tagged with: technology

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Year Up: A Non-Profit that Can Teach Business and Education a Thing or Two

Year Up offers urban young adults a chance at a better life. It also offers a model of training that educators, managers and HR professionals should pay attention to.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the birthplace of Year Up. Like many successful startups, the original space in Boston's financial district is funky, distinctive and graced with personal touches. Creaky wood floors are warmed by oriental rugs; high ceilings with exposed pipes provide architectural interest; colorful handprints of the members of the first graduating class claim the wall of the common area, where visitors and students can relax on oversize leather sofas and chairs.

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How to Succeed as an Early Adopter: Interview with Genentech CIO Todd Pierce

This is Part Two of my interview with Todd Pierce, CIO of Genentech. In Part One, we spoke about effective communication.

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Great Communicators: Genentech CIO Todd Pierce

Great communicators focus on the perspectives, priorities and frames of reference of the people they seek to communicate with. At Genentech, that means science. Todd Pierce, SVP and CIO at Genentech, views effective communication as the “circulatory system" of business. Everything he does takes that into account.

Being in the drug discovery/drug development business, Genentech runs on quickly gathering large volumes of information and analyzing it effectively. With 30-40 clinical trials going on at any given time, that's a lot of information.

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How IT Can Help Cash-Strapped Government Agencies Better Serve the Public for Less

Government agencies are in fiscal trauma right now. Billions of dollars over budget, many states are taking drastic measures to cut costs. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and CTO Aneesh Chopra are aggressively pursuing software as a service and cloud computing as one way to cut costs, and the state of Utah is planning a private cloud to serve local agencies.

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A Brief and Colorful History of Technology in Business

I was asked to give a couple of talks this spring giving my perspective on the current state of technology in business. I always think the present is better understood by looking at the past, so I put together a presentation looking at a) how things have developed over the past 20 or so years (not coincidentally, the span of time I was involved with CIO Magazine), and b) the challenges and opportunities I see businesses in general and CIOs in particular facing during this tumultuous time. I've posted a version of this talk on Slideshare, complete with an audio narration. Please check it out and let me know if your view lines up with mine or how you see things differently.