Lazonick on Chandler Part I

I introduced Professor Lazonick's paper the other day, it can be downloaded from here. I will be reviewing this paper in multiple posts. Professor Lazonick is from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and based on a review of the bibliography for this paper, has been writing on the topic of innovation for over two decades. This is the first that I am aware of Professor Lazonick's writings, and we will definitely have to take a look at some of his other papers.

Lazonick starts off with an appropriate reference to Joseph Schumpeter about the importance of innovation.

More specifically, since, as Joseph Schumpeter (1934, 1950) recognized, innovation drives economic development. p. 1

Economic development from the point of view of greater productive capacity to produce oil and gas. How does the oil and gas industry produce more with the same volume of inputs? This is highly dependent on innovation and the capability to innovate that the industry develops. Lazonick notes Chandler;

Chandler (1990: 594) then goes on to articulate in two paragraphs, which I quote in full, what I consider to be the essence of his theory of innovative enterprise, including its contribution to the growth of the economy as a whole, that he had distilled from his trilogy. p. 2

Such organizational capabilities, of course, had to be created, and once established maintained. Their maintenance was as great a challenge as their creation, for facilities depreciate and skills atrophy. Moreover, changing technologies and markets constantly make both existing facilities and skills obsolete. One of the most critical tasks of top management has always been to maintain these capabilities and to integrate these facilities and skills into a unified organization—so that the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. p. 3

Such organizational capabilities, in turn, have provided the source—the dynamic—for the continuing growth of the enterprise. They have made possible the earnings that supplied much of the funding for such growth. Even more important, they provided the specialized facilities and skills that gave the enterprise an advantage in foreign markets and in related industries. Because of these capabilities the basic goal of the modern industrial enterprise became long-term profits based on long-term growth—growth that increased the productivity, and so the competitive power, that drive the expansion of industrial capitalism. p. 3

2. The theory of innovative enterprise

The Preliminary Research Report, the Draft Specification and all of the work done at People, Ideas & Objects points directly at the Joint Operating Committee (JOC). The reason for this is that People, Ideas & Objects have determined that the JOC is the ideal organizational construct of the innovative energy producer. Lazonick summarizes why an organization like the JOC is that innovative construct for oil and gas, better then I have seen elsewhere.

A business enterprise seeks to transform productive resources into goods and services that can be sold to generate revenues. A theory of the firm, therefore, must, at a minimum, provide explanations for how this productive transformation occurs and how revenues are obtained. These explanations must focus on three generic activities in which the business enterprise engages: strategy, organization, and finance. Strategy allocates resources to investments in developing human and physical capabilities that, it is hoped, will enable the firm to compete for chosen product markets. Organization transforms technologies and accesses markets, and thereby develops and utilizes the value-creating capabilities of these resources to generate products that buyers want at prices that they are willing to pay. Finance sustains the process of developing technologies and accessing markets from the time at which investments in productive resources are made to the time at which financial returns are generated through the sale of products. p. 4

Chandler noted that "strategy follows structure". One of the key attributes of using the JOC is that it enables the strategy to be unique and specific to the property represented. In order for the value to be earned, each facility, each zone of oil and gas requires that a different strategy be implemented. One that is unique and develops the value based on the facts and the situation at the property.

With the structured hierarchy, and its close cousin the bureaucracy, the focus is on the corporate entity. This is reasonable until we discover the conflict associated with many corporate entities represented in each JOC. To eliminate the conflict at the JOC it is important to remember that consensus at the JOC is driven by financial interests. If the strategy and structure are both focused on the same organization, this conflict between corporate entities disappears.

The last attribute is equally important. To establish finance at the JOC does not seem to be an issue until it is realized the oil and gas finance mechanisms are focused on the corporate entity. The Financial Marketplace module of the Draft Specification moves the finance function from the corporate entity to the JOC. This enables proper matching of investments and returns based on the strategy and organizational alignment noted.

As this discussion of strategy, organization and finance show, the culture of the oil and gas industry is based on the Joint Operating Committee. The closer we move to that conceptual model, the greater the alignment, efficiencies and other attributes become. In addition to the focus on the culture of the JOC, there needs to be a revision in another attribute of culture of the energy industry. The culture that we want to change is what Lazonick and Chandler call the optimization culture, and is applied to the oil and gas industry in this post. 

I see the two cultures as being mutually exclusive. One, the JOC, being developed to deal with the unique requirements of the partnerships represented in oil and gas. And the optimization culture exists as a result of the "easy" energy era that existed in the 1980's and 1990's. There was a demand to survive commercially during this "easy" energy era. Innovation was the last thing that people thought of. Optimization for the survival of the firm was the skill that was rewarded. Lazonick notes;

The problem is, however, that the optimizing firm is not an innovating firm; indeed it can be characterized as an un-innovating firm. p. 5

How do we change from an optimizing to an innovative culture? What we do know is that software defines and supports the organization. Therefore to change the organization requires that we build the software first, and that is what we are doing at People, Ideas & Objects. Review of the remainder of Lazonicks paper will provide more answers, and I think that Lazonick and I are not talking about a wholesale change from optimizing to innovating. I would rephrase it for the purposes of the communities represented by People, Ideas & Objects as from where we are today; innovating on top of optimization, to change it to a culture of optimizing on top of innovations.

Our appeal should be based on these eight "Focused on" priorities and values of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not initially be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are. If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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McKinsey Three Executives on Strategi...

McKinsey have an article entitled "How we do it: Three executives reflect on strategic decision making." Two of the executives, Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Anne Mulcahy, Chairman of Xerox make comments that are pertinent to the work we are doing here at People, Ideas & Objects. I highly recommend downloading the entire document and reviewing it. It has several points and ideas that should be added to your decision making tool kit.

McKinsey continues on with their discussion around the theme of behavioral strategy. Mr. Kosimar raises an interesting point in making decisions.

What makes this culturally difficult in larger companies is that there is often a sense that Plan A is going to succeed. It’s well analyzed. It’s vetted. It’s crisp. It looks great on an Excel spreadsheet. It becomes the plan of record to which everybody executes. And the execution of that plan does not usually contemplate testing assumptions on an ongoing basis to permit a course correction. So if the plan is wrong, which it most often is, then it is a total failure. The work has gone on too long. Too much money has been spent. Too many people have invested their time and attention on it. And careers can be hurt in the process. To create the right culture, you have to make very clear that a wrong answer is not “failure” unless it is ignored or uncorrectable.

