1. Dropped while carrying
2. Object dropped on unit
3. Fall off desk or surface while in use
4. Packed too tightly in case
5. Extreme heat or cold exposure
6. Misused or abused
7. Normal wear and tear
8. Mishandled in travel
9. Improper insertion of PC card
10. Object left on keyboard when closed
Source: Gartner Group, 2001 Technology Business Review Notebook Reliability Survey
Stolen computers are in the news these days. How safe are your company’s laptops?
We talked about virtualisation a while back, but now more people are recognising its importance. Witness the article in this week's Economist (The rise of the hypervisor). Read more about this important topic and find out how you can experiment with desktop virtualisation on your own PC.
HP Labs Bristol is also working on answers to some seemingly straightforward (but actually profound) questions of security. Is this laptop safe to connect to the company network? Is that user who she claims to be and not an impostor? These questions of trust, authentication and verification are critical. They keep IT managers (and security researchers) awake at night.
Later this year, CERN will switch on the Large Hadron Collider. It is the world's largest and most complex scientific instrument. They will use it to simulate conditions shortly after the big bang in the hope. Scientists hope that this will shed light on the construction of the universe. (Incidentally, CERN is where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.)
Unlocking the secrets of the universe. Not exactly a modest ambition.
You can read more about it on CERN's website. Also, check out these amazing QTVR panoramas on Boing Boing. Lastly, you can read more about HP's role in this project, particular around Grid computing (to process the 15 million gigabytes of data the collider will producer each year).
By Matthew Stibbe
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.” - GK Chesterton
Is a company’s job to maximise shareholders’ returns within the law, or is there such a thing as corporate social responsibility? Some have argued that corporate spending on non-business activities, such as philanthropy, lacks the legitimacy of government or charitable spending. Others have suggested it is misappropriation of shareholders’ funds. (For example see "A Pragmatic Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility".) However, ambition has to mean more than the naked pursuit of profit and growth. Ambitious companies must listen to their conscience.
A more pragmatic consideration is that customers’ needs now include social, ecological and ethical dimensions. Just count the free-range eggs on supermarket shelves or sales of the Toyota Prius. Investors, too, are increasingly picky. There are dozens of ‘ethical funds’ to choose from. Whatever the high priests of capitalism might say, companies are increasingly judged on how they make money as well as how much they make.
Employees too prefer to work for companies that are in tune with their own beliefs. Best Companies, the organisation behind the Sunday Times lists of employees’ favourite companies, includes ‘giving something back’ as one of eight factors that help it decide who makes the cut.
The CarbonNeutral Company, a business that helps other businesses measure, reduce and offset their CO2 emissions, argues that profits and virtue go hand-in-hand. Their research suggests that some companies are greener than others. Some FTSE 350 companies are seeing commercial benefits from taking a strong lead on carbon emissions. For example, Radio Taxis won five major contracts within months of going carbon neutral. The majority are waiting for taxes or legislation to force their hand.
Ecologically-minded companies have an economic interest as well as a ecological imperative to factor environmental costs into their IT decision-making. Poorly-chosen and badly-managed IT has a serious environmental impact. Running IT equipment can account for 70% of a company's energy use. A typical PC left on for 24 hours a day, 220 days of the year it is responsible for up to a tonne of carbon dioxide over a 3-year period. FTSE 200 companies waste more than £60m annually with power-hungry desktop computers. This is equivalent to 2.8 gigawatts of power or two coal-fired power stations. It is also greater than the total output of all the UK’s wind farms.
We believe that ambitious companies would rather take the lead on these issues than be a follower. They do this because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is in their commercial interest.
Ever triedEver failedNo matterTry againFail againFail better - Samuel Beckett
Ever triedEver failedNo matterTry againFail againFail better
- Samuel Beckett
It is a startling fact that R&D spending alone does not correlate to increased sales, according to an EU-sponsored analysis of the top 50 companies by R&D investment in Europe. The truth is that it ain’t what you spend; it’s the way that you spend it that makes a difference to the bottom line. Nevertheless, innovation is critical for ambitious companies. It is, after all, about looking at the future and smart innovation equips the company for future competitiveness.
The innovator’s dilemma
In his book, The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen argues[ii] that truly disruptive – industry-changing – technology breakthroughs came from new entrants to a market and not from incumbents. Too often, established firms focus on refining existing products rather than creating wholly new ones. This is defensive innovation. Spending more on it may be a business necessity but it doesn’t revolutionise anything and it doesn’t create the big payoffs of more speculative risk innovation.
The novelist William Gibson said, “The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.” Ambitious companies seek out the future and commercialise it. Doing so requires that they embrace more uncertainty than their competitors do. There is an emerging charter for innovation around Kevin Kelly’s notion (expressed in his book "New Rules for the New Economy") of “imperfectly seizing the unknown rather than perfecting the known.”
Ambitious companies don’t fail safe, they fail better. They fail faster so that they can move onto the next project, the next breakthrough. They apply a portfolio model to their investments in innovation. Some are revolutionary but high risk. Others are evolutionary and more predictable. They know that innovation doesn’t end with a blueprint so they build multidisciplinary teams to exploit new developments. They measure and manage innovation performance to balance and fine-tune their portfolio and ensure a pipeline of new ideas over time. This requires an ambidextrous attitude to innovation so that companies learn to be adept at managing both incremental and radical innovation, even though this requires different and sometimes contradictory cultures, processes and leadership styles.
UK’s R&D performance
It is a commonplace that the UK is good at invention but bad at exploitation. This is partially borne out by government analysis of innovation in the UK. The science base is solid. The UK is second only to the US in share of world science and engineering publications and citations and leads the world on a per capita basis. However, we spend less on R&D relative to GDP than the US, France and Germany and we claim fewer patents per capita. This suggests that there is a genuine opportunity for UK business to compete by leveraging the UK’s science base.
Ambitious companies embrace change and seek innovation that creates new business opportunities, whether they come from inside the company, from acquiring smart start-ups or whether they come from academia. Or, as with Dyson, if they come from sheer bloody-minded frustration with the status quo.
