Intelligent Enterprise

"Leveraged intellect and its prime facilitator, service technology, are reshaping not only the service industries but also U.S. manufacturing, the country's overall economic and growth patterns."

"The harnessing of intellect and its handmaiden, services, has been silently revolutionizing both the U.S. and world economies?and the power relationships, competitive structures, and boundaries of most individual industries. "

"Core service competencies focus on the basics of what creates value from the customer's viewpoint and should be designed and evaluated from this perspective."

"Think in terms of dominance?being able to bring more talent to bear on an issue critical to customers than anyone in the world. "

"As companies develop sufficient depth in a specific knowledge or service activity to dominate a segment of their industry, they can sell that capability to new customers in ways that increase profits, absorb costs, or support diversification."

"Effectively combining micro units permits one to achieve the highest possible degree of segmentation, strategic fine-tuning, value-added, and customer satisfaction in the marketplace."

"The "spider's web" organization operates essentially without?or with only minimal?formal authority or "order-giving" hierarchies. "

"When properly installed disaggregated organizations can be effective in harnessing intellectual resources for certain purposes."

"Services and manufacturing are now so intertwined and mutually supporting that, increasingly, success in either goes to those who effectively utilize the combined technological potentials of both."

"Strategic focus lies not so much in narrowing or limiting one's product lines and product market scope as in focusing strategy around a uniquely developed set of core intellectual and service capabilities important to customers."

"With rare exceptions, the economic and producing power of a modern corporation lies more in its intellectual and service capabilities than in its hard assets?land, plant, and equipment. "

"Processes of innovation tend to be unique and chaotic, not orderly or easily planned."

"People judge the quality of an enterprise's output largely against the standard of what they expect from the producer."

"The most pervasive issues companies encounter in managing service productivity lie in (1) measuring service quality and (2) determining its economic value."

"Service technologies (particularly IT) have been advancing so fast that it has often been impossible for a company to fully recover its investments in new technologies before it is necessary to make the next generation of investments."

"Outsourcing of a complete or partial activity often creates great opportunities, but these may also present new types of risks."

"Successful transitions toward any new organization forms or concepts will focus more on people and the processes of change than on formal structures of organization or control systems."

"Services and the management of intellect will be the keys to future economic success for nations?as well as for all businesses regardless of whether they are in the "manufacturing" or the "services" industries. "