Legacy Problems

The easiest way to build the newest, best, most-efficient anything is to start with a blank page, with no constraints from what came before. Sure, knowledge and experience are also important, as are learned skills and skinned knees, and can`t forget deep pockets. But Microsoft (to cite just one case) has all these things in abundance, but to no avail. Or at least no efficient avail.

Gate's gang, er, Balmer's bunch, have to use their skills, experience and dollars building upon an existing system, Windows, an uncertain vista if there ever was one. Indeed, Windows is perhaps the best technical example of a black hole (the opposite of a blank page), where new applications and features must be built upon and made compatible to whatever was done in the past, going back even to DOS.

(That would be a Disc Operating System, the first computer universe for everyone, Windows on just 64K; no mouse, no hard drive, just strange commands like autoexec.bat and configsys, where everything you did started the same way, with c:/ -- the command prompt.)

It is frightening to think of the total of all IQs at Microsoft, a giant, ferocious brilliance in one company. Yet projects arrive late, programs arrive bloated, not because of a lack of anything but because of too much of something: legacy. businessdictionary.com defines a legacy system as

obsolete computer system that may still be in use because its data cannot be changed to newer or standard formats, or its application programs cannot be upgraded.

Windows adds a third issue, that of creating new features or processes while simultaneously insuring that prior features, processes and programs, even from 3rd parties, still work. In other words if a mistake was made in the past you must continue using and building on the mistake. The legacy system is the environment within which you must work. It is the reality.

I am neither a hard nor soft computer professional (or even gifted amateur), so I mention this not to discuss computers in general or Windows in particular, but to introduce the problems of legacy systems. Why? Because of the N=1, R=G world described by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan's in their book, The New Age Of Innovation.

P&K describe a world where services, products and delivery systems are customized at the most basic level: the individual. This is the N=1. (R=G describes a focus on access to resources--on a global scale--not ownership of resources.) All fine stuff, yet something kept me coming back to their ideas. Eventually (yesterday actually) I realized it was legacy systems.

P&K use medical insurance and diabetes in India as an example of N=1. Diabetes sufferers pay a unique-to-them premium based on their individual behavior and lifestyle. They argue that

This could be achieved (and the technology is already in use) via remote monitoring of blood sugar and other vital statistics, once a day at random, based on sensors attached to that person's watch or cell phone.

Through this data, the insurer, doctor and patient--based on the patient's full consent (italics added)--could assess the level of compliance of that person to a recommended regimen of medication, diet and exercise. <snip> If, however, the person refused to change her lifestyle and did not comply, the ... premium would then go up.

Personally I have no problem with this. I am a strong believer in user pays and being responsible for your own actions. I believe most obese people are not victims of the fast food industry but are simply lazy, and should have to pay more for health insurance (and for airplane seats, a pet peeve of mine when I fly). I would of course agree to a safety net for true victims and the truly disadvantaged, but for the most people, you do the crime you do the time, period.

Back to P&K. Such personalized N=1 service requires sharing information, personal information. Possible perhaps in India and other communal/collectivist-societies, would it be possible in individualistic-societies like the US or Great Britain? If there is a difference, and I believe there is--check a column by David Brooks in the Aug 11 New York Times for a good description of the differences--what do these differences mean for the N=1 service model?

I will continue this theme and what it might mean for Dick and Acme. In one sense Dick has the best possible position, a blank page upon which to build a company. Many questions arise though: how will his plans and structures fit into different societal types? Will Dick be forced to do N=1 on a macro scale, offering different service models to different locations? If so, what does that mean to business plans? How can Dick create a blank page environment in a dark hole area?

That's enough for today. It is now off to another day of downsize hell. Sigh. I'd much rather sit here and write all day. Heck, I'd much rather do anything. But I was (and still am) influenced by a quote from R.L. Stevenson, that (paraphrasing) "The true measure of a man is not in how well he does the things he likes to do, but in how well he does the things he does not like to do, but must do."

Helping my parent's downsize is a good example of the latter: So far I've done a pretty good job. I think.