The Draft Specification is most definitely Plan A. Plan B is the Preliminary Specification and each of our last months blog posts have concluded with the following comment. "Our appeal should be based on the 30 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are." Which goes directly to "create the right culture" for success for those involved in People, Ideas & Objects.

Anne Mulcahy has guided Xerox from bankruptcy in 2001 to the firm that it is today, a success story. She reflects on her leadership throughout this period. And provides us with an understanding that few can articulate and most can appreciate.

This was the first of many lessons about how to ensure high-quality decision making that Mulcahy would go on to learn during her nine years as CEO. In a recent interview with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland, she distilled five suggestions for other senior leaders.

I'll leave it to the readers review of the document to reflect on the five suggestions. Applying these suggestions to the work at People, Ideas & Objects provides substantial value and that is reflected in the following quotations of Ms. Mulcahy.

Decisiveness is about timeliness. And timeliness trumps perfection. The most damaging decisions are the missed opportunities, the decisions that didn’t get made in time. If you’re creating a category of bad decisions you’ve made, you need to include with it all the decisions you didn’t get to make because you missed the window of time that existed to take advantage of an opportunity.

I hope that industry adopts People, Ideas & Objects Draft Specification. It's timeliness is reflected in the way that it resonates with the issues and opportunities in the oil and gas industry today. To take this opportunity, that took five years in the making, and the behavioral strategy that we have adopted in getting this solution right, right for the producers and right for the users of the applications, "trumps perfection", and the remorse "because you missed the window of time that existed to take advantage of an opportunity".

Proceeding with People, Ideas & Objects is risky, and as the previous quote reflects, not making the correct decision in the right time frame creates its own risks.

These days, everyone is risk averse. Unfortunately, people define risk as something you avoid rather than something you take. But taking risks is critical to your decision-making effectiveness and growth, and most companies have taken a large step backwards because of the current climate. I was CEO of Xerox for five years before we really got back into the acquisition market, even though we knew we needed to acquire some things rather than develop them internally. But we got very conservative, very risk averse, and also too data driven. By the time we would reach a decision that some technology was going to be a home run, it had either already been bought or was so expensive we couldn’t afford it.

The oil and gas industry has changed. Since 2005 our global productive capacity has stalled. Prices reflect this reality, and prices are re-allocating the financial resources to the most innovative producer. With this fundamental change in the business, we need to define and build the systems that define and support the innovative producer. That is the Draft Specification and the process of finding the right solution with People, Ideas & Objects.

Decisions have shelf lives, so you really need to put tight time-frames on your process. I would so much rather live with the outcome of making a few bad decisions than miss a boatload of good ones. Some of it flies in the face of good process and just requires good gut. So when trying to take bias out of decision making, you need to be really cautious not to take instinct, courage, and gut out as well.

March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 30 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Perez, The New Technologies Part IV

Continuing on with our review of Professor Carlota Perez 1986 paper "The New Technologies: An Integrated View". I keep wondering what I would have thought of this paper if I had discovered it back when it was written. Clearly Professor Perez was well advanced in terms of her subject matter, but I'd be curious how this was initially received. The fact that it was not published in English until 2009 probably indicates it was a source of initial difficulty for the Professor.

If we look at the economy today, we see a pace of change that is refreshing in its ability to confront and confound the bureaucracy. Particularly in oil and gas, the management are flat-footed in their reaction to events. Going through the motions is the only reaction that management is able to muster. Pushing to optimize the inefficient and demand more from those that remain, these times are most certainly the beginning of the end, in my opinion.

In this post Professor Perez provides an understanding of what management will involve itself in this renewed economy.

A NEW MODEL FOR MANAGERIAL EFFICIENCY

In setting out what the role of management will fulfill in the new organization, Professor Perez provides a context of how the changes come about. Much of our experience in attempting to motivate the bureaucracy to fund this projects budget. Is really only the beginning of the difficulties that we should anticipate. Management does not share our concern for the markets demands for energy.

The diffusion of a new technological style is accompanied by a conflict-ridden trial and error process resulting in the construction of a new organizational model for the management of the firm. This process is extremely uneven and tends to spread by forced imitation under competitive pressures. The nature of the new model is shaped by the characteristics of the new technologies, in particular by those features most directly responsible for the quantum jump in productivity. In this section we shall explore some of the already visible elements of the new organizational model. p. 26

As each of this blog post is closed, the comment is made that we are committing to finding the right way to organize an oil and gas firm. It starts with the Joint Operating Committee (JOC), and we should not lose sight of the need to fully explore the potential of that organizational construct.

It should be noted that we are here treading much more uncertain terrain than in the techno-economic sphere. The final form taken by the organizational model at the level of the firm will be profoundly influenced by social and political factors. The general framework governing the eventual upswing will tend to favor some organizational forms to the detriment of others. p. 26

A. Systemation: The firm as an integrated network

It has been argued here before that management, due to a variety of reasons, have compromised corporate strategy across all divisions and properties. One of the advantages of using the Draft Specification is that each producer within a JOC can use their own unique strategy for the property. These strategies might be mutually exclusive to the other producers involved in the JOC. However, the strategy selected by the individual producer does not have to be a compromise strategy dictated as a result of too large a scope and scale of oil and gas company operations.

The typical organizational model of the previous paradigm was based on a clear separation between plant and economic management. Within each, the goal was to break down every activity into its component tasks, detecting repetitive routines which could be deskilled or mechanized. It was basically an analytic model, focusing on parts and elements of the process; it led to detailed definition of tasks, posts, departments, sections, divisions and responsibilities and resulted in complex hierarchies. The new paradigm is intrinsically synthetic. It shifts the focus towards links and systems of inter-relations for global techno-economic coordination. p. 27

People, Ideas & Objects proposes to provide the oil and gas industry with an ERP styled software development capability. This is not a static situation. The role of the Community of Independent Service Providers in developing new and better ideas and ways for people to interact around the JOC will never stop. This iterative loop between the software users, CISP and developers is an integral part of the new organizational model that Professor Perez suggests.

This term [Systemation as opposed to automation] has the advantage of shifting the accent away from mere hardware and emphasizing the systemic, feedback nature of the organizational “software”. We believe this to be an essential distinguishing feature between the new and the old model of firm organization. p. 27

and

Nor does it imply that they would constitute a single unit. If the old corporate structure managed multi-plant, multi-country operations, the new technological infrastructure would allow the efficient management of worldwide, giant, complex and rapidly changing conglomerate structures. p. 27

C. Centralization and decentralization

Just as a homogenized centralized strategy provides efficient centralized control, innovation, reserves, production and profits suffer. A decentralized strategy as suggested here will enable the innovations that increase the reserves, production and profits.

