Posts Tagged ‘european’

Maximizing costs, minimizing ROI

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

The title of this article is both a provocation and a simple statement of facts.

It is funny to observe as something that was often the most critical issue with startups and growing SMEs is now visible in sensibly larger organizations.

The issue? The temptation of reducing risk by spreading too thin across multiple line of activities.

In theory, this could mean having multiple “fall-back” opportunities, should one or more of the alternatives fail to deliver the expected results.

In reality, this implies that you have multiple initiatives to coordinate- a tough call, made even more difficult to manage if you are within a competitive environment, where external issues could require a constant refocus.

In this article, taking the lead from the first public speech of the European President, a “what if” story on the application of the streamlining approach to the external relations of the EU 27.

AGB2009: Bridges

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

This part of the AGB2009 series (see the presentation)
AGB2009: BRIDGES

BACKGROUND

I know what some of the locals would say.

But, on an overall “helicopter view”, it is irrelevant.

ABSTRACT

Mixing change in politics and business is always a risky affair- and I am not referring to the tulip craze.

Just read the enclosed bibliography.

I might be wrong- but changing a culture requires a long-term view, that sometimes requires more real-politik and less short-term results.

Interesting times: Internet, copyright, patents

Monday, October 5th, 2009

We are heading toward interesting times but, as usual, time is the main constraint.

It is a small world- and, moving online, borders become even more irrelevant.

There are some calls to stifle innovation by creating artificial online borders- but it is akin to re-instating border controls within Schengen: a temporary, cumbersome, and annoying palliative.

AGB2009: a balancing act

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

This part of the AGB2009 series (see the presentation)
AGB2009: a balancing act

BACKGROUND

In my business experience from late 1980s, I almost never saw a coherent organization- it is more a work-in-progress.

ABSTRACT

Few decades ago, the European Parliament started being directly elected by citizens.

Accordingly, a sequence of treaties and agreement gradually strengthened the European institutions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This bibliography is slightly more “technical”- nothing is worse that an uninformed discussion on the future of political or business organizations

my take on post-i2010

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Yesterday I attended the last EU conference that I had planned to attend for 2009, a public consultation on what should happen after i2010

Or: what the should European institutions (and their funding) consider a priority in using ICT to generate benefits for citizens in EU and beyond (private and corporate).

I shared my detailed “idea” draft minutes online, using the xMind.net community: you can download both my file and the software (free OpenSource) needed to “navigate” through the minutes.

If you want, re-use it: let me know if you have any questions.

This short article (less than 1000 words) contains my own commentary on both the event and the questions presented by the participants.

As usual: my comments are my own position, but anything reported inside the minutes is how I perceived the position of each speaker.

XXI Century libraries and search engines

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

XXI century encyclopedias and knowledge processing.

How Google, WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, and Eurostat process a query.

Or: models of knowledge processing and distribution.