Tom Davenport - Speaking

speaking
topics | list of presentations | hire me

Topics

I speak on life, liberty, and:

> Google's Innovation Machine

> Competing on Analytics: How Fact-Based Decisions and Business Intelligence Drive Performance

> Knowledge Worker Productivity

> New Business Ideas and Managerial Innovation

> Knowledge Management

> The Value of Enterprise Systems

> Attention Management

> Business Process Engineering/ Outsourcing

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EXAMPLES

Not by Brains Alone: Six Interventions for Knowledge Worker Productivity
speaker: Thomas H. Davenport

Peter Drucker has argued often that improving knowledge worker productivity is the most important task of the century. Yet we have few measures or management interventions to make such improvement possible. Most organizations simply hire smart people, and leave them alone.

In this discussion, Tom Davenport will present six interventions for improving knowledge worker productivity, each with a set of approaches, examples, and cautions. The interventions combine roles for technology, organizational culture and behavior, and the physical work environment as tools for enhancing performance. The recommendations Davenport makes are based on several research studies he has conducted on how companies have addressed knowledge work, both successfully and unsuccessfully.

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What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking
speaker: Thomas H. Davenport

This presentation, based on Davenport's book by the same name, describes an approach to business and management ideas that can revitalize organizations. Davenport, who himself has helped to create several important ideas including reengineering and knowledge management, describes why the adoption of new ideas matters to organizations.

A key emphasis is placed on the most important role in organizations with respect to ideas: the "idea practitioner," who selects the appropriate ideas for his or her organization, modifies them to fit, and shepherds them through implementation. The creators and communications channels for new ideas are also important components of this picture. Davenport's message is that there are no faddish ideas, only faddish approaches to implementing ideas. He puts both the credit and the responsibility for managing new ideas on idea practitioners and leaders within organizations.

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Managing Personal Information and Knowledge
speaker: Tom Davenport

In the early days of knowledge management, most organizations focused on institutional solutions to the problems of knowledge creation, sharing, and application. Today, however, both organizations and their employees have begun to realize that knowledge management starts and ends with individual behaviors. They are initiating programs and activities to manage personal, work-related information and knowledge.

Tom Davenport will describe the results of a recent study of organizations and individuals on this topic in which APQC participated. The study will describe the problems and emerging solutions involved in personal information and knowledge management, and the likely directions and trends for this area in the future.

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details

>> Google's Innovation Machine

Learn more: Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine Harvard Business Review, April 2007

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>> Competing on Analytics:
How Fact-Based Decisions and Business Intelligence Drive Performance

Companies have long used business intelligence for specific applications, but these initiatives were too narrow to affect corporate performance. Now, leading firms are basing their competitive strategies on the sophisticated analysis of business data. Instead of a single application, they are building broad capabilities for enterprise-level business analytics and intelligence. Their capability goes well beyond data and technology to address the processes, skills and cultures of their organizations. These strategies are driven by senior executives who insist on fact-based decisions. Davenport will describe his recent research on firms that compete on the basis of their analytical prowess and will provide guidelines for adopting similar approaches. "Competing on Analytics," a much anticipated article on this topic was published in the January 2006 Harvard Business Review decision-making issue, to be followed by a Harvard Business School Press book later in the year.

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>> Knowledge Worker Productivity

Studies show that knowledge workers make up 25-50% of the workforces of advanced economies. Their expertise and experience fuels the success of countless organizations around the world—and their value is reflected in their compensation. But how much do managers really “know” about the knowledge workers they are charged with overseeing?

Often a company’s knowledge workers are dispersed across the organization, and increasingly across the globe. They are extremely mobile, their work is inherently emergent and unstructured, and much of what they do is invisible. After all, how can you tell whether your employees are working when their job is to think? How can you judge their performance when you rarely see them in person?

In my latest book, Thinking for a Living, I developed a unique classification system for segmenting knowledge workers into four major categories—transaction, integration, expert, and collaborative—and prioritizing which group or groups a company should target for intervention. I also outlined five customizable approaches for intervening in and improving knowledge work. I speak on specific management strategies that have proven most effective with each category of knowledge worker:

Process and Measurement: A three-step model for matching different knowledge activities—creating, distributing, or applying knowledge—to specific process interventions.
Organizational Technology: Alternatives to company-wide knowledge repositories, including strategies such as embedding knowledge into the knowledge workers’ job process, performance support and role-specific portals, automated decision-making processes, and more.
Personal Technologies: Strategies for utilizing technologies such as PDA’s, instant messaging, pagers, laptops, and other devices to help individual knowledge workers to process information and knowledge more effectively and efficiently.
Social Networks: Ways to facilitate collaborative networks through which high-performing knowledge workers can quickly find and share valuable information
The Physical Workspace: Ideas for rethinking the physical work environment in ways that optimize the performance of various types of knowledge workers.

