The glass ceiling is what I perceive to be the layer between the various management groups within an organization - between workers, managers and the various levels in between.

In most cases the glass ceiling acts as a barrier for good ideas to work their way up the chain to actual implementation. As well as acting as a barrier for true information dissemination from the higher ups to the folks actually involved at the ground level.

Does it really mean that just because you are younger and more inexperienced your contributions aren’t valued? Not really. To drive innovation you need young fresh blood, tempered with experience only people years in the industry can give you.

I have been fortunate to have worked with very open minded groups of people in all the organizations I have been a part of (yes, I have been counting my blessings). This has prompted a much faster increase in my learning and subsequent career direction than would have been otherwise possible.

A good manager is one who understands the boundaries of the corporate world, yet allows his team to experiment and test these boundaries.

If you have experienced this glass ceiling, were you the one enforcing it or trying to break through?

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Being part of a couple of medium / large organizations I’ve always felt that my work was governed in some manner or the other by processes.

So, the real question is whether process and innovation can truly co-exist. With an organization focused on process improvement, a large amount of effort goes into improving existing systems. While great, i can’t help but wonder whether this rigid adherence to processes actually impedes creativity.

With the various levels of certification that corporations go through as part of their “quality” process allow for certain levels of improvement their stringent norms on conformance really doesn’t leave very much room for thinking “outside the box”

The Indian IT services industry is known for its high levels of process adherence, a component that it has built its reputation on.

A friend of mine recently moved from a very small startup to a rather large company, his first reaction was “I spend more time conforming to processes than doing anything really creative”. In the large scale of things I do agree that this high level of process adherence does make it easier to enable the creation of a “Way” of doing things. Though from what little I have seen there is always a certain level of diversity in the way these “processes” are interpreted.

I do understand if asked the question of whether process and innovation go hand in hand the answer would probably be “Innovation needs to be governed by a certain level of process”. But where do you stand? If you had the option would you push innovation? Or process?

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Source : Cnet News 

Yahoo filed a three-year plan–a set of slides originally presented in December 2007–with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining the ways in which the company is worth more than Microsoft is willing to pay at this point. Yahoo expects growth in revenue and operating cash flow of $1.9 billion over the next three years from display and video advertising and $1.4 billion in added search revenue. Caroline McCarthy has more on this topic in her blog post.

I doubt that this regulatory filing will do much to change Microsoft’s strategy, which has been to hold firm on its February 1 bid of $31 a share, or $44.6 billion. In the current economic climate, Yahoo’s promises of future growth, including doubling its operating cash flow from $1.9 billion to $3.7 in the three-year span, are future promises, not necessarily a reality.

Microsoft, and investors, are waiting to see how Yahoo made it through the first quarter, ending March 31. A nonstellar quarter will make Yahoo shareholders more willing to accept what Gates, Ballmer, and company have to offer, and hope that it doesn’t go down.

Following are some of the slides from the presentation:

(Credit: Yahoo)

(Credit: Yahoo)

(Credit: Yahoo)

(Credit: Yahoo)

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Source : Top Tech News

Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.’s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.

An official at the trade and economy ministry, which oversees product problems, said a defect is suspected in the lithium-ion battery in the iPod Nano, model number MA099J/A. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity, saying he is reiterating a ministry position.

The problem surfaced in January in Kanagawa Prefecture southwest of Tokyo, and Apple reported the problem to the ministry in March. No one was injured, the official said. Other details weren’t available.

Apple Japan did not contest the ministry statement but declined further comment. Nano players are sold all over the world, and it was still unclear where else besides Japan the suspected model was sold, said Masayoshi Suzuki, an Apple spokesman in Tokyo.

The ministry has instructed Apple Japan to find out the cause of what it is categorizing as a fire and report back to the government.

The iPod was assembled in China, but it was unclear who made the lithium-ion battery, the ministry official said.

Lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for a series of blazes in laptops recently that have resulted in massive global recalls.

The ministry said Apple has shipped about 425,000 iPods of the same suspected model were shipped into Japan. It was unknown how many have been sold and how many might still be in stores.

Shipments of the model began in September 2005 and were discontinued after September 2006, the ministry said.

The iPod has been the symbol in recent years of the successful fashionable image of Apple. But its sales momentum may be gradually running out of steam.

