The Preliminary Specification Part XCVII (PLM Part XII)

In an October 21, 2011 post we made a point about the accounting for the joint account in the Partnership Accounting and Accounting Voucher modules that used data from the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. In that blog post is the assumption that the data was centralized amongst the partners in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace. This centralized data is as a result of the proposed research that the user community will undertake for that module. This blog post will discuss the centralization of the information in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace and why that assumption was made.

When we discuss the centralization of the information, what I mean is that each of the producers that are party to a Joint Operating Committee are accessing the same central data elements. There are not separate individual data elements stored within each of the firms databases. If you review the data that is stored within the Petroleum Lease Marketplace it is of the type that is “owned” jointly by the participants in the JOC. Whether that be agreements, leases, AFE’s or other data, each participant is provided with their own access to these one off types of documents.

What benefits are achieved by centralizing the data? Simply everyone is working from the same page. There should be no more confusion as to what the document states if the documents have the appropriate change management controls placed upon them. These document control procedures exist, its only a matter of implementing them appropriately within the systems on an industry wide basis. Something that is proposed here in People, Ideas & Objects and should be part of the scope of the proposed research project.

The logistics of the systems management would become complex. The access privileges and the storage access would be unique. For example a producer would have unique access to a multiple number of data elements based on the number of Joint Operating Committees that they participate in. However, there is a maturation of the systems infrastructure that provides us with new opportunities to look at these issues from a business point of view first and ignore the technical issues. I would caution you that we are ignoring the technical issues, which is the point of the Preliminary Specification, we are only concerned with the business issues.

So in reference to the October 21, 2011 post the check and the balance between the systems was a simple mathematical calculation to verify the validity of the working interest calculations as they were known. Any variance would be material in that their understanding of the working interest distribution was somehow different then what was calculated. This might occur if there was a significant systems or user error during the month that was not captured in the regular checks, balance and routines throughout the producer or other working interest partners.

And that is the point of the October 21, 2011 post that is not well reflected in the text. With a highly integrated and collaborative ERP systems such as People, Ideas & Objects the simplest of mistakes can occur. What may seem to be a rather redundant check and balance can become a valuable tool in determining if the system is maintaining the appropriate balance. We will need to develop more of these checks and balances throughout the Preliminary Specification in order to ensure that the producers are accounting for their properties in the correct manner. What we are providing is a means for the innovative producers to develop their businesses, and as a result, that will require that we sharpen our pencils in terms of our accountings accuracy and timeliness.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part XCVI (PLM Part XI)

Continuing on with our discussion from yesterday regarding the selection of potential partners for Joint Operating Committee’s. Today I want to discuss some of the key factors that enable innovation and how they need to be sought after and developed. And how the Petroleum Lease Marketplace of the Preliminary Specification can develop an interface that will help producers to understand their capabilities, with respect to what their partners in the Joint Operating Committee may be contributing.

Our discussion so far on the capabilities that the producer holds has documented a number of processes through the Research & Capabilities, Knowledge & Learning and Resource Marketplace modules. These are comprehensive processes that enable the producer to develop and maintain their unique and valuable competitive advantages in terms of their earth science and engineering capabilities. These capabilities should be actively marketed to other producers as a potential partner in terms of the value add that could be contributed to a potential Joint Operating Committee.

We are in a period where the “easy energy era” has passed and it is generally agreed that the complex energy era has begun. The demand for earth scientists and engineers is substantial and challenges the ability for each producer to build the capabilities they need to operate all of their properties. Therefore the need to pool their capabilities with their partners in the Joint Operating Committee is not a nice to have but a necessity. This pooling can take on an ad-hoc disorganized mashing of two or more producers or can be a deliberate construct as a result of the meeting of minds at the beginning of a joint venture. People, Ideas & Objects Petroleum Lease Marketplace assumes the latter is the preferred choice and is providing the tools to develop these joint capabilities.

In Professor Giovanni Dosi’s paper he notes the following factors involved in the development of innovation.

The search, development and adoption of new processes and products in market economies are the outcome of the interaction between:

• Capabilities and stimuli generated with each firm and within the industry of which they complete.

and

• Broader causes external to the individual industries, such as the state of science in different branches, the facilities for the communication of knowledge, the supply of technical capabilities, skills, engineers etc.

