Jay Littlepage: Life In Balance?

How paradigms shift
One of my favorite aspects of the roles i've played at Sun has been meeting with our customers.  This stems from the fact that I spent the formulative years of my career (defined as the years prior to my day-to-day activities being more influenced by Ram Charan than by James Gosling) as an IT customer myself.  During that time I tended to gravitate towards the application of new technologies  to solve whatever business problem or opportunity that was top of mind for the company.  Besides just being a heck of a lot of fun it was a constant challenge being an early adopter, but the payoff often had the potential to enable significant business change, ranging from productivity improvements that went right to the bottom line to disruptors that built share.

Potential being the operative term, because often times that's all it was.  

A "paradigm" refers to the set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time.  A paradigm shift occurs when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made.   My friends in marketing and in the industry analyst community can (and do) paradigm shifts with regularity, but it takes observation and the wisdom gained from hindsight to really understand that a significant shift occured.  Within IT introducing great technology is simply not enough - though we often convince ourselves that it is.  The shift occurs when the technology is put to use.  Technology for business' sake.  Increasingly, technology for society's sake.

Sun continues to produce fantastic, innovative products.  Increasingly we are delivering them as networked services, so that "assembly is not required" by our customers.  This will become increasingly important as more and more non-technical businesses form which rely completely on an internet storefront. 

Ahh, but innovation often happens during the assembly of a system by our customer, for that customer's business, in ways that we can assist with but cannot predict.   They are solving for their business; being a part of such solutions is the most rewarding thing we do.  And if you are a part of enough of them and squint your eyes you might see the next paradigm shift forming.  It takes technology and expertise and it's not happening in a lab.  It's happening at a customer location near you.
Posted by jaylittlepage ( Jun 06 2006, 06:22:03 PM MDT ) Permalink