From what we have seen the new paradigm tends to favor both the very large and the very small. The same sorts of trends seem to appear when considering the optimal model of organizational control. To begin with, the hierarchical bureaucracies and economies of aggregation are radically questioned. The new ideal system is based on decentralized networks with local autonomy under central coordination. p. 28

And finally, rarely do we find the clarity of thought of where we are; as in this final quotation.

Bearing in mind the obvious limits to the analogy, it serves to make the organizational point quite clearly. A centralized decision-making system would have to be able to simulate every single possible combination of events with every single possible combination of elements and this is indeed a cumbersome and nearly impossible task. If organizations are to be diversified and flexible, to take full advantage of the new potential, they will probably tend to be based on flexible, interactive, relatively autonomous units, linked in adaptive on-line systems of coordination, under dynamic strategic management. p. 29

March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 30 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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McKinsey Behavioral Strategy

McKinsey have published an interesting document that analyzes the ways and means that organizations make decisions. This is particularly relevant to the work at People, Ideas & Objects as we are first of all, asking the investment community to fund these developments, and secondly setting up how users will be able to build the systems that they want. Both requiring what McKinsey calls "bet the company" type of decisions.

The larger point that the document asks and suggests, is what are the best ways for companies to make decisions? Noting a series of biases that are part of behavioral psychology, McKinsey documents that process is the most important element in making decisions. No news here as People, Ideas & Objects is user based developments where the users, using only the Draft Specification, determine their best ways to proceed. The only other constraint that is placed upon the user community, and particularly the Community of Independent Service Providers, is that they fulfill the objective of provide the innovative producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

I would highly recommend to the user communities they read the McKinsey document. This is the type of value that can be added to People, Ideas & Objects, and hence the greater oil and gas community through user research into the best ways and means of proceeding with this important and quite exciting task.

March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 30 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Strategy + Business on Oil and Gas

Strategy + Business magazine have put out a short summary of their perspectives on oil and gas. Please note People, Ideas & Objects only concerns itself with the upstream portion of the industry. The marketing and refining are continuous process businesses that are somewhat serviced by the SAP type of ERP application. No comment regarding the downstream portion of the business is included in this summary.

The S + B article talks of the current trends in oil and gas. These being un-conventional gas and the "better" management of supply, particularly by OPEC, to meet the diminishing demand for oil.

Yet, refiners and natural gas producers stand at a critical juncture and need to carefully assess the implications of reducing capacity to bring the overall portfolio in line with new forecasts for future demand and supply. They must also consider how to out-execute competitors; e.g., through better operating approaches and improved use of technology. We envision an escalating M&A and joint-venture environment as companies seek to achieve these advantages in position and operations.

These recommendations resonate with the position of People, Ideas & Objects Draft Specification. The strategy we recommend for the producers to pursue is to focus on developing their scientific and engineering capabilities. And application of that science based capability to their asset base. The following are the S + B recommendations for oil and gas producers.

• Concentrate and invest in areas where you have, or can build, significant capabilities that give you the “right to win.”

• Focus on and nurture your best assets, the ones that are outperforming or that can outperform the competition on the relevant supply curve.

• Divest or shut down lagging assets, permanently or temporarily

• Pursue M&A, and joint ventures, as needed to create or access advantage in position and execution.

Lastly, S + B note that now is the time to prepare for the future of the industry.

With so much uncertainty in the energy sector, one thing is clear: 2010 will be anything but a dull year in the oil and gas industry. Difficult periods are often the best time to prepare your business for expansion and growth. Companies that don’t shrink from the task will be the clear winners when industry conditions improve.

March 31, 2010 is the deadline for raising our 2010 operating budget. After which a variety of consequences, such as financial penalties and a loss of one years time will occur. Our appeal should be based on the 26 compelling reasons of how better the oil and gas industry and its operations could be handled. They may not be the right way to go, but we are committed to working with the various communities to discover and ensure the right ones are.

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas director, investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Perez on the role of government

Back in 2005, when I first read the Strategy & Business Thought Leader Interview with Professor Carlota Perez. Professor Perez stated something that I found interesting and thought provoking. Her comment in the article was as follows.

S+B: What role does the government play in this?

Perez: A big role. I think that market fundamentalism today is as much of an obstacle to world economic growth in the next decades as state fundamentalism was in the 1970s and ’80s. Government needs to be reinvented, using as much imagination as it took to design the welfare state in the first place. It all seems impossible now, but things always seem impossible at this point in the surge. Between 1934 and 1946, a lot of economists believed that high unemployment was inevitable, because both industry and agriculture were shedding labor. But just after that, with an adequate institutional framework for mass production and consumption, the U.S. entered its biggest full-employment period in history.

Compliance frameworks have been how governments regulated business. Today, shareholders of firms have never felt more unable to deal with the businesses that they own. A systemic failure of the banking industry shows that boards of directors are powerless to deal with management. Bringing into question corporate governance and compliance as one of the premier issues that everyone would agree on.

This discussion about compliance may be about different perspectives on how compliance is achieved. I see compliance as a fallout of the transactions themselves. Net profits attract taxes. Oil and gas production incurs royalties. Stock exchanges impose transparency. In a transaction focused ERP software application as described in the Draft Specification. Where design of transactions is deemed one of the value adding attributes of a business, the Tax, Royalty and SEC requirements are not the driving attribute of the decisions being made. Or they shouldn't be. Granted interpretation of the regulations is the fine art that does generate substantial value for a firm. But these can be done on a global or overall firm basis after the fact. The point that is being made here is that compliance is a fall out of transactions. Secondly, compliance is a critical and inherent aspect of the transaction itself. Separation of compliance from the transactions is how Enron, WorldCom and Bernie Madoff achieved their scams.

In this post I want to propose a hypothesis of how things have became so disjointed. Based on Professor Perez' prompting us to rethink the role of government; have the software developers been the ones that fumbled the compliance football? Or has the lack of recognition of the importance of the role of software developers in ensuring compliance, been an inherent part of the breakdown?

