Sightings in SaaS

I like reading books that question our assumptions, that are ready to admit and work with the tensions of their own ideas, that are fun. I had the opportunity to read a few books like this recently, and they offered some interesting counterpoints.

The New Polymath by Vinnie Mirchandani has recently landed on our desk, and it’s a fascinating read for people who want to keep abreast of the latest technological innovations and the people and companies behind the innovation.

Let’s start by stating that Vinnie Mirchandani has been one of our favorite bloggers for years. His blog was the first on our blogroll when we initially rolled out Sightlog 6 years ago, and the synergy was obvious: We had both witnessed first hand the problems and runaway costs of the Enterprise Software market and were determined to do something about it. I opted to start a Netsuite consultancy, focusing on the Small and Medium Enterprise market, believing, then as now, that I could offer an enormous software and consulting value while staying true to the values that I had come to embrace as an Oracle Consultant, like the value of integrated software.

Vinnie on the other hand concentrated on the fat in the enterprise software market by helping companies negotiate better IT contracts, and writing about it at the Deal Architect. Enterprise software was such an enormous part of the average company’s budget that there was little left over for new innovations, and Vinnie was out to fix that. He also writes extensively at the New Florence blog about those new innovations, from nanotech to green energy, and a smattering of IT and software thrown in as well.

The focus of Vinnie’s two blogs comes together in his new book, The New Polymath. He sent me an advanced copy of it, which I have been reading for the past couple of months. It’s interesting alright, and filled with interesting people and their innovations. There are chapters on organizations as diverse as General Electric and the National Hurricane Center, and chapters on various disciplines range from Cloud Computing to Cleantech. Mirchandani’s thesis is that innovation happens when talent, energy, ideas and people from different disciplines interact to create something new:

Fortunately, as the database of posts grew year after year, I started to
notice two patterns. I was seeing ever-more complex products and services
that blended a variety of technologies. An example was General Electric’s
plans for the Net Zero Home (as in zero annual energy costs), which plans
to bring together solar, wind, next-gen battery, smart grid interface technology,
and energy management software to efficient appliances, water heaters,
and other devices at home. Or the BP CTO group, which effortlessly weaves
sensory networks, predictive analytics, and other technologies to bring
innovation to a variety of refineries, exploration sites, and other aspects of
its global reach.

And he goes on to give the definition of the Polymath:

Those are modern-day polymaths, I thought. “Polymath,” as in Greek for someone who excels in many disciplines, like Isaac Newton, the English physicist, astronomer, and philosopher, and Hypatia of Alexandria, who was a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and teacher.

We call them Renaissance men and women these days. They exemplify an AND not OR mind-set. Put many of them together and we have a fighting chance at some of our grand (and day-to-day) challenges.

One immediately begins to wonder if it is possible today that an individual really achieve the same level as say one of Mirchandani’s favorite polymaths, Leonardo Da Vinci. After all, making a drawing of an aircraft is a lot different that being an engineer for Boeing.

Mirchandani makes a useful turn at this point and explains that the modern polymath is really a group of individuals from several disciplines working together to solve difficult problems:

Given that the grand challenges have grown exponentially in the five centuries since Leonardo lived, the new polymath can no longer be just one person but a collection of many.

From here the book sails along, describing Polymath projects in a variety of fields and functions. It really is quite fascinating to read about how people are bringing so many different talents to bear on difficult problems, or challenges as they are commonly referred to today. If you are a person who likes watching Nova on PBS, or reads The Economist, Wired, The Wall Street Journal or The NY Times for their coverage of the latest in science and technology, then this is a book that you will really enjoy. It goes into great detail in areas as diverse as Nano Technology and Smart Grids. Actually, maybe those areas are not as diverse as you might have thought? Mirchandani answers this question, and many more.

Also of interest are the people that Mirchandani takes the time to introduce. They are a diverse group of thinkers, Polymaths, who are intent on solving the worlds biggest challenges.

There are two undercurrents in the book that require mention. As a man from Michigan I can tell you that when an important industry becomes stagnant, when a whole culture stagnates with it, the results will not be pretty. This idea has been Mirchandani’s greatest contributions to the enterprise software conversation over the years.

Just like in autos, enterprise software is undergoing the same consolidation and anti-competitive evolution that ultimately leads to its demise. Between Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and IBM, innovation has become nearly non-existent while the corporate budget is eaten whole. Is there room, cash or energy for innovation in software? Not enough, Mirchandani claims, and he has a strong point. In this respect the book is a real push to see the ‘fortress’ of legacy systems and companies fall, at least enough to allow innovation to take hold again.

The other undercurrent I noticed is the tension, as I mentioned above, between the polymath culture and the need for specialization. In the Outlier, Malcolm Gladwell introduces the idea of the 10,000 Hour Rule. It’s simply this: To be really good at something, good enough to make a good or perhaps a great contribution, you need about 10,000 hours of practice. Regardless of your talent level, practice is a very important, perhaps the most important attribute of the ‘genius’.

Practice not only makes us better at something, but specialization has made the world we all inhabit, and love, truth be told. Specialization allows the standard of living to rise. Without most of us putting in our 10,000 hours, the world we know would be a much different place. Anthropologists now believe that trading is one of the most important attributes of our human evolution. Trading ideas, trading our wares, has allowed us to evolve from small families of hominids to modern societies. And what does one trade? What one is best at producing, of course.

One man might have seeds, another smelts copper, a third makes bows.  Over time our specialization has become deeper and deeper. Most of us now devote the better part of our lives to a single pursuit. But how does this need, requirement for specialization exist in a world that also needs Polymaths? Mirchandani, to his great credit, has not avoided this problem, but instead looks it right in the eye and gives one great example after another of how teams of specialists can find ways of working together.

It is a serious question, how to balance specialization with the need for polymaths. I think Mirchandani is on to something in The New Polymath. It is a subject that deserves much more attention at every level of our society.