The Eclectic Zone

We all know shopping bags (or checkout bags) make shopping very convenient. With the introduction of plastic bags for shopping, it became very convenient and economical for retailers, and shopping bags at stores became as common as exit doors!

Many countries, and states in various countries, have implemented a ban on the usage of shopping bags manufactured with Plastic (polyethylene) due to environmental concerns.

Most up-market retailers have started providing Paper bags with purchases and have absorbed additional costs in their already high margins. But, many grocery stores have actually resorted to a strange (to me) tactic of selling alternative bags (made of jute or cloth or paper) at the check-out counters.

This does look like a good business opportunity – a lot of people end up at the check-out counters with items they cannot carry with bare hands and hence are forced to buy those bags. And these bags are priced, definitely, not at the cost price but with additional store margins. So they do make some money on these bags.

But, not so apparent to these store or franchise owners is the following (and that is strange to me):

• A lot of shoppers actually drop items, and end up buying only the necessary ones (I have seen many shoppers actually dump the majority of their shopping trolley, and carry just toothpaste or a food item!)

• Many shoppers, even when they decide to buy that bag, when hitting the limit on what they can carry in one or two bags, end up dropping the additional items.

• The additional time in this process at the check-out counter increases the transaction time many-fold.

• It is highly irritating for shoppers to spend an hour collecting items from all over the store in a trolley, and then having to decide on dropping some of them while checking out. Some of the checkout clerks are not even trained to handle situations when confronted, irritating the customers so much they may not return to the store.

• The logical behavior over time would be for everyone to start carrying their bags from home, but essence of the displays at the stores is to get the shoppers to buy more than what they planned. This procedure forces them to plan and hence limit their purchase.

It’s evident that these stores are losing a lot of business due to this. What’s strange is that the business economics of such decisions do not strike these retailers.

They need to give these bags for free! Selling shopping bags is not the business of these stores, at least not by cannibalizing their major business.

And if it really looks silly to give a bag for few bucks of shopping (which the person can carry in hand as well!), link it through a promotion and give it for free for an amount (and in multiples of that amount) and above of shopping!

Common business sense!

Over the last couple of years we have witnessed vendors falling out of the Pure-Play category due to acquisitions (Fuego, Savvion, Lombardi…) or their move into a different strategy. Very few players are left in the Pure-Play zone: Appian, Global 360, Ultimus, Intalio, Handysoft, and few more. Before someone hangs me for picking these names, let me also mention that some of these are also creating their own niche by adopting cloud or domain models or aligning with additional areas getting created with convergence of BPM with Social, SaaS, CRM, Case Management, & so on. Agreed, like these others, Pega also is still tagged as Pure-play, but it is also not behaving like a pure play anymore. It has been moving up with business domain models for some time, and now with acquisition of Chordiant, has made itself align with CRM and Case Management even more.

Initially, the category “Pure-play” referred to those vendors that originated from workflow management, and to distinguish them from those originating from EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) or Document/Content Management or platform based development etc. Over the years, however, and especially now, it doesn’t seem to make much sense sticking with the same reference term for these vendors any more. They stand (and better do) for much more than where they originated from.

And if any vendor still doesn’t move ahead of this term and doesn’t positions itself really to differentiate from the plethora of other vendors, the future of such a strategy will be in serious question. Everyone needs a real identity and association with a business value, and more than just being pure-play horizontal framework/product.

So, is it time to drop “Pure Play” term from BPM vendors categories? Even if we retain if, what’s the future of such “Pure Play” vendors?

Some time back I blogged about the various patterns of BPM Center of Excellence (COE) and emphasized that good governance leads to better performance. I didn’t delve into why COEs are important and what the COEs do in that post, believing enough was written already on those.

Today, Theo brought up a stirring point again, (as always ) and claimed that social wave while removing silos will also bring the extinction of the COEs.

Well, I disagree. I left a comment there but thought I didn’t do full justice to the argument, hence this post.

