That used to be pejorative; a way to describe an unrepentant dreamer with no practical ability or interest.  Today, it might be good cause to pay $2-3K/day to that same person, who may in fact yet be an unrepentant dreamer.  A sign of the times.

I have my head in the clouds–from time to time in both of the described ways.  While being fully consigned to the value and inevitability of cloud computing, with good and reasonable (reasoned) cause for believing in it, even I have to admit it’s really a “movement” benefiting from good marketing or spin.  It’s not new, but perhaps only a concept whose time has come.  That’s the part that concerns me a bit, having followed the idea for the past decade or two in its various guises.

It’s good that cloud computing’s time has come (I hope).  It’s less good that there are so many false prophets.  As inevitable as worms popping out of the ground and drowning on the sidewalk in a downpour, this latest great idea has drawn out a growing number of men and women–and their organizations–who are using the name, the idea, and the fashion to appropriate a vast and oversold notion to every sort of incidental and ancillary service or other offering.  Of this it’s important to be vigilant in every such instance, like a long bull market, real estate bubble, or miracle drug.

For me and others, what it means as well is carrying around the uninspiring character of simple value.  Whatever it’s name or description–distributed or grid, “the network is the computer,” etc.–the concept is relatively simple and old, and… well… bland.  It’s not that sexy.  It just doesn’t sizzle in and of itself.  But it’s a strong proposition and it drives much needed power for businesses and governments–to do what they’re supposed to do instead of being second-rate IT shops.

All I hope is that those coming to this party late and getting in on the wonders of cloud pull their heads out of the fog and make sure they’re not overlooking the steak for all the sizzle out there.

I’m a panelist for “The Case for Cloud Computing in Government” at the Canadian Cloud Council CloudLAUNCH conference in mid-October, which got me to thinking.  In mid-thought about why government needs to pursue a cloud-based IT development strategy, an idea about government’s v. the private sector’s role (and shortcomings) in Canadian productivity unfolded.  It was triggered by a comment by Denzil Doyle about a Financial Post essay by Don Drummond.  Dr. Drummond pointed the finger at Canadian business’s lackadasical attitude toward supporting productivity improvement when it has the chance.  The forum thread reflected a lot of other commentary about such subjects:  that there are other levers at the government’s disposal, such as tax structure/regime; that business does plenty already; that the measures are poor and inconsistent; and so forth.

I pondered:  what does government do well and badly?  why does it fiddle with various levers and dials at the periphery to affect players’ activities?  are there other things it could do?  is business doing all/what it can do?  Again:  and so forth.

Here’s the notion, admittedly with the blinkered view of someone with a narrow answer to a broad question:  I think that business probably hasn’t done what it could have or should have to invest in productivity gain; governments play with levers like taxation and “industry supporting” investment, through credits, grants, and so on, and they probably could do better.

1.  Canadian business could be more productive

It is soooo Canadian to overuse assets, scraping the plate right to the porcelain well past the asset’s ability to provide productive value.  It reduces investment demand.  In my experience, Canadian businesses are at the very least less prone than our American counterparts to spend money for efficiency or capability gains.  That makes the argument supporting business not having done as much as it could to close the productivity gap more likely on point.

2.  The metrics are misleading

Far be it from me to challenge anyone who studies and understands the intricacies of what goes into performance metrics of any sort including productivity.  Whether branch plant economics are at play here or the measures are simply different between Canadian and American firms, I wouldn’t begin to dispute.  That said, it seems to me the proof is in the pudding (or the discrepancy in how much power Canadians have to purchase pudding relative to Americans as measured longitudinally over past decades).  It’s hard, though not impossible, to argue that our productivity has been anything but foreshortened relatively speaking.

3.  Governments aren’t doing the right things

This is the core of the thoughts I thunk.  Standing outside a mega-centre store waiting for my wife and daughter, it seemed to me that all efforts at manipulating economic levers of the to move the private sector in “better” ways  have been failures of greater or lesser degrees.  There are obvious short-term successes (that Canada’s New Government points out ceaselessly) and many failures.  The bottom line is that the private sector quickly learns how to game government largesse to its advantage, and that doesn’t usually lead to increasing the national good.

More than that, governments get nothing from their investments supporting specific industries and innovations.  Directed funding to support private sector firms seeking markets for their innovations obviously gives those firms more capital to work with but does nothing of direct value for government.  The hope is that the investment will be paid back—its ROI positive—through general economic gain and taxes levied on those businesses.

My reverie shifted to grand societal projects such as the CNR, the postal service, Kennedy’s moon mission, the creation of the Internet (Darpanet) and the GPS satellite system, radio-based telephony, and even skip/ramjets.  Unlike simple investing in private sector business activities—as they search for commercial markets—these projects actually generated value for the governments that ran them.  This is fairly critical, I think.  In all of these cases, and so many more, government spent a lot of money.  Much of that money went directly into the pockets of contractors.  And that’s OK because the last thing we want is socialized business.  But more importantly, what was developed and built was directly useful to the government for some reason.  In the case of CNR and postal service and Truman’s interstate, the reason was knitting together a nation.  In the case of GPS, radio telephony, and jets/rockets, the purpose was defense.   Darpanet was not conceived and created to help you sell your trash to people across the country.  In the case of the moon mission, the goal was to… impress Marilyn Monroe.  But whatever.

There are two undeniable points in this:  (1) Each of these projects ultimately became a successful platform for private sector innovation and wealth development for a long time over a rich, evolutionary life-cycle, and (2) Each was done to satisfy a nation’s needs as identified and pursued by its government, not to bet on private sector, market-based objectives.