In these past few days, when we have been discussing the compliance requirements of oil and gas producers. I have stated that the Compliance sub-frameworks of SEC, Tax and Royalty need to be aligned to the five frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee. The lack of alignment is part of the problem. I have also recently published the policies that People, Ideas & Objects has for compliance to royalties. That is we don't pay for the software development costs of any royalty framework. Since 1993 it has been my experience that producers won't pay for royalty compliance software development. It's 2010 and not one system exists to properly calculate a producers obligation. The evidence is in. Our policy is that the royalty holder will need to pay People, Ideas & Objects to develop the royalty compliant software. It's a compliance policy that is either 100 or 0% compliant. This is particularly valid when the Alberta Government is looking into it's sixth review of royalties since 2007.

The government's role in these situations has always been to pass legislation, enforce and administer the regulations. Why have they not funded the software that maintains the compliance for the oil and gas producers? Everyone at the table has someone who is paying their costs, except for the software developer. Governments toss these regulations out, expect compliance and its the lowly software developer who is required to fund the development of the software? We have no skin in the game, and are indeed hesitant to employ anything but the 0% solution. If compliance is such a large issue in today's business market. Why are the governments leaving it to a disinterested groups of software developers, who in turn have to sell what they did to uninterested investors or the producers themselves. This is a lose, lose proposition.

I think this is one of the areas where Professor Perez is correct. The software development costs associated with the compliance frameworks [royalty, tax and SEC] should be funded directly by the government agency that demands compliance. This is an area where government needs to think how they can be more effective in their responsibilities to their stakeholders. We are relying on an administrative framework that is a generation or two behind the fact that software is a critical piece of the compliance world.

Another point is that government's writing generic applications to maintain compliance won't work. The analogy of putting a 1956 Soviet Lada engine in a 2010 Ferrari is appropriate. Just send the cash. The JOC's decisions have compliance implications. Compliance needs to be natural elements of the processes, written by the same developers, in the same programming languages, designed by the same users. Therefore to integrate them, the software developers have to do the functionality and the compliance. For those governments that are concerned about funding several software firms, that's not my problem. Making the regulations more easily integrated might be an area where value could be generated.

People, Ideas & Objects face market, financial and technical risks. If we manage our cash in an effective manner. And are able to internally fund the compliance development costs ourselves. And then in the eleventh hour, when the application is 95% complete and everyone is exhausted, the producers lose the desire to continue funding People, Ideas & Objects. This type of financial failure is the primary cause that software systems have failed. With approximately $1 billion in projected costs, we would be foolish to even attempt to build a compliance framework ourselves. Particularly with a government such as Alberta's that changes the rules every six months.

One last point is that People, Ideas & Objects is user based developments. Our objective is to provide the oil and gas producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Think of this compliance issue from these user and producer orientations. And that does not mean that we just skip compliance, and that does not mean that we will fund these costs ourselves.

On a related note to this, here is a video of British Conservative Leader David Cameron talking about "The next age of government". He also has some answers.



If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Change at Conoco

The Houston Chronicle reports today that ConocoPhillips have revised their corporate strategy.

ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva signaled a dramatic shift in course for the nation's third-largest oil company Wednesday, saying that after years of bulking up through acquisitions, it is now focused on being a smaller, leaner business that takes better care of its shareholders.

Everything that People, Ideas & Objects is about is represented in that statement. Going back to the Preliminary Research Report, the changing nature of the energy industry has been evident for a long time. Nothing has been done about this during the past 10 years. Why would anything be done when the high energy prices made managements look effective. Now that the writing is on the wall, expect to see many CEO's become enlightened. I am surprised though at the comment that ConocoPhillips would take better care of its shareholders. It is the shareholders of these producer firms that I expect will direct the financial support towards People, Ideas & Objects and the User community. Providing them better control over their oil and gas assets.

A point about communication. If you or someone you know works at ConocoPhillips, or any other producer. Please introduce them to the Draft Specification and encourage them to get involved here. For me to establish a direct communication with ConocoPhillips, or for that matter any producer, is counter productive in terms of the Community of Independent Service Providers. It is the Users who are the critical contact with the firms. They are the ones that will use the People, Ideas & Objects application modules and their services to make the producer the most profitable that it can. It is the User community that will direct the developers in the development of the applications they need. For me to communicate directly with the producers is counter to the interests of this user community.

But the change is necessary in light of the global recession and the difficulty of accessing new oil and gas reserves around the globe, coupled with the massive costs of extracting them, he said.

An honest assessment of the change to the oil and gas business. The position of the producer firm needs to be able to focus and support the innovative earth science and engineering talent in their firm. To do that requires the Joint Operating Committee to be the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer. It is one thing for ConocoPhillips to begin the process of becoming more focused on the sciences. In today's market the ability to change direction needs to have the changes recognized in the software first. SAP and an innovative science oriented Joint Operating Committee will not work. Bringing the CEO Mulva's comments into question as to their validity.

Mulva's comments underscore challenges facing major oil and gas companies and may even call into question the bigger-is-better, integrated business model that has prevailed in the oil industry for decades.

Asking these giants to make the change from the SAP induced bureaucratic firm to something more nimble is difficult for me to see without a change in the ERP systems they use.

Now, ConocoPhillips appears to be embracing a business model more akin to smaller, independent oil companies, which many investors prefer because they are more nimble and likely to deliver better returns, said Fadel Gheit, oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co.

Who knows maybe they will be successful. Or the properties they sell off will continue to fuel new and more innovative firms.

When asked if he believes other oil companies will follow its downsizing lead, Mulva said not necessarily. But, he said, “I think longer term — I can't speak for the other companies — it's really changed from prior decades. It's going to take a somewhat different approach.”

That different approach is members of the User community joining me here.

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James Hamilton on Exxon Production

I have highlighted the work of University of San Diego Professor James Hamilton on this blog before. He writes this weekend on the changing face of the oil and gas industry. Focusing on the difficulties Exxon has experienced this past decade in moving their daily production volumes higher. Exxon has stated on two occasions, 2001 and 2006 they will increase production 3% each year. Only to experience an overall small decline.

This is in many ways last weeks news and something that was known by most "in the know" in the industry as early as the mid 1990's. With the commodity pricing being so bullish in the past decade, it is reasonable to assume that all was done by all the producers to bring on as much production as was possible. Nonetheless the overall deliverability of the global industry has been somewhat stable at around 85 million barrels per day.

What I find interesting in Professor Hamilton's article, is the range of Exxon's risk profile. Spending $4 billion for a 25% interest in Ghana's offshore Jubilee oil field.

...it still seems to signal a change in philosophy for a company that has historically been extremely careful with its investments in order to maintain its position as a very low-cost producer.

