2008/02/19

Halifax et l'Inde

On risque d'en entendre parler pendant un bout.

New Brunswick Transportation Minister Denis Landry is one of several Atlantic politicians and business stakeholders looking at how the Atlantic region can capitalize on one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Landry is overseas visiting India this week in an effort to promote Canada's Atlantic Gateway strategy for Indian shippers, business leaders, and key government representatives.

[...]

Included among them are Wes Armour, president and CEO, Armour Transportation; John Murphy, vice-president of transportation, J.D. Irving Ltd; Ron Tepper, president and CEO of Consolidated FastFrate; and Doug Hayden-Luck, sales director, international intermodal, for CN Rail.

2008/02/17

Andrew McAfee

The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders

Together we innovate

Article tiré du WSJ.

Most companies continue to assume that innovation comes from that individual genius, or, at best, small, sequestered teams that vanish from sight and then return with big ideas. But the truth is most innovations are created through networks—groups of people working in concert.

The misperception has never been more damaging, as companies pour more money into generating ideas and then end up frustrated as innovations simply don't develop. To lay the groundwork for innovation, organizations must make it easy for their employees to build networks—talk to their peers, share ideas and collaborate.

Knowledge Management

Article d'Ivey.

Online Knowledge

À 71 ans, un prof de physique du MIT devient une star du web.

Making an impact

Des gradués MBA qui désirent faire une différence :

Once they had acquired an MBA, the traditional route for students was to follow the well-trodden path into consultancy or investment banking. But times are changing and as sustainability and “green” issues attract a higher profile, more MBA graduates are looking for jobs that exhibit at least an element of corporate social responsiblity.

WSJ - New Era Dawns for Rail Building

Front page du WSJ.

For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they've spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.

The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities. Their new higher-volume routes, called corridors, often serve the South, where the rail system is less developed and the population is rising.


Et un commentaire intéressant :

Noticeably absent from the discussion are two of the largest surviving North American railways: CN and CP, each of whom own substantial networks south of the 49th parallel. That might just be because the article is focussed on US-based railways, or it might indicate another situation where Canadian business is failing to invest to keep up with their American competitors.

Fortune, 21 janvier 2008 - Innovation

Tiré de "Six Leaps of Innovation", l'organisation d'une campagne politique virale.

Paul has proved once again that a candidate who knows how to tap the collective power of the Web can pull in serious cash. How serious? More than $18 million in the fourth quarter alone, almost all of it raised online using Web 2.0 tools like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You-Tube - you name it. Lam has even strapped a webcam to a baseball cap and broadcast live video of the candidate on Justin.tv.

Globalvia

Dans la même lignée que Macquarie, Glovalvia Instraestructuras qui se veut aussi un "partner for the infrastructure sector of the future". Cela inclue des terminaux portuaires, du transport ferroviaire métropolitain et des tramways.

Je reviens sur ma question : à quand le prochain grand développement ferroviaire ?

Fortune, 26 novembre 2007 - Web 2.0

Un article qui résume bien la facette économique du social networking.

Pasta Panic



Le prix des pâtes augmente, car le prix des céréales augmente...

Fortune, 26 novembre 2007 - Paypal Mafia

Portrait de Fortune de la "Paypal Mafia".

YouTube, Yelp, The Founders Fund, Slide, LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital.

2008/02/16

Gartner

Let's face it, we in the computing industry have the best excuse in the world to put off making decisions. It's called Gartner.


- David Taylor
Responding the challenge of choice
Agile Business Conference 2006

Lobbying

Canadian National, which lobbied Congress, the Surface Transportation Board and Transportation Department, spent nearly $1.3 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 8 by the Senate's public records office.

The company spent $1 million in the first six months of 2007 to lobby on largely the same issues.

(canadianbusiness)

Railways scrambling to meet demand

Customers are clamouring for more space to move their goods on the rails, leaving the carriers scrambling to keep up.

"Right now we are not meeting our customer demands. The demand for our transportation services is very strong," James Foote, CN's executive vice-president of sales and marketing, said during an investment webcast.

CN, CPR and the four largest U.S. railways are expanding because they need to handle ever-increasing volumes of freight and reduce bottlenecks along their systems, notably at ports, transportation consultant Greg Gormick said. "Demand is growing, and networks are being stretched to the limit," he added.

(reportonbusiness)


Note to self : à quand la construction de nouvelles lignes ?

SSM

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is an approach to organisational process modelling and it can be used both for general problem solving and in the management of change.

Deming

L'homme derrière la révolution industrielle du Japon et le modèle Toyota.

System of Profound Knowledge
1- Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);

2- Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;

3- Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known (see also: epistemology);

4- Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.


Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. In summary :

1- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of a product and service with a plan to become competitive and stay in business. Decide to whom top management is responsible.

2- Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship.

3- Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in. (prevent defects instead of detect defects.)

4- End of the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, depend on meaningful measures of quality along with price. Eliminate suppliers that cannot qualify with statistical evidence of quality.

5- Find Problems. It is a management’s job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, composition of material, maintenance, improvement of machine, training, supervision, retraining)

6- Institute modern methods of training on the job

7- The responsibility of the foreman must be to change from sheer numbers to quality… [which] will automatically improve productivity. Management must prepare to take immediate action on reports from the foremen concerning barriers such as inherent defects, machines not maintained, poor tools, and fuzzy operational definitions.

8- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9- Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production that may be encountered with various materials and specifications.

10- Eliminate numerical goals, posters, slogans for the workforce, asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods.

11- Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas.

12- Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right of pride of workmanship.

13- Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.

14- Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the above 13pts.


Quotes :

There is no substitute for knowledge.

The most important things cannot be measured.

The problem is at the top; management is the problem.

To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge—knowledge for leadership of transformation.

Knowledge-worker

SIX major factors determine knowledge-worker productivity.

1-What is the task ?

2- It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivityon the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers haveto manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.

3- Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and theresponsibility of knowledge workers.

4- Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of theknowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of theknowledge worker.

5- Productivity of the knowledge worker is not - at least not primarily- a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least important.

6- Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledgeworker is both seen and treated as an asset rather than a cost. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization inpreference to all other opportunities. [...]

In most knowledge work, quality is not a minimum and a restraint, butis the essence of the output.Productivity therefore has to aim first at obtaining quality and notminimum quality but optimum if not maximum quality. Only then can one ask : What is the volume, the quantity of work ?

The main trouble is, however, not the difficulty of measuring quality. It is the difficulty - and more particularly the sharp disagreements -in defining what the task is and what it should be.

Management Challenges for the 21st Century (Peter F. Drucker)

NotchUp

Après LinkedIn, NotchUp.

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand et la bulle immobilière.

Film recommandé

How to succeed in business without really trying