Embracing Change: The Cultures, Structures and Mindsets of Nimble Organizations is the topic for the first session this morning. After last night’s Gala Reception in The Union League Library, the crowd here is remarkably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, proving once again how resilient are the information industry denizens.

The day started off with Linda Sanford, who works for IBM in their Enterprise On Demand Transformation & Information Technology unit. She presented some depressing statistics on corporate growth rates and noted that the average life span of companies is only 20 years. Innovation, she thinks, is the key to success in the global economy. She then went through the five common attributes of uncommon people. They are:

1. Innovators re-imagine what they can be.
2. Get the right people on the bus and let them help decide where it should go.
3. Technology by itself doesn’t create innovation but it can be a great accelerator.
4. Innovators don’t go it alone.
5. Innovative organizations require innovative leaders.

David Turner, SVP of Finance, Thomson, then gave a case study on remaking a global 500 company. Reinvention was necessary because content used to be king, but isn’t anymore. It’s a commodity. The company divested itself of print newspapers and travel/leisure products to concentrate on electronic information. The vision was to move from being a content player to being a content plus software/services player, from the information publishing industry to the information services industry.

Thomson’s priorities during transformation were to redefine business models, align to create four strategic market groups, integrate acquisitions (otherwise you have competing silos), build infrastructure, reframe markets, and manage talent.

Their front-end customer strategy: Look for right customers (ask do we have the right customers, not do we have the right products? Pursue the highest growth opportunities segment by profitability). They want the right product; right price; right alignment; and right measurement for improvement.

OK, this makes me wonder if Thomson thinks that libraries are the “right customers.” Or are only some libraries the “right customers?”

Kevin Bouley, CEO of NERAC, then gave his own case study of transforming a company that looked like it was doing just fine. That’s harder. He hired a consultant to help them be innovative, but the staff was unable to grasp change. “Our minds had calcified. Ideas generated by staff weren’t innovative.”

He tried again a year later with more success. NERAC evolved from search and content to research solutions, It added opinion to research and took on a more analytical role. It began to focus on the customer not the product.

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