Let’s first understand what all a COE can typically do (any subset of the following could be done by a COE based on the need of the enterprise and pattern(s) chosen):

• Help in Demand Management, Projects Prioritization, and Implementation planning

• Conduct Periodic reviews of architecture

• Formulation of consistent approach, practices and processes across teams and geographies

• Knowledge Management and better collaboration on reuse

• Standardization of the architectural patterns, process modeling guidelines, notations, and design elements for cross-usage and leverage of investments

• Facilitate faster and better delivery turnaround for Process implementation to business owners

• Formulation of Reusable Process fragments, vertical process model, horizontal technical frameworks, centralized business rules

• Oversight of the Process repositories and facilitate storage and maintenance including version management

• Facilitate Technological / Infrastructural migration plans as needed

• Cost Rationalization through the efficient governance mechanisms and various servicing models based on business needs

• Streamlined vendor management, platform support and issue resolution

• Plan and manage the resource needs of various skill set based on the demand-supply management in conjunction with Programs planning

and so on…

Now, the basic premise of a CoE is not to own infrastructure or resources directly (although it could be one of the possible models in a conducive environment), it is based on facilitation, collaboration, oversight and streamlining. So, a COE model formulated well can actually leverage immensely from social networking and collaboration tools. This wave, in fact should be a booster for the COE intent.

Going back to the premise of the COE extinction hypothesis, I agree that the business world could more than do well with a little more freedom, Innovation, creativity, and collaboration. However, a system, governance, and little bit of structure is still needed. In the same spirit, I’d also like to refer another post the same day from Theo that makes an excellent point -

Right now, if you look at how businesses are run, every department is silo’d, we’re not really running one ship but lots of smaller craft all heading off in different directions with the notion that they are doing the same thing. And the guy in the centre seat is so far removed from the action he really has no clue how the ship operates.

And he also adds in terms of how Social paradigm is going to help us there -

Collaboration breeds involvement, and that creates a sense of purpose. Silo’s breed disconnectivity which in turn feeds discourse

Now, that’s a good thought , full of good intent. However, it is actually a wish that can actually not be fulfilled without a facilitating mechanism beyond the tools and technology. If one wants all those silo-ed ship to go in one direction, how would that happen without some bit of governance and structure? The reason is the human angle to the silo mode of working. I had blogged a little earlier about the systemic mechanism of aligning incentives for bridging those silos and Max made a terrific point that went like this –

Create a clear and well strcutured process organization, assign the best qualified process owner, empower him and his people and that will be it. They will be proud of their achievement without a single bonus dollar paid. If you need to link your objectives and KPIs, your process organization is wrong. You have created conflicting processes, because your functional organization does not reflect them. That can be fine, if the process owner and his team are empowered.

And this is where COEs (in whatever form) provide tremendous value. It’s not just managerial governance, but more collaboration, facilitation and alignment effort.

Still, let’s consider the scenarios where one may NOT need the COE.

If the answers to the following questions is strong affirmative in the social networking paradigm without a facilitating body or some human governance, then COEs may cease to exist in any form…

• Every individual comes up and learns by oneself, no best practices are needed, they all collaborate and learn on the fly and do the right thing (regardless of their experience,  personal competency and personal egos and preferred relationships

• Architecture will evolve the right way without the need for an agreed upon enterprise architecture blue-print

• All the technological components needed will become mashable, and plug-&-play. Individuals can decide by themselves what they want to use with collaborative decision making

• Central planning will not be required for any size of programs. Project Managers of individual streams would be able to meet over a collaboration platform and devise the plan without one entity primarily accountable for the program

• BPM will indeed become purely process and no technological development required. Plug-&-Play.

• Competency Development and talent management would either become less important in collaborative world or become easy as a snap. Wikis will be the omni-potent platform for self-learning with no specific planning required on how many skills of what type would be needed for the BPM initiatives

• Business will be the de-facto owner of the process initiatives. No conflicts of interest, no bonus issues, no issues on budget allocation. No facilitating body will be required to align the needs with the variety of preferences and plans. Collaboration would work like a magic wand and all the gaps will disappear with the social networking making a huge impact

If Social wave makes the above possible, we probably wouldn’t need COEs. Do you see this happening, my answer is a big NO.

So, IMHO, COEs may become more decentralized and could be a combination of various flavors/patterns that I have earlier covered, and actually may leverage collaboration tools and social networking technologies to get more effective and efficient. I don’t see them getting washed away with the social wave.

Token: ZQEARKWAVWQK

I’ve been involved in some “happening” discussions recently on whether we need to define or redefine (or refine the existing definition of) BPM. Theo Priestly brought up few trends to sum up that it’s time to ‘define’ BPM for the new era. Steve Towers asked on Linked In if we can clearly re(define) BPM. The information on BPM on Wiki looks insufficient to cover various perspectives that prompt the community to keep coming back to the questions on definition of BPM, or relevance of the current definitions to the present context. We have had many attempts in past to define BPM and the terminology, but questions keep coming up. And we also have the trends on blurring of boundaries in BPM ecosystem that I blogged about earlier.

