Irving Wladawsky-Berger

A High Wire Act with the Whole World Watching

Like so many around the world, I was transfixed by the spectacular opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  From everything I had read I was expecting a grand spectacle - two years in the making, at a cost of a few hundred million dollars, with more than 15,000 performers.   In particular, I was really curious to see what Zhang Yimou, the overall director of the opening ceremonies, would come up with.

Zhang Yimou is one of my favorite film directors.  I first discovered his work about ten years ago.  He is part of what is known as the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, the name given to the first group that graduated from Beijing's film making school in the 1980s after the devastating Cultural Revolution.

His films are visually stunning.  Hero, for example, is one of the most gorgeous films of all time.  He is also a great storyteller, whether directing a historical epic like To Live or small, intimate films like The Road Home. 

I was eagerly looking forward to Zhang Yimou’s opening ceremonies, and he surpassed all my already high expectations.  It was truly fascinating.  It was also an incredible high wire act to put on in front of the whole world.

The opening ceremonies actually made use of physical high wires in a scale that I suspect has never been done before, but it was not their literal use that so impressed me.  It was the near flawless execution of the overall spectacle.  It was not without incidents - a top dancer was seriously injured during a rehearsal, - or without controversies – the voice we heard when an adorable little girl was singing a patriotic ballad was not her own.  But given the incredible complexity of the live production, it is impressive how well it all went.

As I was later reflecting on the risks involved in such an elaborate, live production, I was reminded of IBM’s experiences with the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Since 1960, IBM had been an official sponsor of the Olympics, as well as the overall technology provider.  The Olympics were a unique opportunity to showcase IBM's technical prowess in front of customers and the world at large. 

Having just recently launched our Internet initiative, we were hoping to establish IBM as a major Internet player by developing the first official Olympics website.  The site offered near-instantaneous results for all sporting events, in addition to information about the athletes, schedules, photos and news.  We publicized the website extensively and invited the world to come use it.

In 1996 the World Wide Web was truly in its very early stages.  The Olympics took place less than a year after Netscape went public, which many consider the key event marking the transition of the Internet from a research network used primarily by the technical community to the commercial behemoth that it went on to become. 

The new World Wide Web had the feeling of magic, but, in 1996, it was pretty primitive magic.  To begin with, the vast majority of people accessing the Web at the time were doing so over slow dial-up modems with bandwidths of 56 kilobits per second or less.  Only at work, if you were lucky, did you have access to faster broadband speeds.  It wasn't until years later that broadband usage in the home became commonplace.

As we were planning the IT infrastructure for the Olympics website, hardware was not an issue.  We used IBM's SP family of parallel supercomputers which we were confident would provide us with all the computing power we could want. 

But the software for web servers was quite immature.  Netscape's web software was the most widely used in those days, and while it was adequate for small workloads, its scalability was suspect.  We could not use it.  Instead, we used the open source Apache Server as the basic web server, and custom built the extensions needed to support its content, applications and other capabilities.

We were pretty sure that the Atlanta Olympics website was the largest such web project anyone had undertaken so far.  Because it was all so new, we did not know how many people would come to our website and what features they would use once they got there.  We were well aware of the considerable risks inherent in doing such a complex, new project on such a global stage.  We knew, for example, that beyond a certain number of users, the response time would start to degrade, and if sufficiently stressed beyond its capabilities, the system could become unstable and crash.   

But, we felt that this was exactly the kind of market experiment we should be doing to learn what was needed to support large numbers of live users on the Web.  We were part of a wave of innovative, experimental projects that were trying out all kinds of new Web applications and services, hoping that our Internet audience would understand that this was not yet a prime time application - more of a beta system, - and would thus forgive its shortfalls.  We got as ready as we possibly could before the games opened - and then crossed our fingers hoping that things would go well. 

Our Olympics website worked quite well, except for some unduly slow response times when traffic got very heavy.  Overall, the site handled 187 million hits – that is, individual pieces of information served to users.  We learned a lot about the requirements for building and operating large, complex websites.  All in all, it was a very successful experiment.   

But, while the experience with the website was quite positive, IBM's Olympics high wire act ran into unexpected troubles with one of the production applications.  Most of the computer systems worked flawlessly, including the applications that delivered the results from all sporting venues to scoreboards, judges and commentators.  However, there were problems with the application that delivered the event results to news organizations and reporters around the world.  These caused the results to be delivered late and in some cases they included erroneous information.

The problems were contained within a few days, but by then the public relations damage was done.  Reporters were justifiably unhappy with not being able to get the results from the various events in a timely way and wrote some pretty negative stories about IBM.  It was a humbling experience.

