The iRise Blog

Is your company an innovator?  Do you want to know how some of the leading companies are using IT to strategic benefit?

For the past 19 years, the InformationWeek 500 has tracked the technology practices of the nation’s most innovative companies and the rankings for 2007 just came out last week.  This is what IW says about their annual study:

“Documenting the business-technology strategies, investments, and administrative practices of some of America’s best-known companies, this study offers a unique opportunity to understand and compare your company’s IT approach against the most innovative users of technology.”

Here is a link to ranking of the top 250 companies.

The top 5 companies for 2007 with links to their stories include:

1. Con-way
2. National Semiconductor
3. Vanguard
4. Kimberly Clark
5. Washington Mutual

Side Note - Washington Mutual is an iRise customer and there are 27 other iRise customers ranked in the top 250.

Finally, here’s the IW500 Hompage for more information and profiles.

[this entry was originally posted in the Catalyze Current Wisdom blog on September 27, 2007]

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What would you say in your “last lecture”?

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university on September 18, 2007.   In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

Randy, a professor of computer science, human computer interaction and design, is a co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center and the creator of the Alice interactive computing program, which is being used by students worldwide.

Randy is still very upbeat and relatively healthy - which he demonstrated by doing several push-ups on stage.  His talk focused on the following topics:

• My childhood dreams
• Enabling the dreams of others
• How you can achieve your dreams or enable others the dreams of others

Randy’s lecture is a true inspiration and worth watching.  It will also make you think about you would say in your ‘last lecture’ too.

If you’re pressed for time, you should definitely read Jeff Zaslow’s article in the Wall Street Journal and watch the 4-minute video excerpt of the lecture below.  If you have more time, the entire lecture is also provided available below courtesy of Google Video.

The 4-minute excerpt of the Randy Pausch’s last lecture from the Wall Street Journal website:

The entire 1 hour 45 minute lecture from Google Video is below:

[this blog was originally posted to the Catalyze Current Wisdom blog on September 21, 2007]

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Who knew?

My work colleague was at a conference this week and the keynote speaker was Tom Peters, the uber-guru of management.  Twenty five years ago, Tom and his colleague Bob Waterman wrote the seminal book, In Search of Excellence.  I guess I hadn’t thought of Tom since reading In Search, but he is definitely alive and still kicking.  Tom is continuing to write books and is still riding the speaker circuit. 

On his website, Tom willingly shares copies of his presentations and has converted many of his better blog posts to PDFs for easy downloading and sharing.  If you have the time, you can also view all 2700 slides (in 7 parts) of his presentation Excellence 2007.

In fact, you can even download the slides he used yesterday at the Taleo conference - both the short and long versions.  My only nit is that his fonts and colors are a little (ok more than a little) jarring to the senses (especially if you consider yourself a design expert). 

The slides give you only a small slice of Tom in action.  To get a taste of Tom’s presentation style in a live format, you need to experience him live (or via YouTube).  Here is a link to a short 3-minute YouTube video with Tom presenting on the the topic “Innovation is Easy“.  And there are 29 other Tom Peters videos on YouTube if you want more of Tom - check for the Related videos.
[this blog entry was originally posted to the Catalyze Current Wisdom Blog on September 11, 2007]

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