Collaborator's Dilemma Future Salon on Thursday 17th of September 6pm at SAP Labs in Palo Alto. Please RSVP http://budurl.com/6qx6
Abstract: Just as Clayton Christensen highlights The Innovator's Dilemma, we must identify and name The Collaborator's Dilemma to describe the way we create—or fail to create—strategies that work. Organizations, and the people within in them want to tap the talents of their people, generate lots of great ideas and have everyone co-own the solution.
But we don’t do that. We instead have an “air sandwich” between the executives and others.Collaboration can fill that gap I call an Air Sandwich: the empty void in an organization between the high-level strategy up in the stratosphere and the realization of that vision down on the floor. Where there should be connective pieces between the vision and the reality, in an Air Sandwich the filling consists mainly of misunderstandings, confusions, and disinformation. It is that Air Sandwich which prevents us from winning.
This session explains how this problem is fixable if one is willing to reinvent their firm to win. Discussion will center on the future of work and organizations and how collaboration will play out in 5, 10, 15 years.
Speaker Bio: Nilofer Merchant
CEO, Author and
Strategist, Nilofer is a leading authority on creating business strategy to win
markets. Having worked inside and outside major corporate brands like Adobe,
Apple, Nokia, SAP and others, Nilofer has honed her collaborative approach to
solving tough problems. Her firm is hired by global brands such as
Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec and others to create the
solutions to win markets.
Her keynotes attract SRO crowds at business
leadership events, technology expos, women’s conferences and universities –
ranging from AjaxWorld to CTIA and PBWC to Stanford. Having won multiple awards
for her insights on applying strategic thinking and innovation, she’s been
quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek,
Entrepreneur, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal.
Nilofer earned her MBA
from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco
and is a certified Instructor of Facilitative Leadership from Interaction
Associates. O’Reilly Media is publishing Nilofer’s book on the “the new how:
creating winning outcomes through collaborative strategy”, in Fall 2009 (http://bit.ly/AKF4g)
Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs North America, Building D, COIL (Co-Innovation Lab). SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVP http://budurl.com/6qx6 so we know how many people to expect.
We will do our best to webcast the event again via Ustream.tv on the Future Salon Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Future-Salon