Creating sustainable platforms for long-term growth is just not something that private sector firms can or will do, full stop.  That falls to government.  Government can ideologically abdicate responsibility and turn it back onto the private sector through investment credits, tax breaks, and the other candies it has in its bag.  It hasn’t, doesn’t, and won’t work.  Business, for its part, needs to stop pretending it can and will take on such grand infrastructure, and stop bleeding society for those credits for “innovations” that do nothing but create short-term rents for itself.  Short-term rents are business’s wheelhouse, and best it should be compelled to stick to that space.

Circling back around to the conference panel participation, I think that by shifting itself to cloud computing government could make tremendous productivity gains in IT spending and operations alone.  Those gains alone could release to government the resources to do something selfish and create something for itself (which is for Canada or Ontario or Toronto, after all).  That, in turn, could first increase productivity and expose platforms for unsupported private sector innovation that can’t even be imagined today.

I have more, specific thoughts and ideas about cloud computing—with some clear examples of how productivity improvements open up opportunities for innovation that can be enormous in terms of wealth creation.  For that, come to the CloudLAUNCH in October.

This piece (Symantec admits antivirus source code filched in unnoticed 2006 hack attack) in the Globe and Mail today is ironic in and of itself.  The admission that Symantec continued to sell PCAnywhere knowing that code had been stolen and the security compromised ought to generate at least one or two entrepreneurial lawyer-disgruntled customer combinations to file a class against Symantec.  Of course, it’s too late to short their stock right now.

Maybe nobody’s noticed (maybe nobody cares), but there is a tension between creation and evolution that goes on in business even without invoking the giant scientific-belief system debate.  And, it permeates right down to the educational process for business and organizational administration.  What’s worse is that unlike the much larger debate, where there are clear divides and most people who contemplate it for even a moment tend to fall into one of the two camps, in business and organizations the same person can and will hold diametrically opposing positions from moment to moment depending on what (s)he is doing.  In brief, it goes like this:

Management education and the practice of developing business plans, etc. especially within large and established organizations tends to follow the creationist approach.  Think it through to some conclusion (i.e., a successful business) based on the materials available and the circumstances observable.  Plan for the successful achievement of that “business case.” Implement the plan to “create” the successful outcome.  This is decidedly creationist–“intelligent design” if you will.  And, at least where I’ve observed, there is even a “religion” around these articles of faith that the end can be achieved if you plan it well enough.

On the other hand, there are those who are occasionally raised upon shoulders (can you say “Jobs”), who represent a different point of view–at least for a while.  That point of view is somewhat evolutionist and, unlike the larger philosophical perspective that looks backward in time to create a coherent path for how evolution happened to get “us” to this point, in business and organizations evolution does not yet know the end point. But, the perspective and logic is the same: there is a starting point and a hoped for direction and end state.  Ultimately, however, a product or a business or some organization is given life and “free will,” and then is set out into the conditions of the world to grow and develop as the conditions of the market, competition, and funding allow.  Without a doubt, the intent has direction and a goal.  But, and this is key, the response to those changing conditions may (often does) move the product or business in ways unanticipated at time zero.  In short, the product or business “evolves.”

Which is right?  Who knows but I would suggest that the path to greatness is littered with the corpses of the creationists.  Few businesses and organizations exist at any stage in the exact condition assumed at the outset.  Some are close to what the founder or visionary saw; others are massively different.  What is sure, in both cases is that the mind has to make sure there is internal consistency.  So, those who believe in the creationist approach will adjust and evolve but conveniently forget the original designs (perhaps “revise” is a softer and more palatable choice) and paint the bulls-eye around the arrow at any given time.  The evolutionists tend to be those in full apology mode:  when something hasn’t gone exactly as anticipated and changes have to be made, even before success is determined, many become evolutionists to accommodate the earlier “failure”–at least according to creationist rules.

Will this change?  I doubt it.  I doubt it will even become more acceptable and transparent.  There’s too much at stake and too little to squash the conveniently malleability of self-/organizational-delusion.

And who am I to change it?  I’m just saying…

When I was eight years old–about a month from turning nine, I went to a hockey school in Toronto for a week. For the week that followed, my mother toured me through all the kid-friendly parts of Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe that were her old stomping grounds.

We ended up at Fort Erie and the Crystal Beach amusement park: monster roller coaster, fun carnival games, and various other typical amusements. We went to the “Fun House” in which clowns and other stuff would pop out of a strobe-lit darkness to great shocking hilarity. Let it be said, I do not have a clown phobia. That now said, I got to the first unexpected puff of air and out the ride I went. My mother, being the mother she was, was insistent that I go through the ride completely. Eventually she brought the carny operating the fun house to guide all of us through the amusement with a flashlight. Basically, we got a private workman’s tour of the magic behind the ride.

For years I’ve been a bit embarrassed and guilty about what a coward I was. Then I remember that I WAS EIGHT in an adult fun house. So I feel better. It struck me recently, though, that this much-too-close-to-forty-year-old episode was perfectly consistent with who I am and what I’m compelled to do every day.

What I do is pull back the curtain to show everyone that the magic–whatever it is–is just artful trickery. Mostly that’s been in the realm of business. This is not to suggest that these magic tricks are deceitful or nefarious, only that they are not always what they seems to be.  Tricks of language, method, or what have you are presented to create and sustain an illusion of magic and insight. I expose it so that everyone who wants can understand it and do the right thing rather than do things right (or as they’re told are “right”).

It all makes sense to me now.