Some new technologies profoundly alter our organizations; others fail to register a blip on the radar screen. Five questions will help you determine which course the next new thing will take.
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| John Glaser | |
From time to time, we are presented with information technologies—the Web, bar codes and MRIs—that significantly influence our organizations' strategies and plans. But we also encounter information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that failed to have a widespread impact on organizations.
In developing an information technology strategy, we need to accurately predict whether a new technology belongs in the first cohort or the second, and why. An organization that miscategorizes technology runs the risk of investing heavily in a technology that does not help the organization or, conversely, of failing to use a technology that could be a major benefit.
In analyzing the potency of new technologies, leaders of an organization need to answer five primary questions:
1. What are the core capabilities of the new technology?
2. How might the technology generally be applied in the organization?
3. Given these general application potentials, does the technology provide specific opportunities to solve problems or advance strategies? Are these opportunities important?
4. What have the early uses of the technology taught us?
5.
Given the discussion of all of the above questions, should the organization pursue the technology?
What are the core capabilities of the new technology? This is an easy question to state and a complicated one to answer. For example, the core capabilities of an airplane are that (1) it allows you to go from point A to point B in less time than other modes of transportation, and (2) it costs less to achieve scope (roads or track are not required) and can achieve greater range (that is, it can go to places where roads or track are not practical).
The core capabilities of the mobile phone are that it transports applications and communication directly to a person (rather than to a fixed workstation). As another example, the global positioning satellite infrastructure lets you know where something is anywhere on the globe.
Be sure you understand the core capabilities of the technology so you can assess how the technology might contribute and if the contribution will be significant.
How might the technology generally be applied in the organization? A new technology can fill several roles. Bar codes, for example, can track an object as it moves from place to place, identify an object and link it to other data (e.g., the bar code on a can of soup can be linked to current price information) and serve as a "permanent" storage information device that can be applied to irregularly shaped objects.
The definition of potential roles provides a framework for identifying applications of the technology. For example, an organization could use a mobile phone to deliver reminders to patients, support communication between the patient and her care team, or capture data necessary for managing a patient's chronic disease.
Given these general application potentials, does the technology provide specific opportunities to solve problems or advance strategies? Are these opportunities important? Radio-frequency identification tags and network capabilities might enable the organization to identify the location of equipment. This could reduce the time clinicians spend looking for equipment and reduce the capital budget devoted to replacing "lost" equipment.
In efforts to improve disease management, the mobile phone can be used to remind patients to take their medications, record blood pressure and document food intake.
The Web and videoconferencing could extend the reach of the organization's specialists to anywhere in the world.
Depending upon an organization's strategy and operational needs, these opportunities could be important or irrelevant.
What have the early uses of the technology taught us? Have other organizations been successful in applying the technology to achieve objectives that might be similar? If they have been successful, what gains have they seen, and what steps did they take to achieve those gains? If success has been elusive, to what degree was that due to immature technology or a poor implementation of the technology?
Developing an assessment of a technology's potential based on early experiences can be difficult. Pioneers often overstate their success and minimize their headaches. On the other hand, early efforts to fly were plagued with frequent crashes and pilots that got lost. These problems were a sign of technology immaturity rather than flight being a poor idea.
Given the discussion of all of the above questions, should the organization pursue the technology? This pursuit could be aggressive, with a broad commitment to adopt, or it might be in the form of small-scale projects that let the organization further its knowledge about the technology. The pursuit must be goal directed and based on a reasoned understanding of the potential value of the technology.
In answering such questions, the organization frames its understanding of a particular technology and the role it might play in advancing its strategies. It forms an understanding of the power of the technology, which can range from strategically disruptive (or enabling), to operationally important, to marginally significant.
It is important that an organization address the earlier questions and not leap immediately to later questions. If an organization had based its assessment of the Web on the early efforts to provide access to information, it might have missed the core capabilities that enabled that technology to have a massive impact on our society. These capabilities include:
Using these core capabilities, the retail, travel and financial services industries, among others, have forever been altered. Because of these capabilities, for example, the need to establish well-placed chains of stores or branch offices effectively disappeared for many organizations. Competitors that did not have the capital to create stores could enter the market, and they could do so quickly because they did not need to take the time required to put stores in place.
If the core capability concepts are powerful, the technology is likely to be powerful. Concepts that appear to shrink distance, collapse time, add intelligence to processes and reduce costs have particular promise.
At times the power of the technology will rapidly become apparent (such as the mobile phone). At other times, the power will evolve more slowly (such as clinical decision support). And sometimes the power is not completely clear (such as Web 2.0 communities of patients that may alter the trust relationship between providers and patients). But thoughtful assessment of new information technologies can always be a critically important strategy discussion.
John Glaser is a vice president and the CIO of Partners HealthCare in Boston. He is also a regular contributor to H&HN Weekly.
This article 1st appeared on November 30, 2009 in HHN Magazine online site.
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