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>> New Business Ideas & Managerial Innovation

Does your company need tools and frameworks for:

Assessing the merits of the top business gurus?
Scanning and tracking emerging ideas in the marketplace?
Distinguishing promising ideas from rhetoric?
Refining ideas to suit your organization's particular needs?
Packaging and selling the idea internally?
Ensuring successful implementation of new business ideas?
Creating an enterprise innovation process?
Getting your leaders to think for the future?

These are just some of the issues I talk about.

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> Knowledge Management

What are the steps needed to building a "mature knowledge enterprise"?
What are the best knowledge management tools and processes?
What are the best ways to represent individual expertise and experiences?
How can one capture the “richness,” “flavor,” and “sense” of what a person knows and has experienced?
How can stories and narratives be represented other than in linear texts?
What forms of knowledge (procedural, analog, declarative, etc.) are best suited to what representative structures?
What navigational aids work best for knowledge “sense making”?
What can we learn from older practices such as AI, expert systems, modeling systems, mapping theory, etc.?

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> The Value of Enterprise Systems

Unless managers view Enterprise Systems (ES) adoption and implementation as a business decision rather than a technology decision, they may be risking disappointment.

I present an authoritative and no-nonsense view of the ES opportunities and challenges. They have'nt been the right choice for every company, and I'll tell you why.

To be successful, an organization must make simultaneous changes in its information systems, its business processes, and its business strategy. I provide a set of guidelines to help managers evaluate the benefits and risks for their organizations. I describe how this is done, with extensive examples from real organizations.

ESs should be viewed as business vs. technology projects, and I articulate the specific business change objectives that should be formulated in advance of ES adoption and monitored throughout its implementation.

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> Attention Management

"Understanding and managing attention is now the single most important determinant of business success."

If yesterday was the age of information, today is the age of trying to attract or employ people's attention. Indeed, leaders and managers in the business world face this two-fold problem daily, constantly seeking the attention of their customers and employees while managing their own limited supply.

I'll examine what attention is, how it can be measured, how it's being technologically constructed and protected, and where and how attention is being most effectively exploited, and much, much more.

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> Business Process Engineering/
Business Process Outsourcing

While different process management approaches, such as Total Quality Management and business process reengineering, have attracted attention then faded from view, the overall trend is for a stronger orientation to managing end-to-end processes as a way to improve an organization’s operations: reduce cost, increase quality, enhance customer service, and accelerate innovation.

All of the approaches to process management wrestle with such basic issues as:

How do we make processes more efficient and effective?
How do we govern and manage processes?
How do processes fit in with the other dimensions of organizations (functions, products, geography)?

In addition, in today’s world of the Internet and globalization, we have new and emerging challenges, such as:

Outsourcing processes to third parties
Moving business processes to new, low wage countries (“offshoring”)
Introducing new business process management tools

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Academic Presentations and Affiliations

2001 Senior Fellow, “Developing Knowledge-Based Products and Services,” Harvard Business School Interactive Research and Learning Program.

2001 Guest Editor, Special Issue on Knowledge Management (with Varun Grover), Journal of Management Information Systems, Summer 2001.

2001 Keynote speaker, Association for Information Systems Americas Conference, Boston.

1997 Greene Honors Professor, Texas Christian University.

1997 Panel Leader, “The Role of Information Technology in Knowledge Management,” International Conference on Information Systems, Atlanta, December 1997.

1996 “Practical Research: Academic IS Can Make a Difference,” Paper presented to Academic Institutional Members of Society for Information Management, Cleveland, December, 1996.

1996 Panel Leader, “Will Mega-packages Transform Organizations and IS?” International Conference on Information Systems, Cleveland, December 1996.

1996 “Managing Knowledge,” Keynote Address, World Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology, Austin, TX, December 1996.

1995 Invited to deliver one of three plenary addresses at first meeting of the Academic Information Systems professional organization, Pittsburgh, PA.

1995 Editorial Board, Journal of Management Information Systems

1994 “Managing Information About Processes” (paper) and “Business Process Reengineering,” (panel presentation), The Institute of Management Sciences, Anchorage, Alaska.

1994 “Is There A Theory of Reengineering?” panel presentation, International Conference on Information Systems, Vancouver, Canada.