IBM went on to handle the winter games in Nagano, Japan in 1998 and the summer games in Sydney two years later.   Everything worked flawlessly in both Olympics.  Testing times were significantly increased, including three major technology rehearsals for Sydney.  Usage of the Web had exploded, but by then large, complex websites had become just another production application.

The 2000 Sydney games were the last IBM was involved in.  The growing efforts and vast computer systems needed to support the games made it hard to justify the escalating costs of being the Olympics technology sponsor.  After extensive negotiations, the forty year relationship between IBM and the IOC came to an end.

Trying out something that has never been done before, in a world stage like the Olympics is about as high a high wire act as they come.  Such risks are inherent when you are pushing the frontiers of innovation.  Every so often you stumble, and are then painfully reminded how risky high wire acts can be.  But, when everything goes as planned - as with Zhang Yimou's magnificent spectacle, - something truly special has been created.  In the process, the innovation bar has been lifted to a whole new dimension, totally redefining the art of the possible.

I bet that the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics in London will be quite a show.

Indifference, Hostility, Isolation and Other Obstacles to a Healthy Innovation Environment

In most companies, just about all the cards are stacked against the nurturing of innovation, especially the kinds of new ideas and disruptive innovations that generally lead to major changes in the marketplace and within the business. 

Is that too pessimistic a view?  Perhaps.  Let me discuss some of the behaviors I have observed through the years in various companies, which have convinced me how difficult it is to create the proper environment for innovation to flourish.

Indifference.  While just about every CEOs and senior executive of a company will pay lip service to innovation, many do not really mean it.  It is not because they are not good, smart and highly competent people.  It is just not part of their DNA.  Of course, they mouth the words – it would be politically incorrect for them not to embrace innovation. But they do little beyond that. 

Why is that?  The majority of executives make it to top positions by being very good operational managers: meeting sales objectives, improving products and services to keep up with competitors, supporting existing customers and acquiring new ones, managing mergers and acquisitions, achieving the required financial results quarter after quarter, and so on.  These management jobs are very tough and getting tougher, given our rapidly changing, fiercely competitive, global business environment.  Being a good manager takes very hard work, attention to detail and organizational discipline. 

But as executives rise up in the organization, other skills become increasingly important.  You need to transition from being a manager to being a leader.  At a recent lecture at MIT, Lou Gerstner succinctly articulated the difference between management and leadership. 

Management is about business results and processes.  Leadership is about people.  The key quality you need for good leadership is passion - the urgency to attack and solve the complex problems that all organizations face.  To do so, you need to be surrounded by highly talented people, and you need to find a way to transmit your passion to them, so they will buy into your vision of the future, perform at the highest possible levels and come up with innovative solutions to the challenges of achieving the vision.

When skies are blue, a company might be able to cruise along with top managers who are indifferent leaders.  Such managers are typically executing tactical, incremental strategies, where the critical ingredients are good, disciplined management as well as operational excellence.  But once the skies begin to darken, as they inevitably do, such managers will get into deep trouble, and often end up taking the business down with them.  Their most talented innovators and strategists, those whose skills are now badly needed to help set the business on the proper course, have either long departed or become so disenchanted that they have nothing left to give.

Hostility.  In general, managers who do not actively encourage new ideas and innovations in their organizations do so because of indifference.  It is just not who they are.  They will typically listen politely to your new idea, provide some encouragement and offer good advice.  If they are being honest, they will tell you that they barely have the time, energy and budget to help much beyond a pat on the back now and then.

But some managers - fortunately, a relatively small number, in my experience - go beyond indifference.  Their initial reaction to any new idea is negative, if not downright hostile.  This is particularly true if the idea comes from someone outside their own organization.  They tend to be poor team players and autocratic. 

Some of them also exhibit characteristics that many of us would associate with being a bully.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines bully as "a blustering, browbeating person; especially one habitually cruel to others who are weaker."  Wikipedia's entry says, "Research indicates that adults who bully have personalities that are authoritarian, combined with a strong need to control or dominate.  It has also been suggested that a deficit in social skills and a prejudicial view of subordinates can be particular risk factors.” 

These words pretty much fit the behavior of the corporate bullies I have met.  Typically, they have achieved their high management positions because, despite their poor interpersonal skills, they are very good at other parts of the job.  Sometimes, they are excellent innovators themselves, but given their autocratic tendencies, innovation to them is a one man/woman show.  Collaborative innovation is not for them.         

I would further add that another reason people with such behaviors are tolerated by upper management is that they generally are very respectful of hierarchy and authority and treat those above them very differently, reserving their worst behaviors for colleagues and subordinates.

Such hostile behavior is particularly detrimental to a healthy innovation environment.  People championing new ideas, especially if they are potentially disruptive new ideas, are doing so by going against the grain of what the business is currently doing.  Rejection is painful, especially coming from people in positions of authority.  Senior managers can nurture those new ideas through positive words and actions, or they can stop them on their tracks by being overly negative and combative.

