August 2010
Intermediate to advanced
272 pages
6h 21m
English
Content preview from Agility: Competing and Winning in a Tech-Savvy MarketplaceBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 2. MAXIMUM RIDE: OWNING TECHNOLOGY VERSUS JUST USING IT
When we buy a car, we expect to drive it—usually on a daily basis. Sure, there are a few people—like comedian and car lover Jay Leno—who buy cars, put them into a garage, and sometimes never use or even look at them again. But most of us look at our needs, add a few "wants," and come up with a car package that is going to get us where we need to go safely, securely, and maybe with a bit of style.
So why do companies act more like Jay, the car collector, than the regular Joe when it comes to IT purchases? Just about every company has acquired and deployed software and hardware that sits on or under someone's desk and is never used. Somebody thought it was a good idea at some point. Somebody bought it. And now it sits, taking up valuable real estate and maybe some valuable IT time.
When I met with the Kimberly-Clark team in 2004 to discuss its then recent and early Office 2003 migration, I really wanted to know why the company made the upgrade. What was its driving factor? Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Kimberly-Clark has nearly 56,000 employees worldwide and operations in 35 countries. Its global brands are sold in more than 150 countries. Every day, 1.3 billion people use Kimberly-Clark products, such as Kleenex, Scott, Andrex, Huggies, Pull-Ups, and Kotex. This is not a small operation. And the answer to my questions was definitely interesting.
The customers' IT team did a beautiful job of repeating Microsoft's marketing ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.