It is suggested in the article that Exxon needs a price greater then $100.00 per barrel of oil in order to provide a return for that investment. I would suggest that the ways and means of managing this investment in Ghana is not any different then what a groups of start up producers would face in a low risk onshore play in North America. The Joint Operating Committee is the systemically global method of managing oil and gas assets.

Exxon did not spend $4 billion to have the "operator" take operational control of the property. They will influence what they want to see in the property and participate effectively through the Joint Operating Committee. A form of organization that SAP is not even aware it exists! The members of the JOC are able to pursue their own independent strategies as to what they want and need from the property. The conflict and contradictions only arise when Exxon Mobil should attempt to apply a global corporate compromised strategy. These corporate compromises are unable to extract the value that properties like the Jubilee oil field provides. Each JOC needs to be managed in the best interests of the property. A critical change to the way things need to be done in oil and gas today.

Corporate strategies can be developed on what is done with the value of the proceeds from the Jubilee field, and that is where the large International Oil Companies (IOC's) and the start up producer may differ. I recall my many days when I was auditing Imperial Oil the Canadian arm of Exxon. I was reviewing the firms gas royalty operations on behalf of my client the Alberta Government. This was between the years 1988 to 1994 and I accumulated the knowledge of how the firm was designed.

It was brilliant and awe inspiring. The times were different then today, the commodity prices and oversupply of the market were the two overriding concerns. Looking at how the firm extracted value from each property, granted under a standard corporate strategy, and used their "might" to make the operation the most impressive accumulation of assets that I had ever, and still had the opportunity to see.

What I am suggesting is that today Imperial would need to be run in a different manner. A manner where each property is designed to maximize the return and minimize the risk of each individual property. You can not do that with the bureaucracies that are in play, and the software they use, such as SAP. 

Whether a producer is a local startup or ExxonMobil I don't think makes a difference. The innovative oil and gas producer, the National Oil Company (NOC), or IOC will need to make these changes to this fundamentally different oil and gas marketplace. The world is in a deep recession, except for oil and gas. The pricing has never been better and the upside more dramatic to those producers that can innovatively use their earth science and engineering capabilities against their asset bases. With demand for energy from China and India, the future of the industry looks to be the best it ever has. I would challenge the thinking that SAP, conceived in the 1970's, and bureaucracies, conceived of in GM by Alfred Sloan in the very earliest part of the 20th Century, is the solution to the industries needs today.

As I am one to suggest, you should never expect a mouse to run like a horse, do not expect a bureaucracy and SAP to meet the challenges of this industry on a go forward basis. Please join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Hamilton Strategy Management Innovation

We need to organize

Yesterday we noted the comments of Mohammed Al-Qahtani of Saudi Aramco. Ninety million barrels of oil are needed to be discovered and brought on to production by 2030. I don't know if he has calculated what that would cost, lets assume its a big number. That's only 21 years, not a lot of time.

Does anyone believe we should leave this task to the current bureaucracies to figure out? How about we leave this ominous task to the likes of SAP to define and support those bureaucracies? It doesn't make much sense does it.

Another assumptions inherent in the Draft Specification is the role that finance capital takes in achieving these 90 million barrels. The short answer of course is absolutely nothing. With the current financial crisis pretty much on full boil it is difficult to see how they could fund the capital requirements for such a Herculean task. Going back to Professor Carlota Perez we find that financial capital is of limited value in the future. Its role was completed in financing the groundwork for the next great surge. The building of the Information and Communication Technologies was the job they were to have done and that is what they completed. As we can see, no one needs their services anymore.

Commodity prices will provide the reward to those producers that are successful. What better motivation is there for the teams, unconstrained cash flow. Failure will also be distributed fairly and equitably. No more need to have the ear of the biggest venture capitalist to endow you with success by granting you an equity influx. Those days are over and the earth science and engineering capabilities are the competitive advantages in the industry, and the determinants of success.

In the world where we are tasked with achieving a 90 million barrel per day increase in production. I can't think of a more exciting place to be then at People, Ideas & Objects. We have a job to do, and its a big one. In terms of the scope of the opportunity, I think that Duvernay's and BlackPearl's left a lot on the table. Please join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Funding Leadership Strategy

Industry Management of Intellectual P...

I want to stress or highlight a key point of the Draft Specifications assumption about the producers competitive advantage. The physical assets, reserves, leases and the capabilities in exploiting those assets are the sustainable competitive advantage that producers are interested in. A producer organization focused on building value, using the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) as the key organizational construct, can employ the right strategy for that JOC. There is no need to have a corporate strategic compromise now practiced in most firms. The strategies of the various producers within the JOC do not have to be, and probably never will be the same. Many producers have different asset mixes, costs and dynamics within each JOC. They are each free to pursue their strategy without creating conflict within the JOC.

In addition the energy producers need not own can not own the intellectual property of how the industry conducts its operations. The service industry is best able to work with the producers to innovate and develop the tools and methods necessary to optimize the discovery and production of oil and gas. Does it provide Duverney or BlackPearl with any value to have developed and patented the most innovative drill bits? Of course not, if they had developed their own drill bits they would probably be in bankruptcy instead of sold for many billions of dollars.

Is the CFO of a producer firm going to come up with the next great innovation in drilling technology. How about the CEO, will he finally prove his theory about the physics of oil and gas accumulation? No. If they were they're not doing their jobs. And as Duverney and BlackPearl have shown. Their job is in applying their understanding of the science to the assets they own, and building their production and reserves.

Who is going to "break their pick" on the next drilling technology. Who is going to discover the next organizational structure that supports the innovative producer. These innovations can only be discovered and built based on the scale that has the entire energy industry benefiting from them. To have them within one producer does not provide the motivation for the individuals to break their pick doing so. This is why the Draft Specification has developed the Research & Capabilities Module and the Knowledge & Learning Modules.

I see Canadian producers involving themselves in the business of their suppliers and service operations. When Encana purchases its own rigs when there is a rig shortage, that only stops anyone taking the risk of building new rigs. The message is the oil and gas company will involve itself in direct management when the service industry is unable to provide the needed services. This too is a direct symptom of the attitude that the Intellectual Property of the oil and gas industry is not developed or owned by any group or individual. This is the wrong type of thinking and it needs to stop. Please join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Strategy Capabilities Ideas Economics
 

Stormy Clouds

I'm finding there is a surprising level of resistance to the concept of cloud computing, and I can clearly see the point of view of the pessimists. Firstly People, Ideas & Objects are proponents and active users of Cloud computing and expect to host the application modules on centralized servers. The resistance to the idea seems to be focused around the fact that the status-quo hierarchy. Who's decline is the defining purpose around People, Ideas & Objects. Doesn't want to have control, as represented by the computing of the firm to fall outside of their jurisdiction. When it comes to politics the status-quo is always mindful of its turf.