My general opinion on this is that it’s really not so important to put another definition on BPM (I mean at least in terms of semantics). We have seen hundreds of definitions on BPM by now and most cover the objective part pretty much in coherence with each other. Debates start when we enter the approach zone, i.e. the How part. In fact, I have not found any direct correlation between tagging an initiative as BPM with the success of the initiative against what would be common BPM objectives (noted through a post earlier).

In order to understand where these views and discussions are stemming from, it’s important to understand the various perspectives that are at play in the BPM domain. Every perspective brings with it certain expectations and since we have people from all perspectives trying to address the same question, the seemingly conflicting views (where in reality they may all be saying the same thing) amplify the questions further, just because there’re questions doing the rounds.

Business Strategy Perspective

Because we have the qualifier “Process” in the term, BPM is normally associated with Process Performance. However, a Business Process Performance is directly linked with the way the organization conducts business. The Strategy, and the next level dimensions on business capability directly stem from Processes and People. In pure Business Process Excellence terms, consultants find it difficult to dissociate BPM initiatives from the business strategy. This is especially true for larger initiatives on BPM. And many a discussion around the Outside-In v/s Inside-Out debate originates from this perspective.

Business Operations and Process Improvement Perspective

Business Operations are the most directly impacted area from application of BPM in the business process sense. From this perspective, the end-to-end BPM lifecycle is Envisioning/Defining the Processes – Executing the Processes – Monitoring the Processes – Analyzing and Optimizing the Processes. At the Business Operations level, however, there are various methodologies which have been used for decades on Process improvements. It can be said and has been debated as well, that one may be practicing BPM when managing processes in some of the traditional ways and with little help from the contemporary tools. The point is not whether I endorse the view or BPM community in general does, or not, the view remains.

Technology Perspective

Every stage and every aspect of the end-to-end BPM lifecycle on Business Operations side has an associated technology aspect with it. The technology view of BPM covers the lifecycle as Business Process Modeling and Design – Business Process/Systems Integration – Business Process/Workflow Execution/Orchestration – Real-time Process Monitoring and Analytics – Process Simulation, Analysis, and Optimization – Process Performance Reporting. Architects mix and match various available business solutions & packaged applications along with the BPA/BPMS/BAM/SOA and other supporting technologies to address their needs. A lot of BPM may happen at the end-to-end technology level in an organization with the BPA and BPMS tool playing just a part in it. (Some of these supporting technologies are covered in my earlier post on convergence.

Product Vendors Perspective

Next level down from Technology is the mapping with various product vendors offering solutions in one or more or all parts of the cycle. So, this subdivides the BPM landscape further based on BPA, pure-play workflows, Integration-centric BPMS, Human-centric BPMS, Platform vendors, business domain-specialists tools, BAM, and recently we have had a lot of discussion around Case Management and Adaptive process Management too. This is one area where vendors from all areas claim their pieces of the pie. Now, these vendors representing a piece of the pie may go to customers and present themselves as full BPM solution for the customer needs. They may be right in the context of the needs of the customer, but various slices and dices of capability all representing one case for BPM is seemingly impossible. And for every one of these pies, there are multiple tools available, and still coming up. For instance, Theo has a list of 70+ vendors for BPM vendors, and still growing. There’s further complication from the clouded services gaining ground in business solutions – some of them wrapped as Process solutions in cloud. Does that make Salesforce.com a BPM vendor in that case? I shared some views on this earlier that raised serious debates on BPM in cloud and established that some degree of BPM in the cloud is already gaining ground.

BPM as a Discipline

This is the methodology and approach view of BPM. From the time BPM came into being, there have been efforts at defining the terminologies, methodologies, best practices, rules of conduct and so on. This is Analysts’ and Practitioners’ field of sharing what works, what doesn’t and also act as the advisory for people wanting to follow BPM principles. This view combined with the supporting technologies set ought to cover all that is required in BPM; obviously there are other views at play that are making this more complicated than it should be (The reason for this post’s existence!)