Isolation.  I strongly believe that innovation is a collaborative endeavor, a team sport.  The 2004 National Innovation Initiative report observed that "[Innovation] is multidisciplinary and technologically complex.  It arises from the intersections of different fields or spheres of activity."  That is why it often takes a group of people that are not only highly talented but bring diverse skills and points of view, in order to successfully tackle the kinds of complex problems we are increasingly facing in the 21st century. 

But perhaps even more important, a collaborative approach to innovation helps provide the energy and emotional support that new ideas need in their very early stages.  New ideas are almost always rough and ill formed at first.  In my experience, nothing works better than bouncing the ideas off other, supportive people.  This back-and-forth dialog is one of the most important ingredients to help properly shape the idea into something more concrete, understandable and actionable, at which point it is more ready to face the tougher challenges and criticisms from line management and others in the organization. 

The best people to bounce ideas off at these early stages are typically colleagues within or outside the company, depending on the nature of the problem.   This is why isolating people in organizational silos is one of the biggest obstacles to innovation.  Companies that are serious about innovation do everything possible to break down silos and encourage communication and collaboration across the organization and beyond. 

Fostering innovation is very hard, especially if the innovation is disruptive in nature.  A spirit of innovation and collaboration does not come naturally to an organization.  For such a spirit to take hold, it must become an integral part of the company's culture.  None of this is easy, but it is what a company must do if it truly wants to create a healthy environment for innovation to flourish.

Atoms, Bits and the e-word

Every two years, leaders of the computer sciences community from universities and research labs come together in Snowbird, a ski and summer resort in Utah, for what has become known as the Snowbird conference.  This year, I was invited to speak in the opening session.  So, a few weeks ago, I got up very early on a Sunday morning and flew to Salt Lake City.  I got there early enough to be able to go hiking with friends in the beautiful Snowbird mountains.  I also tried rock climbing in a nostalgic, age-defying encounter with a climbing wall -  something I have not done in close to forty years.

The following morning I gave my talk on Innovation in the Knowledge Economy.  The theme of the talk was the evolution of IT-based systems to the incredibly complex systems we are dealing with today.

In the first part of the talk, I summarized the challenges.  Driven by the advances in digital technologies, the Internet, globalization and other powerful technology and market forces, IT-based systems are becoming increasingly global and integrated; market facing and services oriented; and complex and unpredictable. 

I then talked about three major initiatives that I am working on with colleagues at IBM, which illustrate this evolution toward complex IT-based systems: cloud computing; globally integrated business systems; and virtual worlds.

The third theme of my talk was, in my opinion, the most important for the audience at the Snowbird conference.  Dealing with these incredibly complex systems requires highly-skilled people.  There is no doubt that the value of a good education is more important than ever, given all the changes going on around us.  But, to help prepare graduates to be innovation leaders in the complex world in which they will be living and working, the education needs to reflect the realities of that world.

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What is Cloud Computing, Anyway?

In a recent blog I summarized the discussions around cloud computing at the conference I had just attended by writing that "something big and profound seems to be going on, although we are not totally sure what it is yet." 

Cloud computing is the kind of wide-ranging initiative that different people can look at from their own point of view and come up with their own, somewhat different definitions.  This is not surprising in the early stages of such a comprehensive initiative.  When the Internet first broke into the wider world in the mid 1990s, you similarly heard lots of different opinions on what it was and what it would be good for.

In reading through the assorted cloud definitions, five key themes keep coming up.  Let me say a few words about each of them.

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Innovation and Evolutionary Biology

Innovation, like falling in love, requires a certain state of mind.  As I write this, I am well aware how incredibly nerdy I likely come across.  I am not about to suggest a whole rash of poems, novels and films celebrating innovation.  But please, bear with me.

A lot of work has been done in the last decade by well respected scientists, like Helen Fisher, on how our brains behave when we are falling in love.  Sophisticated functional MRI (fMRI) machines have demonstrated that being madly in love is actually a reasonably good description of the state of our brain when so infatuated.  If we have ever felt bewitched, bothered and bewildered when falling in love, it is because we literally were.

I don't need to spend much time discussing how this came to be from an evolutionary biology point of view.  Something like falling in love plays a very important evolutionary role in birds, bees, baboons - and humans.

How about innovation and creativity? Are there states of mind, measurable by fMRI and similar scientific tools, which strongly indicate that individuals and groups are solving complex problems and coming up with great new ideas?  Are there work and learning environments that are particularly conducive to help people achieve such states of mind?  Is there anything that companies, schools and other institutions that have a huge stake in being innovative can do to foster such work and learning environments in their midst?

The answer to all these questions is clearly yes.

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