We are assuming for the purposes of these writing that the key stimuli is the commodity prices which are reallocating the financial resources to fuel innovation. Throughout the Preliminary Specification we have focused on the capabilities of the producer. What the producer must now learn to do is to leverage the capabilities of their partners in their Joint Operating Committees.

Within the Petroleum Lease Marketplace there needs to be an interface that lists the areas where the capabilities of other producers are being leveraged. These listings need to be based on the agreed to and documented exchanges of capabilities that are part of the CO&O or other agreements that make up the Joint Operating Committee. This same report could detail the commitments that the producer firm has made in terms of its capabilities to the partners in future years. This "Capabilities & Commitments" interface would of course be organized based on the Joint Operating Committee.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part XCV (PLM Part X)

In yesterday’s post we talked briefly about revenue per employee and how the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification should have an interface for various calculations of that factor. In today’s post I want to talk about the Revenue Per Employee interface of the Petroleum Lease Marketplace and what should be included in that interface.

First we should ask ourselves does the calculation of revenue per employee provide a reasonable comparison of the innovativeness that exists in a producer? Or would this calculation reflect the quality of assets, the size of the firm or its actual innovativeness? That is the question that is hopefully being answered in this post.

Clearly the factor of revenue per employee would reflect many factors other then the innovativeness of the firm. However, would the comparison of revenue per employee over multiple periods be a determining factor of innovative-ness? I think it would. That the increase / decrease in the factor would be as a result of an increase or decrease in price and volume, with the volume being particularly affected by the changes and innovations that occurred over the period in the firm. The one other critical determining factor is the number of employees the firm employs. Unreported changes in the number of employees would skew the results significantly.

If the Revenue Per Employee interface in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module calculated revenue per employee for the participants in Joint Operating Committees of the producer. And calculated the factor for prospective producers there could be value in determining whom would be a good prospective match as a partner in which to deal with in the future. The report could also calculate the trajectories on the basis of the volume, price and employee variances during the periods under comparisons by the user.

So what have we got. We have run some elaborate calculations that “might” prove that one producer is innovative. What does that prove. That depends on what is imputed by being innovative. Professor Dosi states “In very general terms, technological innovation involves or is the solution to problems.” Dosi goes on to further define this as “In other words, an innovative solution to a certain problem involves “discovery” (of the problem) and “creation” since no general algorithm can be derived from the information about the problems. Solutions to technological problems involve the use of information derived from experience and formal knowledge. It is the specific and un-codified capabilities, or tacit-ness” as Professor Dosi describes “on the part of the inventors who discover the creative solution.”

Running this factor against the general population of producers within the industry provides value to the user. The ability to highlight who is solving the problems in the industry on an innovative basis and then partnering with them is positive for all concerned. However the real value in the Revenue Per Employee calculation would be the ability to run the report on the basis of the individual Joint Operating Committees that you are a participant in.

This is a more difficult task due to the calculation to determine the number of employees that worked on each property. That is it was a problem until the People, Ideas & Objects Military Command & Control Metaphor and Work Order system were implemented. These have been recording the hours of the people from all of the various producers who are authorized to work on the JOC’s. Therefore the calculations that were run on the basis of the producers, can then also be run against any and all of the Joint Operating Committees that you have an interest in. This would also include the calculation of the volume, price and employee variances of the trajectories over the periods being compared. Providing an understanding of where the innovation within your firm may be coming from.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part XCIV (PLM Part IX)

We now move on to our third pass through the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. The theme of this third pass is innovation, and how the Preliminary Specification enables the innovative producer and Joint Operating Committee. In today’s post I want to discuss the role the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module could have in forming the Joint Operating Committee, its agreements, the partnership itself and the factors that make for the innovative-ness of the partnership. Recall two of our four Preliminary Research Reports research questions were to determine if the processes of innovation are able to be reduced to a quantifiable and replicable process, and, does the JOC facilitate the means to innovate. Therefore the formation of the Joint Operating Committee within the Petroleum Lease Marketplace is a critical point in which to begin the process of innovation.

What would be ideal would be if there was a factor that could be used to evaluate if a partner was appropriate in terms of a match to your capabilities. In the Preliminary Research Report we developed just such a factor that details the overall capability of the firm. That factor is revenue per employee. If you calculate revenue per employee you will find rather dramatic differences in terms of the different factors for producers. Special consideration has to be given for the integrated firms to ensure that you preclude the downstream operations and the smaller producers as the factor unfairly reflects their capabilities. Given the disparity in the independents this factor I think is a valuable tool in determining the appropriate partner to select in a property.

