The Supplier Collaborative Interface.
We move from the Actionable Information Interface to the Supplier Collaborative Interface within the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. What the Supplier Collaborative Interface provides is a means for the innovative producer to deal with the uncertainty that is inherent in innovative procedures and dealings with the service industry. A collaborative wiki where the industry wide contributions of what and how the service providers new product or service has seen through its early beginnings to its early implementations. So 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 alter its routine is difficult and when a 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. Using the Supplier Collaborative Interface will enable the Joint Operating Committee (JOC) 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 troubleshooting 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 predominantly 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.
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. 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 the other modules that have been mentioned.
The Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas investor with the business model for profitable exploration and production. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy.