The New York Times and Boston Scientific : Two Different Way of
Innovating with Information Technology.
Almost everybody has a story about how to save the U.S newspaper
industry. The only concensus, it could all about disapper. At The New York
Times, tough times have elevated IT-enabled innovation to the top of agenda.
A research and development group, created in 2006, operates as a
shared service across nearly two dozen newspapers, a radio station, and more
than 50 Web sites.
“Our role is to accelarate our entry onto new platforms by
indentifying opportunities, conceptualizing, and prototyping ideas, “ explains
Michael Zimbalist, the company’s vice president of R&D.
Zimbalist’s staff of 12 includes experts in rapid prototyping,
specialists in areas like mobile or cloud computing and data miner who probe
Web site data for insight into what visitors do. They work within a common
framework based on idea generation, development, and diffusion throughtout the
business. Recent projects included prototypes for new display ad concepts as
well as blackberry applications for boston.com and the expert site About.com.
the team’s work is intended to supplement and support innovation takin place
within the business unit. For example, the team is prototyping E-Ink, an
emerging display technology; some business unit can’t spare the resources to
investigate it.
At NYTimes.com the design
and product development group of Marc Frons, CTO of Digital Operation, worked
with Zimbalist’s team and adobe developers on the Times Reader 2.0 application,
the next generation, on-screen reading system it developed on the Adobe AIR
platform. Frons further encourages forward on the adobe AIR platform. Frons
further encourages forward thinking among his 120-person team with twice annual
innovation contests. Winners receive cash, recognition and the resouces to turn
their ideas into reality. Typical projects are measured against criteria like
revenue potential or journalistic value. R&D projects aren’t. “Since we
build software, there’s mo huge capital investment up front,” Frons says,
“which allows us to experiment. The emphasis in on rapid development.”
Times Widgets, a widget-making platform, was a contest winner, as
was the recently launched Times Wire, a near real time customizable interface
for online contest. “We’re trying to solve
specific problems and think
about where the business is going,” Frons says. Frons is focused on enhancing
revenue, cutting cost, and increasing efficiency through process improvements
and automation.
The New York Times has launched a cool interactive map the shows
the most popular Netflix rentals across 12 U.S metropolitan areas: New York,
San Fransisco/Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Washinton, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis,
Denver, Atlanta, Dallas and Miami. If you’re a Netflix junkie and a closet
Twilight fan (and you live in major U.S. city), your rental habits are now on
display. To create the map, The New York Times partnered with Netflix. The map
is a graphical database of the top 100 most-rented. Netflix film of 2009 laid
on top of maps. With it you can graphically film of 2009 laid on top of maps.
With it you can graphically explore top 2009 Netflix movies based on three
criteria: film that were hated or loved by critics, an alphaberical list, and
most rented. For example, select most rented, and when you place the mouse over
a zip code, a window pops up showing you what the top Netflix rentals are for
that specific region.
Some trends are not surprising: The most popular Netflix movie of
2009 was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, although Slumdog Millionaire and
Twilight were both in the top 10. Milk, the story of San Fransisco and othert
city centers, but not so much in suburbs of southern cities (such as Dallas and
Atlanta). Mad Men, the 1960s-set drama about advertising execs, was hot at all
in Miami
The map does show some interesting trends: Big block-busters were
not as popular in city centers (wanted and Transformers : Reverge of the
fallen, barely made a splash in the city center of Manhattan and San
Fransisco), although this could be due to the fact that a lot of people see
blockbusters in movie theaters. Last Chance Harvey, a romantic comedy staring
Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, was enjoyed in wealthier suburbs (such as
Scarsdale), but not in city centers (such as Manhattan). Tyler Perry’s movies
(Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to fail and Tyler Perry’s the Family that Preys) were
popular in predominantly black neighborhoods.
Much of what has been innovative thus far at The New York Times can
be classified as process or product innovation. Typically, a healty and growing
company should be content with focusing 90 to 95 percent of its innovation
dollars on such core business innovation and 5 percent or 10 percent on new
business models, says Mark Johnson, chairman of strategic innovation
consultancy Innosight. However, he adds, “The newspaper industry is in so much
trouble at business model innovation is more important than ever.”
Now is a good-and bad-time for fostering such innovation. “You’ve
got the leadership’s attention you need,” says Johnson. “But it’s harder in the
sense that there’s an urgency to fix the financials, and being patient in the
way you need to be for a new business model to unfold is a very difficult thing
to do.”
The New York Times is focused on experimenting with a number of
different initiatives, but Boston Scientific faces a much different challenge:
how to foster innovation without risking the disclosure and leakage of very
valuable intellectual property. And the company has turned to technology to
help find the right mix of access and security.
