|
|
Friday, November 15, 2002
|
|
| |
Intel delves into life sciences. The chip giant has created an internal group devoted to developing technology for the life sciences market, one of the few remaining hot areas in the computer world. [CNET News.com]
"There seems to be a rush toward building out the infrastructure around life sciences," Hermann said. "Every country in the world is looking for bioinformatics to be the next technology pillar: Singapore...Taiwan...the U.S. Even Ireland is looking at it." "Although most corporations have kept a firm lid on technology spending, bioscience companies continue to invest heavily, banking on the promise that the uncoiling of the human genetic map will lead to medical breakthroughs."
I sure hope this is true. One of areas that I am targeting in my job search, as you can tell from this site, is Life Science and Biotechnology. This is an extremely information intensive industry and the information management requirements of drug discovery, drug development, and commercialization are intense. Collaboration amoung scientists needs to be accelerated and the industry needs a much better set of information management, knowledge management, and collaboration tools. Currently the business processes are siloed in organizations so they are unable to take advantage of the insights generated in their work in real time. This is will become extremely important as the industry learns more about the human genome, experimentation can be simulated in computer models rather then performed in wet labs and market demands faster development cycles.
3:46:03 PM  >
|
|
I am working with an outplacement consulting firm called OI Partners, founded in 1987 with the objective of providing the most successful career transition, coaching and workforce consulting in our industry. OI Partners has grown to be the largest career consulting partnership in the world with more than 170 offices in 24 countries. We offer a wide range of strategic and innovative programs, services and technologies that are flexible and individualized to ensure a favorable business outcome for everyone involved.
The consultant I am working with is Stephen C. Ford, a Managing Partner with the firm. Steve was a founding director of OI Partners, Inc. in 1987. From 1992 to 1995, Steve served as President, during which time the organization tripled in size and enhanced its reputation as the innovator in the career transition field. Steve led OI through the planning and implementation of a major restructuring to facilitate further growth. In 1997, he was interim Chairman and CEO. Currently, Steve is a Director for OI which has over 180 offices in 26 countries. Steve was a founder of Fitzgerald, Stevens & Ford in 1981 and has been President since 1987.
I had a successful meeting with Steve today. We talked about how to network into companies and how to put yourself in the shoes of the person who may be able to hire you. What do they want to know about you? They may want to know what you were responsible for, but, far more likely, they are worrying about what kind of results can you deliver in the future. Therefore all conversations and written material should focus on the results that you have achieved and by inference what you will achieve in the future.
This weekend I will rewrite my resume to focus more on results. If you have looked at my resume page, you will see that the current one is a strictly chronological narrative of my work life. I will post the reworked document on the site, after I get some feedback.
3:43:42 PM >
|
|
Companies that I will see today: 15 November
Celerant Consulting, Inc
Celerant Consulting enables leading companies to achieve significant increases in quantifiable value. The company provides operational strategy and implementation services and prides itself on being the consultant most able to help organisations progress rapidly from thinking differently to acting differently. Headquartered in London, Celerant Consulting has a 15-year track record and an established presence throughout Europe and North America. The majority of its clients are the top 1000 companies in the world across Energy, Process, Manufacturing, FMCG, and Infrastructure industries. Celerant Consulting is an affiliate of Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL), a leader in eBusiness solutions and Net services software designed to secure and power the networked world.
My colleague and friend at Celerant Consulting is the President Dwight Gertz. Here is his bio and a few of his comments about consulting.
"2001 was the year in which consultants lost their arrogance. There were two causes for this. The first was the tough business environment clients found themselves in. The honeymoon is over for new economy and 'e-anything'. There was the business slowdown as well. A lot of facile talk and interesting theoretical reasoning from consultants now seems useless."
As President of Celerant Consulting, Inc., Dwight is building on Celerant Consulting's impressive track record of delivering significant, quantifiable value to leading companies in the Americas who want a fast track to efficiencies, savings and profitable growth in key operational areas.
Dwight has spent 21 years in leadership roles in the consulting industry, serving as a partner of Bain & Company and Vice President of Mercer Management Consulting, where he led the development of the firm's Intellectual Capital. Immediately prior to joining Celerant Consulting in 1999, Dwight was CEO of Symmetrix, Inc., a US-based consulting and technology firm.
His publications include Grow to be Great: Breaking the Downsizing Cycle, published by Simon & Schuster in 1995. The book has been reprinted eight times in English and also published in five other languages.
I am also meeting with a friend who works with Vitivity, Inc. Vitivity is a startup financed by Millennium Pharmaceuticals as heath information business.