After the selection of the partners the development of the agreements to include the innovative elements needed to operate the property. This would include the general assignment for the banking in the Financial Marketplace module, and the adoption of the Military Command & Control Metaphor for the management of the facility. Pooling of the capabilities for the targeted zones in the Knowledge & Learning module. These additions, and others, to the standard agreements would be necessary to adopt the innovative standing that is possible through the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification.

Professor Giovanni Dosi’s paper “The Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation” discusses the role of innovation in the market economy and assumes companies in a free market are willing to invest in science and technologies to advance the competitive nature of their product offering or internal processes. The key aspects of Professor Dosi’s theories that make them directly applicable to oil and gas are the innovation theories application to earth science and engineering disciplines. These disciplines are key to the capability and success of oil and gas firms search, and production of, hydrocarbons. The investment in science and technologies is with the implicit expectation of a return on these investments, but also, to provide the firm with additional structural competitive advantages by moving their products costs and / or capabilities beyond that of the competition. Ensuring that your partners in the Joint Operating Committee are of the same mindset and capability is a critical component to your future innovation strategies. Professor Dosi note:

Thus, I shall discuss the sources of innovation opportunities, the role of markets in allocating resources to the exploration of these opportunities and in determining the rates and directions of technological advances, the characteristics of the processes of innovative search, and the nature of the incentives driving private agents to commit themselves to innovation.

A meeting of the minds with regards to innovation needs to be established in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module and captured in the agreements and associated modules. We will be discussing the revenue per employee factor in the Analytics & Statistics and Performance Evaluation modules in this third pass through the Preliminary Specification. Maybe what we need to do in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module is find a place where we can compare the various producers revenue per employee factors to determine their appropriateness / suitability in terms of an innovative partner. A simple listing of the revenue per employee of your partners and potential partners on its own interface within the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part XCIII (RM Part XVI)

Today I want to discuss the results that producers and suppliers will obtain from the collaborations that they undertake in the Supplier Collaborative Interface of the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. If we assume that the industry participates at the level that has been imputed in the Preliminary Specification to date. That is to say that there would be a vigorous and unconstrained debate of the issues and opportunities that the producers were experiencing with the service industries products and services. And those discussions were available for the entire industry to review. Would there not be a large leakage of proprietary information from those discussion from one producer to the next? And would this fear of a leakage reduce the participation to something far less then the unconstrained debate that is assumed in the Preliminary Specification?

These are very good questions and appropriate concerns. However, just as people who read People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification find different things then other people who read it. It very much depends on the individuals experience in oil and gas, career choice and educational level. This same situation applies to organizations. The capabilities of the producer will dictate what is gleaned from the discussion. Advanced innovative producers will be able to determine the most from the conversation whereas other laggard producers may not fully comprehend the meaning of certain nuances. It will depend very much on the capabilities of the producers and the suppliers that are holding the conversations.

Professor Dosi (1988) notes a study conducted by Richard Levin et al 1984, in which they studied “the varying empirical significance of appropriability devices of (a) patents, (b) secrecy, (c) lead times, (d) costs and time required for duplication, (e) learning curve effects, (f) superior sales and service efforts.” Professor Dosi (1988) observed, “that lead times and learning cures are relatively more effective ways of protecting process innovations, and patents a more effective way to protect product innovations.” Dosi concludes. “Finally, there appears to be quite significant inter-industrial variance in the importance of the various ways of protecting innovations and in the overall degrees of appropriability”. (p. 1139)

Its important to note that there are different objectives being pursued by the producers and suppliers in terms of their innovation strategies. Oil and gas producers are focused on process innovations, industry suppliers on product innovations. Recognizing this division of labor is how the Preliminary Specifications Research & Capabilities, Knowledge & Learning and Resource Marketplace modules processes provide and facilitate greater interaction between producers and suppliers. Each group is concerned with securing their innovative capabilities without creating any conflict with the other. (The producer looking to lead times, learning curves while suppliers using patents to protect their innovations and capabilities.) The fact that these are published in the Supplier Collaborative Interface across the industry brings depth to the discussion but only to the extent that the producers capabilities are able to assimilate the information. In a period of rapidly expanding trajectories, where the shelf life of information is limited, it is appropriate that People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification has enabled the producer to focus their competitive advantages on their earth sciences and engineering capabilities, its land and asset base. The supplier having secured their competitive advantages through the Intellectual Property laws available to them.