BPM structures within Organizations (Organizational Perspective)

Most of the perspective above are operating outside the enterprises where BPM is supposed to be taking shape in form of a solution to the problems identifies as the target set for BPM in the context. Within the organization, however, there’s business that gets swayed by the Strategy, Operations and little bit of discipline perspectives, and then there’s IT that is driven by the technologies, product vendors and disciplinary perspective. Purchase decisions for technology are done within the IT. Business initiatives are funded through business plans against those initiatives. Certain purely operationally oriented initiatives are kicked off, and consummated within the business – with IT being the follower if any systems impacting decisions are made in those. In the meanwhile, and all the time, IT focuses on building the platform as per the technologies view that may not directly align with the business priorities all the time. Then, there’re various patterns of how the BPM Competencies can be driven and brought to maturity in the organization. Lot of these situational conflicts are amplified and visible at the industry level with the BPM community also swaying with their counterparts in the respective customer organizations.

Enterprise Architecture (Enterprise BPM) Perspective

Interestingly, there’s a debate on what’s happening with Enterprise Architecture on LinkedIn that continues to be hot and burning topic. There are debates on whether the EA should be associated with IT or not, and some other very relevant questions on EA. In the contexts of organizations (the previous point), I have seen various Enterprise Architecture strategies cover “BPM related areas” very differently. In some organizations EA gets divided under focus areas as Process Architecture, Data Architecture, Applications Architecture, and so on. What’s interesting is that the Process Architectures could be defined within the confines of Business functions with or without the usage of any standard BPA tools. Definition of certain modeling standards start falling somewhere between business and IT, and when you come to implementation of those processes, the IT systems may or may not be using any of the standard BPM tools but still powerful enough in terms of offering the capability in line with BPM. And in some other cases, there may not be a well defined Process Strategy at EA level, the solutions architectures from function to function start piecing together different solutions that end up becoming too conflicting to standardize on one practice or product for BPM at Enterprise Architecture level. The BPM philosophy recommends starting small and increment iteratively, but by the time various such initiatives land Enterprise ship, they’re running in different directions.

BPM Industry Perspective (Maturity Wave and Consolidations)

BPM industry has gone through various stages of consolidation, and there are various views on this consolidation from different analyst firms. For convenience, I will pick up the one from Forrester that defined these waves as “Market Entry”, “Technology Build-out”, and “Business-Technology Shift” in chronological order. With every move in the consolidation, the definitions have expanded in few areas, and restricted in few other. The standards like BPMN, BPEL, XPDL have taken their time to come to mainstream. Gartner has been bringing up terms in the Hype cycle based on the trends that pick up speed & (and dropping those that lose speed) year by year. Terms like BRE, BPMS, and BPA have become mainstream and common, while some others like Business Process Networks are still topical. We’re also seeing the trends on collaboration, Social Networking, Adaptive Process Management that continue to impact the navigation path for BPM. Regardless of whether social is treated as a phenomenon, discipline or technology, the impact definitely continues to make the definition efforts harder.

and some more…

I’m also tempted to bring more perspective, and the top three doing rounds in my head are Innovation, Project Management Discipline, and Software Engineering. But, I think one would get the point now and bringing these additional perspectives in would look too contrived and akin to beating this to death! And also, my fingers and mind can use some rest… – But those are interesting ones and need to be covered some time. For now, sharing one from Keith Swenson on BPM and Software Engineering.

Conclusion

There’s no single direct conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion above. Many points made above may actually raise further debates. One conclusion that I *hoped* we could draw was that with so many perspectives at play and with BPM community comprising multiple sub-communities with heterogeneous views, it is darn too difficult to define BPM that covers all the aspects and still satisfies everyone. It could remain a play with semantics while situations on the ground may continue to raise questions whenever different parts of the community swayed by different perspectives come together.

So, I continue drumming my beats that Synergy, wherever possible and relatively easier, should be driving our multiple efforts. When it comes to defining BPM, it will always be in a certain context and when a customer looks for the right definition, the questions that need to be asked are – what’s your business’s objective, and what’s the problem you’re trying to solve. And then, one should just go ahead and fix the problem with short term and long term interest of the Enterprise. BPM, at the end of the day needs to make the business more agile & responsive and business processes more efficient, flexible and manageable.

Agree to everything? Not possible! Bring in the debate…!

Whenever I see an object with a specific note attached to it, to me that means bad design. It doesn’t matter how aesthetically great the product looks. I experience so many day-to-day objects of usage with glaringly bad design yet with great aesthetics, I thought I’d jot down few that irritate me the most.

