Agile PLM - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 20

anticipates tomorrow's discontinuities. It goes on to provide a list of seven
responsibilities for the organization's leaders. These run from the obvious
(e.g., develop a culture that nurtures creativity and innovation and putting
the right people in charge) to the less than obvious (e.g., improve the idea-
to-commercialization process and think of ideas and projects in terms of
a portfolio with distinct risk and return dimensions).
The “obvious” responsibilities are covered in depth by the authors as
well as many other authors. It's these less-than-obvious responsibilities
that are the most intriguing, for with these, the authors correlate the cre-
ativity and innovation to financial goals, all important to me as the CEO.
Computerized Brainstorming
Human performance: That's what it all boils down to! Enabling a person
to perform at his or her full potential. In the beginning, we developed
technology appliances to make the drudgery of clerical work less burden-
some—and even to replace humans. Later, technology began to be used to
help humans sort through massive information data stores. The age of the
personal productivity appliance, the PC, began in the early '80s, and dur-
ing that decade, and on into the new millennium, spurred an avalanche
of productivity-enhancing tools that nearly boggle the mind. But still, the
emphasis was on productivity enhancing . What's really needed by com-
panies searching for that elusive silver bullet of competitive leadership is
some sort of tool that is productivity producing .
Marsh Fisher was the original founder of the Century 21 real-estate
empire, unfortunately recently deceased. Any businessperson would take
advice from Fisher. After all, his business was worth billions. But Fisher
wanted to offer more than advice. He wanted to offer ideas. Actually, he
wanted to offer competitive advantage through creativity. Fisher calls this
type of software Human Performance Technology .
Fisher got the idea for creativity boosting back in the days when com-
puters were large, monolithic mainframes stuck away in the basements of
office buildings, providing only a smattering of the functionality that has
become available as a matter of course today. In 1964, Fisher was studying
comedy writing. He noticed that most of the other students in his class
were much better at being faster on their feet than he was. They seemed to
ad lib a lot better than he did. So, he started to look for some sort of crutch
with which he could at least become competitive.