Tom Austin

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Tom Austin
VP & Gartner Fellow
17 years at Gartner
41 years IT industry

Tom Austin, vice president, has been a Gartner fellow for a decade. He is chief of research for social software, collaboration, communications, information management, business intelligence and high-performance workplace (HPW) research. Read Full Bio

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"Strategic Plans Lose Favor" as firms seek real-time, agile strategy setting strategy

by Tom Austin  |  January 25, 2010  |  4 Comments

A very interesting article in today’s Wall St. Journal quoted several sources that clearly support many of the underlying assumptions, imperatives and actions we have been talking about for the last half year in our Pattern-Based Strategy research.

Sources cited by the Journal include Office Depot, Accenture, Spartan Motors, Boston Consulting Group, Whirlpool and McKinsey. Let’s be clear. These firms may not have heard of our Pattern-Based Strategy work. But what they’re doing — actively seeking early indicators of change, dynamically adjusting their plans and seeking far greater business agility fits right into the bigger picture that we’ve been painting.

If you haven’t heard of what we’re saying about "Pattern-Based Strategy", start here — this piece is free to all. Gartner clients can drill in further. Two of the earliest pieces we wrote (of nearly 100) are "Introducing Pattern-Based Strategy" and "Five Eras of IT Business Value Add: From Automation to Pattern-Based Strategy".

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Todd Hanson   January 25, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    The steps for a pattern-based strategy assessment may include:

    - Completion of an information capabilities assessment.
    - Identification and tracking of (information) patterns.
    - A consideration for putting in place a change management program.
    - Preparation to accommodate exception rules (and the like).
    - Periodic measurement and reassessment of results.

  • 2 uberVU - social comments   January 25, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by 8of12: Google Reader: “Strategic Plans Lose Favor” as firms seek real-time, agile strategy setting strategy http://bit.ly/6X32mL...

  • 3 Tweets that mention "Strategic Plans Lose Favor" as firms seek real-time, agile strategy setting strategy -- Topsy.com   January 25, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by emexec, August Jackson, Nenshad Bardoliwalla, Justin Breitfelder, Mark Williams and others. Mark Williams said: RT @nenshad: "Strategic Plans Lose Favor" as firms seek real-time, agile strategy setting strategy http://bit.ly/7RqxeB [...]

  • 4 Cedric Laridon   January 26, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    Tom,

    I believe adaptive systems that can respond to changes in a wide range of environment parameters are the next frontier of enterprise computing. I strongly believe in event-driven applications and business intelligence, facilitated by enterprise-wide SOA enablement.

    I am interested however how Gartner responds to criticism from authors like Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swan) who argue that disruptive events are never predicted, only explained afterwards (hindsight is 20/20).

    Best regards

    Cedric Laridon