solutions with less functionality and much lower prices than competitors locked into a product development strategy calling for growth through product obsolescence and more and more largely unused but expensive bells and whistles.

We're told that the normal user of information technology today utilizes significantly less than 5 percent of the capability made available by today's hardware and software. A few basic functions repeatedly are put to good use by the normal user. They're the need-to-have functions. The functions thought by designers to be nice to possess may enhance marketing efforts and satisfy software engineers' desires to produce complex things, but they largely go unused. For a few, they even make access to "need to have" functions more confusing.

How has this arrived at pass? Can it be that much of the data technology we confront nowadays is the output of a tiny number of entrepreneurs, engineers, and venture capitalists situated in close proximity to one another, frequenting the exact same restaurants, and speaking a language of their particular? They represent a vintage "cluster" from the planet of competitive strategy. But are they denied contact with consumers who are different from them in age, educational background, technological sophistication, and, as claimed in a current, well publicized lawsuit, gender?

My inspiration for these rants is Scott Cook (HBS MBA '76), co-founder of Intuit and a true disruptor. From its founding Intuit, quickly became the leading producer of personal and small-business financial software. It made it happen by providing simple and inexpensive methods to everyday problems. Initially it solved an issue in Scott's group of balancing the checkbook. Intuit is said to possess been the 47th software company to handle the problem. It made it happen by using as a metaphor the familiar checks and checkbooks that could be manipulated in non-threatening ways on a computer screen. Scott likes to say that Intuit had 47th mover advantage, simply as it adopted a strategy that identified the pencil because the company's most significant competitor. As a result, Intuit has dominated markets and badly beaten Microsoft at the private finance software game. And it did so by hiring software engineers which are difficult to get in Silicon Valley—people who actually like to style products which are simpler than those of competitors. Cook's company disrupted its industry.

This prompts several questions. Are information technology companies at the mercy of the exact same kinds of blinkered strategies experienced in more traditional industries? Has there been sufficient effort to disrupt them? Or are my perceptions those of a generationally handicapped and challenged observer? Can it be time for more disruption in infotech? If so, what'll it take to attain it? What you think Are information technology companies at the mercy of the exact same kinds of blinkered strategies experienced in more traditional industries? Absolutely- when industry leaders under-utilize thinking skills -highly likely- it leads to blinkering.?

I totally agree together with your statement "We're told that the normal user of information technology today utilizes significantly less than 5 percent of the capability made available by today's hardware and software. A few basic functions repeatedly are put to good use by the normal user."

I've been working together with MES Systems for 5 years and the user interface gets more and more complex for the operator. I've seen systems easier with only three to four big buttons with the need-to-have functions. They're the ones the users preffer.

How has this arrived at pass? Can it be that much of the data technology we confront nowadays is the output of a tiny number of entrepreneurs, engineers, and venture capitalists situated in close proximity to one another, frequenting the exact same restaurants, and speaking a language of their particular?"

Professor Heskett, as confusing as the new technology is, you're 100% correct in your question above.

So long as Apple and Samsung are contemporaries, and provided that they compete for the business, there is a technology race. The problem is in the nature of competition and particularly in the nature of the competition involving the Engineers of Apple vs. the Engineers of Samsung. It's more essential for Apple to out-do Samsung (and vice-versa) than it is to allow them to provide us with products and innovations that individuals can use. While they compete keenly against each other, they lose a huge segment of the population that honestly doesn't worry about high-tech features that nobody uses, even though they took Engineers on each team lots and a lot of brain-power to check and develop.

I think there may not be considered a disruption in the tech sector but there is a slow and steady trend toward user-friendliness employee productivity monitoring. The Apple vs. Samsung battle between their respective Engineering departments will rage on in a existential battle to the death!