1994 “Information Management Infrastructure: The New Competitive Weapon?” with Jane Linder, paper presented at Hawaii International Conference on the Systems Sciences, Maui, Hawaii.

1993-present Editorial Board, Business Change and Reengineering:The Journal of Corporate Transformation

1992-1998 Associate Editor, MIS Quarterly (appointed to second term in 1995)

1992-present Invited presentations at Babson College, Harvard Business School, MIT, Wharton, Stanford, Cornell, University of North Carolina, New York University, DePaul University, Loyola University, Johns Hopkins Medical School, University of Minnesota, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Irvine, University of North Texas, University of Houston, Georgia State University, East Tennessee State, Hochschule St. Gallen (Switzerland), ITESM (Mexico), University of Chile, Stockholm School of Economics, London Business School, University of Melbourne, Australian Graduate School of Management, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

1991 "Approaches to Business Process Redesign," presentation and panel discussion leadership, 11th International Conference on Decision Support Systems, The Institute of Management Sciences

1990 "Management Processes and Information Technology," panel presentation, Tenth International Conference on Decision Support Systems, Cambridge, MA, The Institute of Management Sciences

Executive Teaching and Speaking

• “Leading Minds” speaker series in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1999.

• Information Management Program, Chalmers Institute of Technology, executive programs in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Sandviken, and London, 1996 and 1997.

• Process Innovation and Strategic Change, London Business School Executive Education, May 1996.

• International Management Program, London Business School Executive MBA, June 1996.

• Between 1993 and present, conference presentations, executive seminar presentations, or case discussion teaching for customer executives or internal managers of A.T. Kearney, Alitalia, Allied Signal, Allergan, American Express, American Management Systems, Ameritech, Andersen Consulting, Baxter Healthcare, Bell Atlantic, Bellcore, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Business Intelligence, CSC Index, Canada Post, Case, Ciba-Geigy, Citibank, Cincom, Clarica, Coca-Cola, Continental Bank, Citicorp, Deloitte & Touche, Delphi Automotive, Department of Defense, Digital Equipment, Dow Chemical, Dun & Bradstreet, DuPont, EDS, EMC, Eastman Chemical, Fiat, Ford, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Hughes Space and Communications, IBM, Inference Corp., Intel, J.D. Edwards, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, McDonald’s, McKinsey & Co., Merrill Lynch, NASA, NationsBank, Nationwide Insurance, Northeast Utilities, Oracle, PDVSA, Perot Systems, PHH, RJR Nabisco, Royal Insurance, Sandvik, SAP AG, Scudder Funds, Sequent Computer, Shell, Siemens, Software AG, Telia, Teltech, Texas Instruments, Texas Utilities, 3M, Time Warner, Towers Perrin, Travelers Insurance, U.S. Census Bureau, Union Carbide, Unisys, Volvo, W.L. Gore, Whirlpool, Wisconsin Gas, World Bank, Xerox, and many other organizations, some multiple times.

• Between 1990 and present, invited presentations (in North America, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and Asia) to such associations and conferences as the Society for Information Management, AICPA, American Management Association, American Productivity and Quality Center, CAUSE Annual Conference, CIO Annual Conference, Ernst & Young Knowledge Advantage Conference (four times), Grocery Manufacturers Association Conference, Workflow Conference, GIGA Workflow and Knowledge Management Conference, Gartner Group Symposium, Groupware Conference, Management Center Europe, Fortune CIO Conference, Planning Forum, Information Week 500 Conference, Life Office Management Association, “CIO Survival Camp,” Japanese Information Management Association, Tokyo U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Chilean National Computer Conference, U.K. Society of Internal Auditors, American Trucking Association, National Association of Accountants, Information Technology Association of America, Institute of Industrial Engineers, Computer Economics Conference, National Association of Government Financial Executives, Life Office Management Association (LOMA), Organizational Systems Designers Alliance, International Development Research Council, MIT Enterprise Forum, Canadian Information Processing Society, and senior management conferences in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, London, Milan, Como, Ottawa, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Santiago, Seoul, Singapore, Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Kyoto, and Tokyo (several cities multiple times).

• Between 1998 and present, gave executive briefings to or consulted with over 100 firms on knowledge management or enterprise systems on Accenture’s behalf

• Between 1991 and 1994, gave executive briefings to or consulted with over 200 firms on process innovation or information management on Ernst & Young's behalf

• 1990-1993, Adjunct Faculty Member, IBM Advanced Business Institute, Palisades, NY. Case teaching and lecturing in the “Managing the Information Systems Resource” Program for IBM customer executives.

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