First the prototypical producer in the People, Ideas & Objects vision of the future has a revised competitive strategy. Which depends on the effective capability to exploit the lease and fixed assets the producer firm owns. The capability being an innovative and science oriented competitive strategy based on the earth sciences and engineering skills of their community or domain. Many an oil and gas firm has been launched from the CEO's kitchen table. What is different in this future vision is the CEO is the firm. Where ever and when ever he or she is working is where the firm exists. Incurring rent expense for the entire firm seems disproportionately excessive to me. Does a Doctor ensure that he has enough office space to visit each one of his patients, or just the patients that he needs to see that day. Mandatory attendance in the office by your manager will cease to exist in the People, Ideas & Objects applications when the management (noun) realizes the need to take attendance is no longer required.

If we go back to the Technical Vision of this project we see some of the assumptions that are the basis of this project. Its the Joint Operating Committee that is the entity that needs the processing. Which company will conduct the processing of the transactions for the joint account? As the Partnership Accounting Module notes, the costs are incurred by the partners on behalf of the JOC. And the vision sees each and every producer is contemplated to have provided some consideration, land, finance, ideas or capabilities in terms of meeting their legal commitment to the property. For innovation to take hold, the strategy of the JOC needs to be in the forefront of the management (verb) of the property. A compromised global corporate strategy of the operator is inadequate to meet the needs of each and every producers JOC.

Other assumptions include the asynchronous processing of transactions. These transactions will be generated throughout the area of which the operation resides. Whether that is the field, or anywhere in the world. People will not be going to the downtown office to make a business phone call or account for a transaction. The oil and gas business will take place everywhere and anywhere, as it always has, the centralization of staff in offices downtown is the situation that is changing.

Where does the server go in these otherwise empty buildings? Is it reasonable to expect to staff and house a number of servers in one location for the firm? Even if these resources are only required for 10% of the time? Remember we are focusing on the producers key competitive advantage of earth sciences, engineering capabilities, lease and asset holdings.

When Duvernay (a start-up that sold to Shell for $5.9 billion) and BlackPearl (a start-up sold to Shell for $2.4 billion) were sold. Was Shell anxious to take on Duvernay or BlackPearl's server and IT talent? Was that what was being sold? Of course not. Shell would have been interested in the Data, and in the People, Ideas & Objects application the data belongs to the producers based on their interest in the joint account. But to suggest the IT and accounting systems infrastructure contributed anything toward the $5.9 or $2.4 billion is foolish.

If anyone thinks Cloud Computing is a fad should try one of the services and think of it from a different point of view. It used to be that you could tell the importance of an individual by their title and the number of people they had reporting to them. This is last century thinking. Constraining ourselves with the burden of a hierarchy is an exercise in getting to the nut house quicker then any other route. What I think people should be thinking is how many hours of standard hour computing did I accomplish today. If I can access 250, or 1,000 hours of standard processing 365 days of a year. Is that not more a reflection of your value to society?

Where does one put (1,000 / 24) 42 computers to achieve that 1,000 hours per day? In there basement? Is it being suggested that an individual, who is conducting 1,000 hours processing per day, is less valuable then an individual who drives downtown to sit in front of one computer each day? During the course of a month accessing those 42 machines may need to balloon to several hundred or thousands for a matter of 15 minutes. Or, contract to 5 machines for the period of a week. If information is an advantage, should you wait for that one computer in front of the employee to do one thousand serial hours of processing?

Client server as a computing architecture is dead, long live client server. The technical vision that is the basis of this project notes the demise of the client server architecture. The four combined technologies of the technical vision enable a different architecture. One where sensors and processing is distributed throughout the field operation, phones, etc., etc. Is this processing and sensors only permitted to be calculated on a computer certified to be owned by one producer or the other? If so then building dedicated networks of devices is going to be a real growth industry.

Information Technology has matured, that is a given. It is however necessary to have a handful of staff that are specialized in the various sub-disciplines that make up the Information Technology domain. Continuing to employ them in a static environment where their skills are only needed 10% of the time, and the rest of the time is consumed in meetings and paper work to show their real value to the business. If this is the vision of how to earn the billion dollar buyouts like Duvernay and BlackPearl, I wish you luck. In the mean time, if you think that Cloud Computing does provide value, and makes sense, then please join me here.

Technorati Tags: People's Strategy Value-Proposition Community Development
 

An interesting view on oil and gas.

The Times Online have raised some interesting points as to the state of the oil & gas industry. In an article entitled "Timid oil giants hand back their cash". They suggest the majors as represented by BP and Shell, but also Exxon, Chevron, Total and Conoco Phillips are failing. Having the inability to maintain their production and reserves in the face of record capital expenditures. The lack of growth leaves the stocks as stagnant dividend and share buy back opportunities as investments. The article notes one unidentified comment as;

The scale of the payouts led one analyst to accuse energy bosses of a “complete failure of ambition”.

I can't agree more. Another interesting point of view is raised. One that shows the difficulty of the business from a political point of view. In the recent Iraqi lease sales the majority of the leases were left with no bidders. The only winning bids were by Chinese firms and BP. The rest of the producers felt that the terms were too steep for the majors to make any money. This is a continuation of what has been happening for many years. 

The national oil companies, backed by governments with the goal of grabbing as much of a dwindling resource as they can, are ratcheting up the pressure. In many cases they are willing to pay far more than publicly quoted rivals that have to explain the merits of such deals to their investors. Paul Wheeler, an oil banker at Jefferies Broadview, said: “National oil companies and the oil giants have the same objective, which is to secure new reserves, but they labour under very different conditions.”

This article also documents the major producing firms decline in known reserves from 85% in the 1970's to today's 15%. This decline in reserves has been despite the phenomenal increase in technical capabilities.

For investors such as pension funds, the only reason to hold the shares is the generous dividend payments. Without the dividend they are an unappealing proposition: low-growth companies that have no control over the price of their only product.

Ouch that hurts. I have held similar criticisms on this blog. Why would someone buy an oil and gas producer if the stock is only going to follow the commodity price. Why risk the investment on the management of the company, and just buy the commodity on an exchange?

