Wednesday, September 13, 2006

MIT Sloan CIO Symposium- Dave Girouard

daniela barbosa Wednesday, September 13, 2006 1 comment :

Yesterday on the way home i listened to the Dave Girouard session at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. Girouard is VP and General Manager of Google Enterprise and on the MIT site it quotes Eric Schmidt saying that "In his group, we have the wildest meetings"- sign me up.

I saw one of the other Enterprise Google folks in April at a conference and he had also talked about the evolution of the 'office worker' to the 'knowledge workers' to the 'self directed innovator' in the workplace. Right away i associated with the definition of a self directed innovator- i had been thinking about that user for a while as i design solutions for enterprise customers- mainly because i am one, but more importantly because i believe those folks are on the bipolar edge of an enterprise user and a consumer and successful enterprise applications need to feel 'comfortable' and usable for these users and then others who will follow the early adopters.

I highlight the items below that i thought were important to keep in mind as we try to deliver enterprise solutions that solve business issues and have high levels of adoption. Here are a few items that are important to keep in mind that Girouard mentioned that i would keep in mind with information delivery solutions in the enterprise:

The target employees for the greatest adoption probably has no directs reports however are big influencers at their company and/or within their groups- if they use it others will follow
the raw material = talent- without it nothing happens- tools need to leverage that talent and enable sharing
need information everywhere- at their desktop, on the road, in a meeting, on the fly when and how they want and need it
put the companies' knowledge behind that person
they like to collaborate inside and outside the company- enable this
their personal life and work lives are not entirely separate- they live an intermingled life- support it
they do not spend the majority of a time in one single application- let the information follow were they go

In Girouard's case he is talking about search- but we all know that Google Enterprise is thinking way beyond search and other other enterprise applications already out there. As savy users, if enterprise applications don't meet our needs we find other ways to do what we need to do, we stop being productive or even worse leave to go somewhere were the tools meet our 'style'. With the new 'MySpace' generation coming into the workforce, enterprise applications need to be designed to meet the needs of those new users.