Tomorrow we will move on to the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part XCII (RM Part XV)

It is in the Resource Marketplace, Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules of the Preliminary Specification that we have mapped complex innovation processes of the innovative oil and gas producer. These processes reflect the dynamic nature of both the producer and the service industry during this highly complex era of oil and gas exploration and development. We have noted in the last number of posts, in our discussion of the "Supplier Collaborative Interface", the interactions that will need to occur to complete the last parts of the innovative processes. But there is more for the Supplier Collaborative Interface as it works with the other interfaces in these other modules that have been mentioned.

In today’s post we will be continuing on with our look at technological paradigms and the effect they have on scientific and innovative trajectories in oil and gas. When discussing these points on innovation, it is important to remember that the sciences, the trajectories they are on, and the opportunities they generate for a producer, are accelerating and will continue to do so. Recall too that the low costs of knowledge and collaboration were the trajectories that are being exploited in the Supplier Collaborative Interface. Professor Giovanni Dosi points out two critical points.

• First, new technological paradigms have continuously brought forward new opportunities for product development and productivity increases. p. 1138
• Secondly “A rather uniform, characteristic of the observed technological trajectories is their wide scope for mechanization, specialization and division of labor within and among plants and industries.” p. 1138

It is the second point that I want to deal with today. The discussion of the Supplier Collaborative Interface about new innovative products and services is inevitably going to lead to “gaps” in products and services that need to be filled. Recall in our research of Professor Richard Langlois that the process of expanding the division of labor and further specialization is through “gap filling”. That when someone sees that a gap is needed to be filled, and is subsequently filled, that is how the division of labor is expanded. So these discussions in the Supplier Collaborative Interface are going to identify the needs to fill a significant number of “gaps” within the Resource Marketplace.

We had discussed this point directly in the Research & Capabilities module in two posts on October 30th and 31st. However, I think that the more natural area for these “gaps interface” is in the Resource Marketplace modules Supplier Collaborative Interface. The actual location is one of the points that need to be determined by the user community once the full review of the Preliminary Specification is undertaken by them.

Management of these innovation processes is the role that People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is undertaking within the producer and Joint Operating Committee. Without the software to define and support these processes the ability for the producer to attain these capabilities is suspect. What the innovative oil and gas producer requires in the 21 century is a software development capability as proposed by People, Ideas & Objects in order to obtain the organizational efficiencies that are of the scope and scale as defined here in the Preliminary Specification. Leaving your innovative strategies to chance have not worked. Innovation is too dependent on multiple organizations working together. These spontaneous collaborations have also not occurred. What we have learned in the Preliminary Research Report is that the processes of innovation can be defined and deliberate. And just as Apple consistently shows the world how to do it, doesn't mean that everyone can.

Its one thing to have the process properly managed by the software. Its another to have the capabilities maintained in-house. And its another to have the innovations developed and applied. Just because the ingredients are there doesn't mean that the producer will be innovative. I can assure you however, based on the research that has been conducted here at People, Ideas & Objects, there will not be any real innovations developed without the processes properly managed by the software first and foremost.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part XCI (RM Part XIV)

Staying with the Supplier Collaborative Interface of the Resource Marketplace module, however relating what is said here in this post to the full scope of the Preliminary Specification. I again want to discuss the reasoning why People, Ideas & Objects is so involved in the operational areas of the oil and gas business. This is an ERP system designed to handle the business aspects of the oil and gas concern. However as we see in this post we can’t separate the business from the science, and when we do we lose our innovative capabilities and innovation becomes just a bad science experiment.

Lets be clear, uncertainty resides in both the scientific and business realms. I am not of the opinion that the two can be separated, as is done in other systems such as SAP. This is maybe why the industry has been poorly served, in my opinion, by the business systems that operate today. They don’t recognize the innovative and science basis of the oil and gas business. By separating them SAP takes away the dynamic that is needed to ensure that the science remains grounded in the business of oil and gas.