Apple sold 22.1 million iPods during the holiday quarter ended Dec. 31, fewer than the 25 million iPods analysts had expected it to sell. That’s raising fears that the company, based in Cupertino, Calif., may suffer as it tries to convince consumers to buy higher-end iPods — a key part of its strategy.

The batteries in Apple products have had some problems in the past, largely about wearing out, not about being prone to fires.

In 2006, Japanese electronics and entertainment maker Sony Corp. apologized for the troubles it had caused consumers through defective lithium-ion batteries that had equipped Sony laptops and products by Dell Inc., Apple, Lenovo and other major manufacturers.

The Tokyo-based company recalled about 10 million batteries following reports of some computers using Sony power packs overheating and bursting into flames.

The lithium-ion battery is considered an overall good technology because of its ability to furnish power in relatively small sizes, although its suspected tendency to catch fire is a major reason Toyota Motor Corp. and other automakers are being cautious about using it in ecological cars.

Toyota’s Prius gas-electric hybrid uses a different kind of battery, and the switch in future green models to the lithium-ion battery will be seen as a considerable breakthrough.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

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Source : Cnet News

This post was expanded at 6:43 AM PT with details from the AOL-Bebo conference call.

In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social-networking site Bebo. The price tag: $850 million in cash.

Rumors had floated over the past few months that Bebo, which has over 40 million members, was up for sale. Reports suggested a $1 billion price tag, but there were few hints as to potential buyers. Though Bebo had already partnered with AOL’s AIM messaging client to facilitate friend-invite interoperability between the two services, even the most creative blogger speculation didn’t seem to point to AOL eventually buying the social network.

Ironically, AOL itself has been talked about as an acquisition target. Jeffrey Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, which operates AOL, has spoken recently about plans to spin off or sell divisions of the company.

AOL has made it clear that buying Bebo is a move geared toward international growth, as the youth-oriented social network is wildly popular in the U.K., Ireland, and New Zealand. AOL reported that it has launched “17 international web sites over the last year and has plans to expand to 30 countries outside the U.S. by the end of 2008,” as well as international versions of its home page and some services. Bebo, meanwhile, plans to launch five localized versions of its service this year (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands), and AOL will make it a major part of the company’s international expansion strategy.

“Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media,” said AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco in a statement. “What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities…This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”

Additionally, despite the fact that performance monitoring firms have pegged it as sluggish, Bebo’s technology was likely appealing to AOL. The social network’s developer platform supports both OpenSocial and Facebook applications; it also has an “Open Media” platform for audio and video content from big-media names like CBS and MTV as well as online production outlets like Next New Networks and Ustream. AOL, meanwhile, has opened up AIM to developers.

In a conference call on Thursday, Falco and Ron Grant, AOL’s president and COO, as well as Bebo president Joanna Shields, said that integration between Bebo and AOL’s AIM and ICQ messaging properties will be crucial. Combined, they said, AOL will own a “social graph” of 80 million people, bigger than the 67 million that the independently-run Facebook currently counts but still significantly smaller than News Corp.’s MySpace.com.

“The distribution aspect of linking up with AIM and ICQ is an extraordinary opportunity for us,” Shields said in the conference call.

Still, at the core, the Bebo acquisition is all about the advertising. It comes at a time when AOL is still struggling to make the transition to a leader in online advertising after amassing nearly $1 billion worth in acquisitions–Tacoda, Buy.at, Quigo, and AdTech, to name a few–into its Platform-A ad network, as well as social-media buys like Goowy. Bebo, like most other social-networking sites, relies on ad revenue, and as projections claim that social-media ad buys will keep rising (eMarketer predicts 75 percent year over year), AOL undoubtedly wants a piece of the pie.

But it’s still an uphill climb for AOL. Just this week, the company confirmed that Platform-A president Curt Viebranz was departing the company amid a management shakeup.

Joanna Shields, president of the San Francisco-based Bebo, will continue to run the social network and will report to Ron Grant. The deal was brokered on AOL’s side by Bank of America Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities. Bebo had hired investment bank Allen & Co. when it opted to put itself up for sale.

Grant estimated in Thursday’s conference call that the deal will ideally be complete within a month.

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