Boston Scientific wants to tear down barriers that prevent product
developers from accessing the research that went into its sucessful medical
devices so that they can create new products faster. But making data too easy
accessible could open the way to theft of information potentially worth
millions or billion of dollars. It’s a clasic corporate data privacy problem.
“The more info you give knowledge workers, the more effective they
can be in creating a lot of value for the company,” says Boris Evelson, a
principal analyst at Forrester. “This creates disclosure risk-that someone’s
going to walk away with data and give it to competitor.”
This tension compels the $8 billion company to seek out software
that allows the broader engineering community to share knowledge while managing
access to product development data, says Jude Currier, cardiovascular knowledge
management and innovation practices lead at Boston Scientific. “Active security
is the way to address this problem,” Currier says.
That is, regularly monitor who’s accessing what, and adjust
permission as business condition change.
Keeping the pipeline of new stents, pacemaker, and catheters fresh
is especially important because heart-related item account for 80 percent of
Boston Scientific’s sales. Over the past few years, engineers have been focused
on quality system improvements, Currier says. Boston Scientific had inherited
regulatory problems from acquisition it made during that timr. Now that those
situations are addressed , the company is ready to reinvigorate internal
innovation.
Boston Scientific is piloting invention Machine’s Gold fire
software, which, Currier says, provides the right mix of openness and security
for data. Before, Boston Scientific’s product developers worked in silos with
limited access to research by colleagues on different product lines.
Information was so locked down that even if scientists found something useful
from a past project, they often didn’t have access to it. “We’re changing
that.” Currier says.
Gold fire makes an automated workflow out of such tasks as
analyzing markets and milking a company’s intellectual property. It combines
internal company data with information from public sources, such as federal
government databases.
Researchers can use the software to find connections among
different sources, for instance by highlighting similar ideas. Engineers can
use such analysis to get ideas for new products and begin to study their
feasiblility. The goal is to have any engineer be able to access any other
engineer’s research.
“The people in the trenches can’t wait for that day to arrive,” he
says.
Athough the goal is more openness, not all data stay open forever.
For example, as a project gets closer to the patent application stage, access
the data about it is clipped to fewer people, Currier says.
He adds that since installing goldfire, patent applications are up
compared to similar engineeting groups that do not use the Goldfire tool. “we
have had to educate people that we aren’y throwing security out the window but
making valuable knowledge available to the organization,” he says.
SOAL UTS
1. Berdasarkan artikel tersebut, Media The New York Times melakukan
sebuah tindakan kepada seluruh unit bisnisnya. Jelaskan bagaimanakah bentuk
tindakannya? Analisislah bagaimana dampaknya terhadap perusahaan baik dari segi
keuntungan maupun kekurangannya!
JAWAB :
Menurut saya, Media The New York melakukan sebuah tindakan shared
service keseluruh unit bisnisnya. Menurut saya pengertian Shared
Service adalah suatu penyediaan layanan oleh salah satu bagian dari
organisasi atau kelompok dimana layanan yang sebelumnya telah ditemukan di
lebih dari satu bagian dari organisasi atau kelompok. Dengan demikian dana dan
sumber daya dari layanan bersama ini, maka departemen secara efektif menjadi
penyedia layanan internal. Kuncinya disini adalah gagasan ‘berbagi’ dalam suatu
organisasi atau grup. Berbagi ini perlu secara fundamental termasuk
akuntabilitas bersama hasil dengan unit dari pekerjaan yang bermigrasi ke
provider.
Dampak terhadap perusahaan adalah :
a. Kelebihan :
Dengan adanya tindakan shared service, terdapat beberapa keuntungan
yang akan didapatkan.
Shared services dapat mempengaruhi bagaimana perusahaan mengelola aset sumber daya
manusia, keuangan dan teknologi, yang dapat dikatakan tiga komponen terpenting
dalam kesuksesan perusahaan saat ini, Selanjutnya dengan mengkondolidasikan dan
menstandarisasikan management information, pusat shared
service dapat membantu perusahaan untuk mengintegrasikan dan
menunjukan gambaran umum pelanggan mereka. Dengan pendekatan pengembangan
inovasi baru shared service perusahaan akan
terbentuk dan berkesinambungan, karena karyawan didorong untuk melakukan
inovasi membuka interaksi baru dengan tidak hanya melalui majalah/news
paper, tetapi juga melalui cara lain seperti contoh Netflix
rentals.
b. Kekurangan :
Dengan menggunakan tindakan shared service akan menghambat langkah
pemimpin perusahaan dalam melakukan tindakan pengambilan keputusan. Hal ini
diduga shared service merupakan tindakan pengutaraan ide atau gagasan dari
beberapa orang dalam kelompok tersebut. Dan kemungkinan besar jika salah satu
orang akan mengambil keputusan, akan mengakibatkan terjadinya pro dan konta
2. Boston Scientific menghadapi tantangan dengan menyeimbangkan
openness and sharing dengan keamaan dan kebutuhan pembatasan akses ke
informasi. Bagaimana penggunaan teknologi yang dapat memungkinkan perusahaan
untuk mencapai kedua tujuan tersebut pada waktu yang bersamaan? Perubahan apa
sajakah yang dibutuhkan untuk menyukseskan tujuan tersebut? Analisalah serta
kemukakan contoh kongkretnya!
