The entire forum had a very global feel to it — not just the venue but the participants. Americans were a small minority. The speakers and panelists for the rest of the day focused on the innovation theme of the forum and drilled down to the next level.
To cap off the day, my friend and just e-tired colleague Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger who is now Chairman Emeritus at the IBM Academy of Technology and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, gave a talk about the future of technology. To get our attention, Irving started by pointing out that the world now produces more transistors than grains of rice. He did not mention this but I know that IBM’s new Power6 chip will have approximately 750 million transistors — that’s per chip! Irving went on to point out that there are fifteen petabytes (15 with 15 zeroes)) of data is being generated every day and that by 2010 supercomputers will execute one quadrillion calculations per second. Sounds like a lot but it will be needed to analyze the information being generated and to do it in "real time". Irving believes that modeling is the future — including simulations of what is in your mind.
Better computational capabilities will mean 100 times faster interpretation of an MRI which in turn means that a surgeon will be able to see exactly what is going on inside of you while you are in surgery. A challenging area in the future will be biological viruses — they will be a great threat and it will be a chess match to see if the white hats or black hats win. I am betting on the white hats. Technology will be able to predict the way viruses mutate and beat them to the pass. High speed computing will also make it possible to perform simultaneous and real-time translation — not by human translators in a sound-proof booth, but by computers. You speak in Chinese and I hear you in my headset in English. Irving was quite enthusiastic about the role of virtual worlds in business, government and society. The games will lead to a three dimensional Internet with visual virtual interactive services. This is not just for kids. One of IBM’s goals is to simulate the environmental behavior of the worlds river basins. The key to all these exciting breakthroughs is speed of execution and effective collaboration among government, academia and business. IBM is taking a leadership role with meetings such as this one.
The Russian Ethnographic Museum Reception and Gala Dinner was really special. I would be embarrassed to share the menu. Everyone loved the opera singer after dinner. Next morning and it was back to The Royal Philharmonic Hall where Henry Chow, Chairman, Greater China Group of IBM kicked things off and introduced Zhang Jianguo, Vice Chairman, Executive Director and President of the China Construction Bank. Everything in China is large scale and CCB is no exception. They have 5 million business customers and 270 million retail customers using 14,000 branches. The bank made more than $6 billion in profit last year.
Irving finished the morning with a panel which discussed how to drive an innovation agenda. It is really hard to summarize the perspective gained from listening to such smart people. I have tried to capture some thoughts about innovation in various postings here in patrickWeb. I would say the bottom line is that innovation is a really must do unless we want to live in an environment that is undifferentiated and commoditized. Sam made the point that if organizations focus only on taking out costs, they will be doomed with very low profits — if not extinction.
Everyone agrees that Innovation starts at the top and Sam practices what he preaches — not just by innovating in technologies (IBM turning out more patents year after year than any company in the world), but by innovating in strategies and business models. For example, it was Sam who led the charge to transform IBM from a hardware company to a hardware, software and services company. Especially the latter, when he acquired Price Waterhouse Consulting and smoothly integrated it into the IBM portfolio of services. He also led the sale of the PC business. Some people viewed it as simply a "sale" but in reality it was a highly innovative change to the IBM business model — selling off a low margin business but retaining the services aspect of it and at the same time gaining a stronger foothold in the Chinese market opportunity. Now he is extending the company reach and effectiveness at the same time by thinking and acting globally. Looks like he is on the right track to me.