3:30:57 PM >
|
|
The Companies or organizations II talked with and researched yesterday, 14 November
Sapient: This was one of the original internet consulting companies. It has downsized and moved it's development work to India. They are organized vertically and their new approach to the market is apparently much more successful
Aspen Technology: A friend was just layed off from Aspen in their supply chain practice. I don't know what the future holds.
MIT: DSpace, Digital Library project : The project director is MacKenzie Smith <kenzie@mit.edu>. Ann Wolpert is a Simmons Alum and on the Steering Committee for the project.
Ann Wolpert (awolpert@mit.edu) is Director of Libraries for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has reporting responsibility for the MIT Press. The MIT Libraries include five major collections, a number of smaller branch libraries in specialized subject areas, a fee-for-services group, and the Institute Archives. The MIT Press publishes about 200 new books and over 40 journals per year in fields related to or reliant upon science and technology, and is widely recognized for its innovative graphic design and electronic publishing initiatives. Ann's Institute responsibilities include membership on the Committee on Copyright and Patents, the Council on Educational Technology, the Dean's Committee, and the President's Academic Council. She is a member of the editorial board of the MIT Press, and chairs its Management Board.
Prior to joining MIT, Ann was Executive Director of Library and Information Services at the Harvard Business School. Her experience previous to Harvard included management of the Information Center of Arthur D. Little, Inc., an international management and technology consulting firm, where she was also engaged in consulting assignments. More recent consulting assignments have taken her to the campuses of INCAE in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and to the Malaysia University of Science and Technology, Selangor, Malaysia.
Ann is active in the professional library community, currently serving on the Executive Committee of the Boston Library Consortium; on the Information Policies Committee of the Association of Research Libraries; and as a member of the editorial boards of Library & Information Science Research and The Journal of Library Administration. A frequent speaker and writer, she has recently contributed papers on such topics as library service to remote library users, intellectual property management in the electronic environment, and the future of research libraries in the digital age.
Flagship Ventures: venture capital firm
Beyond Genomics
EngenOS
I will report later on why these companies are important and what I learned.
7:06:35 AM >
|
|
Microsoft names homeland security director. Thomas Richey to head business unit focused on federal government [InfoWorld: Top News]
MICROSOFT HAS CHOSEN an aide to Massachusetts Senator and presidential hopeful John F. Kerry to represent the company's interests before the coming U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Thomas Richey formerly served as a commander in the U.S. Coast Guard and worked in Democrat Kerry's Washington, D.C., office as a Coast Guard Fellow between 1995 and 1997, then again as a senior policy adviser to Kerry on issues including homeland defense starting in August 2001.
Richey will be the director of homeland security for Microsoft Federal, a Microsoft business unit focused on the federal government. Richey will work out of Microsoft's Washington, D.C., office. His job will be to make sure Microsoft's voice is heard in debates about the development of an information technology framework used by the US$38 billion Department of Homeland Security and to encourage the use of Microsoft's products within the new department, according to Microsoft spokesman Keith Hodson.
This is evidence that companies expect the government will spend on IT and IT services. Microsoft and IBM have located development centers in Washington anticipating that there will be significant volume coming out of the integration of the Homeland Security effort.
12:12:15 AM >
|
|
IDC says IT spending has bottomed out. Network equipment and software purchasing will return to growth by 2006 [InfoWorld: Top News]
After two years of watching IT spending grind to a near halt, IDC has a new economic outlook that predicts purchases of such things as network equipment and software will stabilize in 2002 and crawl back to reach pre-2001 growth rates by 2006.
The worst is over for most sectors of the IT industry in most regions around the globe, analysts said Thursday during a conference here at which IDC detailed figures from a lengthy report on the health of markets by geography and industry. In 2002, worldwide IT spending growth will return, although it will be nowhere near the 11.5 percent growth in spending that IDC recorded in 2000. By 2005, the rate of spending growth is pegged to reach 10 percent.
I suspect the worst is not over. CIOs and people in the industry that I talk with are not budgeting for increases in 2003. Services will continue to suffer from huge price pressures. Some sectors, however, may continue to do well. I am looking in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and government for jobs. These areas rely heavily on information technology and manipulation of information and data.
12:04:17 AM >
|
|
|
|
© Copyright
2003
Ralph Poole.
Last update:
4/7/2003; 8:54:34 PM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves
(blue) Manila theme. |
|
Blogroll Me!
< ?
bostonites
#
>
> |