Using the Supplier Collaborative Interface will enable the Joint Operating Committee to maintain a focus on the scientific and business uncertainties of the innovations they are implementing. In many cases the people within the JOC will be implementing the technology or innovation for the first time. The supplier and vendor may be still trouble shooting aspects of the technology. The need to be able to collaborate at a high level during this process will be essential through this period of both business and technical risk and uncertainty. Professor Giovanni Dosi notes;

However, even in the case of “normal” technical search (as opposed to the “extraordinary” exploration associated with the quest for new paradigms) strong uncertainty is present. Even when the fundamental knowledge base  and the expected directions of advance are fairly well known, it is still often the case that one must first engage in exploratory research, development, and design before knowing what the outcome will be (what the properties of a new chemical compound will be, what an effective design will look like, etc.) and what some manageable results will cost, or, indeed, whether very useful results will emerge. p. 1135

So with respect to all of the interfaces that are in the Research & Capabilities, Knowledge & Learning and Resource Marketplace modules regarding the development of new technologies and capabilities. The actual implementation of the technologies from a business and technical point of view is done predominately by the JOC in the field at the time it is first used. Having this Supplier Collaborative Interface available to deal with the risks and uncertainty in an innovative JOC is a must have requirement for an ERP systems provider to include in their systems.

I suggest that, in general, innovative search is characterized by strong uncertainty. This applies, in primis to those phases of technical change that could be called pre-paradigmatic: During these highly exploratory periods one faces a double uncertainty regarding both the practical outcomes of the innovative search and also the scientific and technological principles and the problem-solving procedures on which technological advances could be based. When a technological paradigm is established, it brings with it a reduction of uncertainty, in the sense that it focuses the directions of search and forms the grounds for formatting technological and market expectations more surely. (In this respect, technological trajectories are not only the ex post description of the patterns of technical change, but also, as mentioned, the basis of heuristics asking “where do we go from here?”) p. 1134

Separation of the business from the science and the operations was maybe something that could happen in the past. Today and in the future, with the high costs of innovation, the ability to troubleshoot the innovation from a science and business perspective seem to be more of the same thing. I certainly can’t foresee how we can continue to parse the two perspectives from the operation and send the respective “departments” their section of the operation. There has to be a better way and that begins with the Supplier Collaborative Interface. Where the users within the JOC are able to deal with the risks and uncertainties at the time they can be resolved, both from a business and science perspective.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part XC (RM Part XIII)

I want to continue on with our discussion of the Supplier Collaboration Interface from yesterday’s post. Today’s post will focus on the collaborative manner in which producers and participants in the Joint Operating Committees will engage with the suppliers and the importance of the interface in the innovative oil and gas industry. This process is complex and I hope that I’ll describe it well enough that it reflects how critical this interface is.

Oil and gas is a business that is based on the earth science and engineering disciplines. Everything in the field is derivative of these facts. Innovation is based on the understanding of the sciences and in turn will lead to further advances in the sciences. As the industry becomes more innovative the need to be mindful of these facts becomes more common in the approach that is taken. The understanding that is required to undertake the most basic of operations requires significant educational and work experience to do it safely and correctly.

The innovative changes in the industry are mapped through the People, Ideas & Objects software application modules in the following manner. People with the ideas for new products and services write about them and earn the rights to them by publishing them in an industry wide blog in the Research & Capabilities module. And as “knowledge beget capabilities beget action” producers develop their capabilities around their land and asset base. Capturing these capabilities within the capabilities interface of the Research & Capabilities module. This then is organized based on geological zone and the Joint Operating Committee which has certain producing geological zones, has access to its producers capabilities from their Research & Capabilities modules, for those zones. The JOC is then able to learn from the producers what has and hasn’t worked through the proceeding process and are able to apply the process successfully and document it in the lessons learned section of the Knowledge & Learning module.

This process has been documented in the Preliminary Specification in the modules to date. The issue that we are concerned about is with the last sentence. The part where it says “able to apply the process successfully” will undoubtedly require the interactions with the supplier. Recall Professor Dosi notes that innovation is developed through the interactions between the “capabilities and stimuli” and “broader causes external to the individual industries such as the state of science”. Working within the science and innovative products and services of the oil and gas industry as they develop demands this interaction. The interactions between you and the supplier are important but just as importantly are the interactions that all the producers have had with the supplier. To have these interactions reviewable makes it substantially less risky for the producer and provides a forum where he / she can have their concerns aired.

Why are we developing the Supplier Collaborative Interface. I think that most people understand that doing the same thing over and over is easy. Making the organization change its routine is difficult and when the change is introduced is when the trouble begins. If we could just leave things the same then we would be better able to produce the oil and gas that we need. Unfortunately those days are gone and the routine in oil and gas is anything but. Professor Dosi notes the following point about this difficult situation.