I have considered the difficulty that a producer has in shutting in marginal production. The mechanism to shut-in production lies with the participating producers of the Joint Operating Committee (JOC). In most JOC instances the producers meet for too infrequently to make these decisions in a timely fashion. And this is one of the many reasons that the industry has to begin using the JOC as the key organizational construct of the industry. The operational decision making authority and framework resides with the JOC on a global basis. The conflict resides with the operators internal policies that employ compromise strategies and ignore the best interests of each individual property. I have included within the Draft Specification ways and means for the producers and JOC's to operate in a fashion that is consistent with the unique strategy and operational focus of each property.

There's a much larger opportunity that is being missed in this article. Since the 1970's the industry has had substantial declines in the sphere of influence of its business. We have also seen the decline of communism and the upswing in what we used to call the developing world. We seem to be globalized to a large extent, globalized except for the mindset of the management of the producers discussed in this article. 

The revenue model of this software development project considers this new reality. Both the producers and the energy producing provinces, states and nations have an interest in ensuring their investments are appropriately managed. With producers and nations financially supporting this community in an arms length, open and transparent manner. Please join us in building the systems the world needs to provide for a strong oil and gas industry.

Technorati Tags: People's Energy Management Failure Strategy

"Industry in a box."

It's 1992 all over again. I find myself in the position where I have a good handle on the needs and understanding of the energy industry. And I stumble into the previously unfavorable position where Oracle Corp is making statements and announcing product architectures that resonate with me. And that is the bad part. Not that Oracle technology is not the best, it is, and I find they are sailing closest to the wind in terms of the market offerings and future architectures. 

The problem for me is that Oracle and I have had business dealings before. In early 1997 Oracle executed a coup against its global Independent Service Providers that was of questionable strategic and tactical value. It is doubtful in my mind that Oracle has changed its way's. With their pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems they seem to be an imposing figure on our horizon. We need to decide how to capture the best value for our clients, the oil and gas producers.

The comment "Industry in a Box" is attributed to Larry Ellison who is the founder, Chairman and majority owner of Oracle. The comment was made in a Forbes article "Questioning Oracle's Cloud" where it is asked if Oracle's commitment to cloud computing is consistent with its current application offerings. 

Irrespective of Oracle's application offerings, People, Ideas & Objects Draft Specification details the needs of an innovative oil and gas producer. None of the current Oracle application offerings are needed to augment the software development capability that People, Ideas & Objects offers the oil and gas producer. Leading one to realize that Oracle is as much of a direct competitor as it is a technology provider. I think it was this same conflict that lead Oracle to make the decision to become an application provider at the expense of its Independent Software Vendors in 1997. 

The point of the article is Ellison's comment. It accurately captures the value proposition that People, Ideas & Objects offers the oil and gas producer. A value proposition based on the understanding that the innovative producer will have it's asset base, geological and engineering capabilities as its primary competitive advantage. Owning and operating computer hardware and software that provides the back office functions does not provide any competitive value. 

Go through an energy companies career listings and see the detailed description of an IT job they are looking to fill. Painful. The "Industry in a box" for oil and gas is consistent with the competitive advantages and value proposition noted here. A centralized, secure, virtual capability providing the producer with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Please join us here.

Technorati Tags: People's Sun Capabilities Strategy Leadership

Google's Schmidt

Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google and is making the keynote presentation at Carnegie Mellon Universities Commencement Ceremony .

Contained within this address is a summary of how an individual can compete in the future. I think Schmidt accurately details what it is that will provide an individual with the necessary tools to build value for themselves. Just as buying a house was a good investment in the past, these tools may be the key to your future. This summary includes:

• The culture of Carnegie Mellon is one of getting things done. And how the importance of getting things done is in today's marketplace. 
• You think friend is a verb.
• George Bernard Shaw "all progress is made by unreasonable men".
• It's all about opportunity and you make your own luck. 
• You can not plan innovation, you can not plan invention, all you can do is try to be in the right place and be ready. 
• If you live your life and forgo your plan, you can also forgo fear. In some sense you have been penalized for making mistakes. Now you have to go out and make them, because mistakes enable you to learn and to innovate and try new things. And that is a culture of innovation that is going to create all the great opportunities. 
• Do things in a group, don't do things by yourself, groups are smarter, groups are faster, groups are stronger, none of us is smarter then all of us. 
• Some truths endure. Leadership and personality matter. Intelligence, education and analytical skills matter. 
• In a world when everything is remembered and kept forever, you should live for the future and the things that you really care about. Curiosity, compassion 
• Resilience in the human spirit is amazing. It is what got us through WWI and WW ll.
• You'll find today to be the best chance that you have to be unreasonable. To demand excellence, to drive change to make everything happen. 

Schmidt's comments about being unreasonableness resonate with me. I wrote the following on this blog back in April 2006.

"There is a saying by George Bernard Shaw...

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

I am an unreasonable man".

And I would invite those interested in this software development project to take these points from Dr Schmidt, and join us here in this most unreasonable of tasks.

Technorati Tags: People's Community Google Strategy

Exclusively oil and gas.

I've been spending some time thinking about the competition and their offerings. Specifically SAP and Oracle who are the predominate software systems used in oil and gas. There is also a large number of boutique software developers that have provided small numbers of producers with niche offerings. I don't normally spend time evaluating the competition, however, these are my thoughts regarding the impact our current economy is having on the software development business.

Capital expenditures are being reeled in at most if not all the oil and gas producers. This therefore applies to the software development groups that provide products and services to the oil and gas industry. Many are small vendors and will be unable to sustain any decline in revenues operations for long without continued support from the producers. That support is / will be waning as the lay-offs and losses continue to pile up in the industry. 

Generally unlike the large international software companies, the small software vendors are unable to rely on other industries, not that other industries are any better off in this economy. Suggesting that whether a vendor chose to focus exclusively on oil and gas or not, the effect in this current market is the same irrespective. 

SAP and Oracle have pursued the one solution fits all industries. This strategy leaves many in the oil and gas industry wishing they would build some functionality for energy. I doubt they will be able to address the unique needs of the industry as it exists today. Oracle is having difficulty in offering the many solutions they have purchased to customers. Oracle is not offering an integrated solution. Its integrating previous acquisitions. 