JAWAB :
Teknologi
memungkinkan diciptakannya suatu software yang dapat memadukan
keterbukaan dan berbagi (sharing) dalam mencapai tujuan
tertentu. Contoh dari penggunaan
teknologi ini yaitu software Goldfire. Untuk mengurangi dampak
negatifnya diperlukan sistem untuk membatasi akses informasi yaitu dengan
menggunakan Active Security. Aturan atau cara memonitor aktivitas,siapa
yang mengakses dan apa yang diakses, serta melakukan perubahan izin atau regulasi dalam mengakses
infomasi tersebut pada saat kondisi bisnis atau perusahaan mengalami perubahan/pengembangan
merupakan cara-cara yang dapat meminimalisir dampak negatifnya.
Contohnya adalah proses instalasi software komputer tertentu di
suatu perusahaan, hanya orang orang tertentu dari bagian tertentu saja yang
diberikan wewenang untuk dapat menginstal software tersebut.
Contoh yang lainnya adalah untuk data atau informasi yang
sifatnya rahasia
bagi perusahaan, hanya orang-orang tertentu saja yang dapat
mengaksesnya dengan
menggunakan user ID & password.
3. Peta penyewaan video yang dikembangkan oleh The New York Times
dan Netflix grafis menampilkan film populer di seluruh lingkungan dari
kota-kota besar di Amerika Serikat. Bagaimana Netflix menggunakan informasi ini
untuk meningkatkan bisnis mereka? Dapatkah perusahaan pesaing dan sejenis
seharusnya menyikapi hal ini? Berikan argumen dan analisamu serta kemukakan
contoh kongkretnya!
JAWAB :
Netflix membuat peta penyewaan video tersebut untuk memberikan
informasi kepada
masyarakat luas tentang film-film yang paling digemari saat ini
oleh masyarakat di negara-negara bagian tertentu. Neflix dapat menggunakan
informasi ini untuk meningkatkan bisnis
mereka dengan cara melakukan sebanyak mungkin kerjasama dengan
perusahaan-perusahaan IT atau perusahaan yang mengelola website-website
tertentu untuk lebih banyak menyebarkan atau menampilkan informasi film yang
mereka sewakan beserta popularitas film-film tersebut di daerah-daerah
tertentu.
Perusahaan lain dapat memanfaatkan informasi tersebut untuk
mengambil keuntungan.
contohnya Pihak industri media cetak, elektronik maupun online
dapat menggunakan informasi
tersebut meningkatkan penjualannya karena informasinya yang
menarik.
Contoh yang lain perusahaan-perusahaan penyedia film seperti halnya produsen film,
bioskop, distributor film, rental film, toko penjual video film di negara bagian tertentu, bisa
mengetahui selera dari target pasar serta dapat memutar dan menjual film-film yang populer
sesuai minat masyarakatnya sehingga akan dapat menarik
keuntungan lebih besar karena bisa
menghemat biaya tertentu, contohnya biaya survey minat
masyarakat, dan lain-lain.
KESIMPULAN
Peranan inovasi bisnis dilakukan dengan cara
berbagi dalam satu organisasi atau grup kelompok mereka sebagai shared
service di seluruh unit bisnis. Hal ini dapat menguntungkan
perusahaan maupun karyawan itu sendiri seperti yang telah dilakukan oleh The New
York Times. Dengan teknologi baru, perusahaan menghadapi tantangan
dengan menyeimbangkan openness and sharing dengan keamaan
dan kebutuhan pembatasan akses informasi, perusahaan juga harus merubah budaya
kerja agar alat atau teknologi dapat berjalan sesuai sistem yang lebih baik
seperti yang dicontohkan di Boston Scientific. Keterbukaan
sistem informasi yang dibangun selain untuk meningkatkan bisnis perusahaan,
harus juga dibarengi dengan perlindungan-perlindungan aset data demi
berlangsung bisnis perusahaan.
IDENTITAS
NAMA : ROYKHATUT TOYYIBAH
NPM : 15.61201.002242
SEMESTER : 6
ALAMAT BLOG : roykhatut.blogspot.com
Pasuruan, 26 April 2018