Organizational routines and higher level procedures to alter them in response to environmental changes and / or to failures in performance embody a continuous tension between efforts to improve the capabilities of doing existing things, monitor existing contracts, allocate given resources, on the one hand, and the development of capabilities for doing new things or old things in new ways. This tension is complicated by the intrinsically uncertain nature of innovative activities, notwithstanding their increasing institutionalization within business firms. p. 1133

Tension and the uncertain nature of innovative activities says it well. The ability for the producer to mitigate these through the Supplier Collaborative Interface is the reason for this critical interface of the Resource Marketplace module.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part LXXXIX (RM Part XII)

In today’s discussion regarding the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification I want to talk about the interface that the suppliers will use to get their message across to the producers. Many of the vendors will have web sites in which they maintain a host of information regarding their products and services, however, these are mostly static and provide little opportunity for the supplier and the producer to interact. The alternative that provides for that interaction is contained in the Resource Marketplace module and for purposes of identification we will call this the “Supplier Collaboration Interface”.

In our review of Professor Giovanni Dosi paper “The Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation” we learned that technical trade-offs facilitate the ability for industries to innovate on the changing technical and scientific paradigms. Crucial to the facilitation of these trade-offs is a fundamental component that spurs the change and is usually abundant and available at low costs. For innovation to occur in oil and gas, People, Ideas & Objects assert that the ability to seek and find knowledge, and to collaborate are two “commodities” that are abundant today. With their inherent low direct costs, knowledge and collaboration are the triggers for a number of technical paradigms which will provide companies with fundamental innovations.

I want to be clear that I see this interface as being completely different from any of the others that have been listed here before. The one that may seem to be the most similar would be the blog in the Research & Capabilities module where people are authoring “new” ideas and technologies on a stand alone basis. That blog is not done on a collaborative basis but is based on the research efforts of a few individuals or groups. What is being proposed in the “Supplier Collaboration Interface” is a collaborative interface that will invite the entire producer community to participate with the specific vendor to discuss that vendors products and services. These discussions will build on the whole communities involvement and define the vendors offerings in a collaborative manner.

The wiki style of this interface will cut down markedly on the volumes of email that are generated between vendors and producers. Much of this email being of the same context. Finding the knowledge that is needed is the key to resolving the problem, and if the producer knows that a centralized wiki format exists in the People, Ideas & Objects Resource Marketplace module that will be their first choice to turn to. It will pay the supplier to invest their time and energy in maintaining the collaborations with the producers in this Supplier Collaboration Interface style wiki, as that will be the first line of customer service. Complaints as well as accolades will show up and be evident to those that visit the site and therefore the response to those comments will be of concern to all of the producers.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification Part LXXXVIII (RM Part XI)

Yesterday’s post documented the different interfaces that related to and would source their data from the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. In today’s post we want to discuss how that data is input and maintained, and most importantly who is responsible for that data.

The data in question is the plain generic contact data that is used in business every day. There are other attributes such as the information needed for processing of payments into the vendors bank account. The majority of this data can be sourced from the suppliers web site, except it won’t be sourced by anyone. That is to say the supplier will maintain their own records in the Resource Marketplace module of People, Ideas & Objects software application.

Since we are a “cloud” based offering we have centralized the processing for the producer clients of People, Ideas & Objects in one location. The need for each producer firm to have detailed records of each vendor that they have worked with will be unnecessary as each supplier will maintain their own record within the Resource Marketplace module. This will save immeasurable amounts of time and errors made in inaccurate records and in duplicating the same information from producer to producer. Each supplier is motivated to ensure their data is correct. If a supplier makes a change of address, then they’ll know the best time in which to make the change to their Resource Marketplace records.

What will need to be done is for the People, Ideas & Objects user community to identify and document the various data elements that are needed in this Resource Marketplace “Supplier Interface”. This will need to include the data and information needs of the interfaces that were documented in yesterday’s post. Which will also include the ability to quantify and qualify the role the supplier and the producer can play when designing transactions.

Recall that the supplier will have many of the same accounting and processing needs as the producer. The objective of People, Ideas & Objects is to ensure that the producer attains the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. That involves the service industry, and therefore we need to have the ability to provide some of the same services to the service provider in terms of processing and accounting as the producer. This processing for the service provider will ultimately lead to lower the costs for the producers.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.