Discussions around Obama 2.0

The inauguration of President Obama has let loose a tremendous amount of energy not only throughout the country but also throughout the world. I was listening to a wonderful program on the BBC today where they were talking to people from all around the world, asking them their expectations of the new President and America in general. One of the interesting features of the program was its ability to set up conversations between people from different parts of the world, with differing perspectives on a particular issue.
Well, it is therefore not at all surprising that people in IBM have been having several conversations at different levels about the implications of the change in administration as well. I was not here at the time of the last change in administration, so I cannot comment on whether this kind of discussion happened then or not. What would be interesting to know is if this is happening now, and if this has something to do with our changing attitude towards on-line sociality, our comfort with social tools and generally the greater amount of participative activities we seem to be involved in. I had an opportunity to participate in and listen in on three different conversations.
One, in the Horizonwatch community, was an analysis of the economy (Dr. Martin Fleming), and an attempt to understand the implications of the various trends over the last couple of months and where that might take us. The prognosis seems not too cheery, at least for the next 18 months or so. However, there were some interesting opportunities for IBM arising out of the new directions that President Obama intends to take. From my perspective, given that the intention is to take the country and the world in a new direction, implies that these will not just be business-as-usual but quite transformational. There will therefore be correspondingly large shifts in all aspects of our economic and social life, as we set up the infrastructure for new industries and reorient our whole system to align with the new directions.
The second conversation was around the theme of Smarter Planet. Granted that we have been working on this for a while now. However, in the context of the change in administration it takes on a fresh meaning. A lot of what the campaign lays out has to do with the opportunities that come about when we confront some of the major challenges we are facing around the world, climate, energy, traffic congestion and so on. What was interesting in that conversation (presented by Craig Sowell)was the recognition, that these problems were in some sense complex, and intractable. We would have to deal with them in a systemic manner, using multi-faceted and holistic approaches. The question that naturally arises is, whether we are ready to address issues systemically, both as IBM and our customers. Even though these issues are problems that exist, the solutions to such problems could also take us in radically different directions and in that sense transformational.
Finally, we are in the midst of a conversation within the HCM practice. To be held over 10 weeks the 10X10 innovation challenge, started with exploring the very same issue of implications of the administration change.
Once again it is clear, that we are facing significant changes in our business environment from all sides, and some of these changes might even bring discontinuities. Whether or not we are able to solve address these challenges successfully and in an enduring manner, are going to depend a lot on how we make sense of what they are, and where the levers of change really lie. We can then direct the resources to these opportunities coherently.
We have to together imagine the future that is possible. These conversations are a wonderful beginning to that possibility.