Nov 15 2007
WCBA - Thornton May on How to Thrive in the Age of BIG Information
Thornton May, Futurist and Dean of the IT Leadership Academy kicked off the World Congress for Business Analysts (WCBA) conference this morning with a fast-paced, entertaining and thought-provoking session.
Wearing his signature bowtie, Thornton started out with a series of slides and open-ended questions showing how technology and the world are changing including:
- how will you deal with a more interactive world?
- how will real-time information processing impact you?
- why do projects fail?
- do you always have the best and brightest on your projects?
- do you grade project team members?
- should we be able to “vote them off the island?”
- are we allowed to fail?
- will you be aware of all the information available?
Just before wrapping up, Thornton offered these nuggets of wisdom:
- “the questions we ask will bias the answers we get”
- bring the future to the present
- go to the endpoint of your analysis and work the problem backwards
- remember the power of end-to-end perspective
Thornton ended his presentation with a slide of a rocket tied to a dog. He mentioned that the rocket represents technology change and asked, “Is the puppy going to be happy if you light the rocket?”
Save the puppy!