Blog Assignment #5

After reading the “six senses” and the beginning of the paper leading up to them I thought of multiple obstacles but before I get into them I would like to cover the MFA being a “coveted” degree. While I have no doubt that in a flat world/global economy the companies that can differentiate themselves from the competition are the ones that will succeed. The important part is that there has to be some kind of balance. If you take into account that Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class and had an epiphany about the fusion of art and technology then I can meet you halfway. But, if it is purely the fusion of art with something why isn’t Ikea furniture in every household. It’s not there because most of it is uncomfortable. Jobs took exceptional technology and presented it in an artful way. So, I am not completely bought into the MFA degree bit.

With that, let’s Segway into the “six senses,” listed below with comments:

Design: I agree that design is important. Consumers are much more educated about quality depending on the product. Someone that is not necessarily artistic may have a difficult time with this one. I know I would.

Story: Content enriched by emotion. From a knowledge management perspective I would imagine that this is where empowerment comes into play, which would be something that would require leadership qualities from the person initiating it. This could be an obstacle.

Symphony: This is all about people skills. This is crucial to build teams that trust one another. 

Empathy: I think that most people can be empathetic.

Play: As we get older we do forget the importance of being able to unwind and be creative. One important note is that a company’s culture has to support play. At my current employer we have an Xbox in the break-room. I’ve never seen anyone play it.

Meaning: I think this also plays into empowerment but could be an obstacle in that there is a lot going from a psychology of personality perspective with meaning. For me personally meaning is fluid. We have to continually refocus ourselves to stay the course.

Blog Assignment #4

An example of a neural network application that I found on the Internet that helps make a product or service more valuable to both the customers and the company is a GPU-powered neural network that is being designed by Netflix that will be used for predicting better movie recommendations for its customers. This is actually a win-win for both Netflix and it’s consumers because for the consumer it creates a better experience. For Netflix it helps it to also better control and utilize it’s physical inventory and to also get the most benefit from licensing fees for digital content. The approach that Netflix is using uses GPU’s and the cloud for a much more powerful application that is in the vein of exascale computing. What this will ultimately do is to give Netflix a competitive advantage by exceeding the consumer’s expectations. If the network is significantly better at modeling and predicting users interests then the application will differentiate Netflix form its competitors and do so in a way that will be difficult for it’s competitors to replicate.

While searching for an expert system that helps to make a product or service more valuable to the customers and the company I found several but realized that that the neural network being created by Netflix is part of a predictive expert system that attempts to classify or identify the interests of the customer. The neural network is just the “brain” behind the knowledge system. The system being designed will use multiple decision trees and multiple decision variables that are in an ever-changing fluid state due to the customer constantly watching movies. It is an intelligent system that further defines or continually improves the quality of its suggestions based upon customer habits within a construct of categories or types of movies. Netflix is essentially doing what Pandora did for music. Pandora’s playlists are the result of the Music Genome Project that group’s music by multiple variables to create streaming music that will be in the vein of the musician or band that the customer used to create the channel. 

http://hothardware.com/News/Netflix-To-Deploy-GPUPowered-Neural-Networks-For-Deep-Learning-In-Movie-Recommendations/

Blog Assignment #3

Blog Assignment 3: Read the article about Nucor Steel's social ecology. Discuss how can a company of your choice learn from Nucor Steel in pursuit of competitive advantage.

My current employer (Asurion) has a lot of the same characteristics as Nucor. One similarity is that they strive to attract and retain high-caliber talent. I think this is a common practice and is probably currently a lot easier in the current economy in that it is an employers market. They can be much more selective about who they higher due to higher unemployment but a lot of companies have always had this quality hiring/recruiting process. The key is hiring an employee with an internal locus of control who has an entrepreneurial spirit; and hiring lots of them. With Nucor, they have put a huge emphasis on social ecology and how they have done that is the foundation for their success. Using high-caliber employees that where held accountable but where in a culture that made it okay to make mistakes when you where trying something new. There compensation was a huge variable in their success also in that even employees at the production levels could get extremely high annual bonuses. They also were able to successfully bring in knowledge from the outside that complimented their internal goals and do so in such a way that it is not easily duplicated. 

Another thing that Nucor did that I feel that my current employer could improve on (and any other company) would be to improve on effective and efficient knowledge transmission channels. Even in companies with a flat organizational model that are team oriented it is not that uncommon for there to be knowledge “silos” that tend to form along the lines of classic functional departments. An example would be that employees in the finance department eventually become subject matter experts when it comes to data and systemic processes. This tacit knowledge is often difficult to transfer into “codified” knowledge and when it is there can be an interdepartmental disconnect. That is where IT at Nucor really changes things because they created a framework to facilitate the sharing of unstructured knowledge. Any company including my current employer can create a competitive advantage by finding a way to create an enterprise wide system sharing of unstructured knowledge.