So much of these current economic difficulties are as a result of the "old" ways to sustain and provide for societies needs. Currently a bear market rally has everyone believing the good old days will soon be back. Nothing could further from the truth. This next downswing will be quick and decisive in communicating the scope of the economic damage that has occurred. It will also be dramatic enough for people to permanently change their expectations of the future. One in which they will begin to look for the things that will sustain them in the future. New projects and businesses like People, Ideas & Objects . 

Spending any more time on the competition is a futile exercise. I prefer to highlight the advantages the producers will attain by joining the community here. 

• A dedicated software developer working exclusively with oil and gas.
  
• Focused on the Joint Operating Committee to facilitate speed and innovativeness.
  
• Unconstrained by the traditional software paradox of code and customers.
  
• Providing a competitive value proposition and business model .
  
• Offering a compelling vision of how the industry could operate more efficiently. 

Technorati Tags: People's Capabilities Development Economics Strategy Value-Proposition

That's a five minute misconduct.

Using a hockey analogy to reflect the opposing team is indulging in inappropriate or unfair play. It's also an analogy that will be intimately understood by Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNeally. I'm speaking of the actions of IBM in this proposed acquisition of Sun.

Lets go back to the Microsofts offer to purchase Yahoo. I thought Microsoft never wanted to purchase Yahoo, but they certainly were not happy with having to deal with both Google and Yahoo in the critical and valuable search business. Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo has similar anti-trust issues to what IBM would be presented with in purchasing Sun. In fact it is the management of Sun that are contending that IBM stick to the acquisition in a potentially difficult anti-trust review. This may be a key point that helps Sun in the very near future and adds fuel to my hypothesis of IBM's dirty tricks. 

If Microsoft could have eliminated Yahoo from the marketplace without spending any money, would that not be a worthwhile action to take? For IBM to walk away from Sun after reducing the offer and peaking at what Sun has under the covers, IBM quickly learned more then they otherwise would have in normal operations. Key contracts, technologies, strategies and tactics of Sun were possibly made available as a result of the offer. Walking away after this peek, after they have the goods, after they make a revised less valuable offer shows that Sun may have some big nasty skeletons in its closet. It also does not speak well of Sun's management in deferring the opportunity to fulfill their shareholders potential on a short term basis. Which introduces a conflict and concern that otherwise is unnecessary and is certainly destructive. This is why IBM needs to be assessed this penalty.

Sun is having a difficult time. They have technologies that few fully understand or appreciate. In a world where value is attributed to those with coherent sound bites, Sun looses a lot of people beyond Java. Sun also has a number of technologies that are unique and far more valuable then the sum of their parts. And that is what IBM is after. Like Microsoft wanting Yahoo's market share for search, IBM wants desperately needs Sun's technologies. 

After the introduction of the personal computer, IBM blew it, big blue time. Under Lou Gerstner, austere management and a lot of luck the firm was able to recover. But what is it that they own now? Services in the form of corporate services to companies. Few if any actual technologies, certainly not a coherent story that can be told. I ask what are the benefits of services to companies? If I buy some IBM services, how do I know that you have provided that excellent quality of services that you claim? And if they are of such high regard, why am I being asked to sign another contract? Selling services without any products is not a long term viable strategy to making money, in my opinion. 

So IBM has now put Sun into play. What ever damage that is done to Sun is of net benefit to IBM. I'm not a fan of this tactic, and I find it oddly coincidental that it's only played out by those with anti-trust difficulties. We'll see how this one plays out, but IBM should be penalized not only five minutes, but a game misconduct and a 10 game suspension. 

Technorati Tags: People's Sun Strategy

What kind of work?

Lets give some thought to the types of companies that will make up our Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP). Those people that will use the People, Ideas & Objects software application modules in their day to day servicing of their oil and gas producer clients. Those people that will interact with the developers of People, Ideas & Objects to define and build the People, Ideas & Objects applications to meet the needs of their producer clients.

Being a member of the "Community of Independent Service Providers" provides these people with two revenue streams. One being for the services provided to their producer clients. And for their time and efforts in defining and working with the developers. 

The point of this exercise is to build the systems and communities that provide the innovative oil and gas producer with the most productive and profitable means of operation. Lets' for a moment think about this. If the combination of this software and community provide the producer with the most profitable oil and gas operations, is it the ownership of the oil and gas assets that are the most lucrative, or access to the software and community the most lucrative element in the oil and gas business. I think it is the software and community and that is the primary reason that people should join this project and start building the software and the community.

Access to the Intellectual Property (IP) that makes up this system software and community is made through the license that will be signed by each member of the community. This license assigns any IP generated in the development of the application back to me, the originator of the idea of using the Joint Operating Committee. This in turn, through the license is granted back to each member of the community for them to use in an unencumbered fashion. Since all the IP is centralized and made available to everyone we are not subjected with potentially thousands of IP related claims that kill the possibility of this community developing and flourishing. I in turn use the IP to generate the necessary revenues from the producers to pay the community for their work with the developers, and the developers themselves. Producers then are paying for the software and services that the community provides separately. 

On to the subject at hand, what kind of work would the people in the community be doing? I foresee the community being very large. Essentially I do not see the industry employing anyone directly. Each individual may have their own enterprise in which they provide some value added service to the producers. These firms may be single proprietors or larger. Initially I think that all of them will be single proprietors that form as a result of this call for this community. Economically the old ways are being consumed by their failures, we can easily skip this by starting from a blank slate. The types of businesses will be in the areas of expertise you would find in the administrative, exploration and production areas. Or as I said, pretty much everyone.

We have defined in the Draft Specification that the division of labor and specialization will need to be enhanced for their to be a more productive industry. These attributes will have to be determined by the community understanding what is necessary and what is possible. 

I probably have made the understanding of what and how the work will be done in the future a little more confused. It is a future that is not well defined as the input from the community has been very minor up to this point. My responsibility was to provide a workable vision of how I think the industry could and should operate based on the research that I conducted. The knowledge held within the user community will be necessary to optimize the system to meet the objective of being the most profitable means of a producer to manage their oil and gas assets. That is the motivation. The communities purpose is not represented in a one to one agreement that provides individuals with the employment contract. The purpose is to ensure that the community is competitive in its offerings in comparison to any other oil and gas system. This is how the members of the community will earn their living and keep moving the oil and gas industry forward. It is a value based offering, not one that is dependent on the employee - employer concept of "doing a job". Please join me here. 

In this post I am establishing a new Label and Tag for CISP. I will also summarize these thought in a new knol located here.

Technorati Tags: People's CISP Community Innovation Knowledge Strategy