So, consider this as one of those “rant” posts!

Here we go. Some examples of great aesthetic design gone functionally bad (most personally experienced so often I could recount them all in a witness box!):

• A glass door entry with glass panels on either side. The aesthetic genius(?) is that all the four panels (Two fixed and two door panels) look the same from all angles – we’re really talking great design here. Effect: Every two of four people trying to enter actually bump into the fixed panels! Finally ended up with two A4 size printed notes on each fixed panel (either side!): THIS IS NOT A DOOR. PLEASE USE THE OTHER ONE.

• The swiveling glass door that is aesthetically so cool it’s got the same look on hinged and loose side. Effect: Every one of two People bumps into the hinged side!! This time note is: OPENS AT THE OTHER END

• A swivel door that opens only in one direction – inside. But got door “handles” on both sides. Effect: You see people that are trying to enter also pulling it first only to realize later it’s supposed to be pushed! After all it’s got a gripping handle with great looks screaming out “Pull me!” Note follows: PUSH (Most common problem!)

• A water tap with a wrist action like handle. Except that in this one, the handle needs to be pushed in. (Can’t we instead have a push button?!). No note here! Figure it out!

• A basin with long tap, the knob is located such that it’s impossible to open the tap without getting your wrists drenched! No note in the world can help, may be something like “Remove your watch”?!

• A great looking flush in a toilet. The note above it says: “Please press gently. If you still see water getting flushed after some time, please press the other lever. And if both do not work, please call…(numbers). Thanks for the concern and helping us in our quest for water conservation” (!!!?)

• A very nice looking soap dispenser in a toilet. Just below that are laid down few folded tissues, you will know why. Note says: Please press the dispenser knob gently to avoid overflow!

• After few days, the nice looking soap dispenser is replaced with even nicer looking one. Only that, this time, the press-button actually tests your thumb power. (Note: Wanna clean hands, train your thumbs!) And that’s probably good for work: stronger thumbs = better keyboard output?

• Few days later they go back to the previous loose one! This time it’s more than the press button that’s loose. The dispenser rotates with an extra degree of freedom (how do they manage to do it?)– hence wider bed of tissues! Note changed too. This time –  ”…Press gently and carefully…“

• A beautiful laptop with mouse pad design coordinated with the design casing! Comes with free lamination strips for mouse pad. Reason? Mouse pad with nice little engraving ended up too rough for fingers!!!

• A flip open cell phone cover, expensive one, aesthetically great! The problem? Flip open the cover, take the call and while talking the flap is actually flapping against chick and lips! Hello Mr. Spock? Was it ever tested by really using a cell phone with it? Even once?

I mean, how in the world such basic things can get overlooked! For doors it could be as simple Putting a flat bar for Push and a handle for Pull. No notes needed! I miss Howard Roark.

During the Process workshops, we always find the business users, business analysts, and architects getting excited about things that they could do with a process solution. But, that excitement typically starts on a wrong footing – The UIs and data. First step into the paradigm shift…

And that struggle often continues through the whole cycle – through the Design, the development, and through the user acceptance, and even in production. The problem is that it’s very difficult for everyone involved to get out of the application mindset that has got deeply ingrained with years of training and repeated beating-in.

I’m afraid this gets further legitimized with Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Composite Applications Development through BPMS gaining acceptance.

Now, I’m one of those who endorse such usage of the available tools, if that’s where you set your mind when you buy these tools. But that’s not the promise of the BPM tools. Do businesses buy BPMS so that they could develop the “same applications” faster and not to manage their “business processes” better? At least I have not seen a business making decision that way with a BPMS tool.

And it’s critical that the Process Solutions are treated as just that – a process solution, not as another Application. Why? Because:

• Process Design is not the same as application design. You want users to focus on processes (as-is and to-be) during process workshops. That’s the only way they can understand the importance of hand-offs, task-lists, work items, notifications, SLAs and so on.

• Process Models need to capture the set of attributes that go much beyond the data that is displayed/edited/passed through the steps. Groups, Roles, SLAs, flow-control elements, for instance.

• UI discussions can easily hog the whole discussions and let’s face it, there’s always a better UI possible. However, there are always ways to continue using the current applications serving a specific step in a BPMS executed process. If you don’t defocus from the application UI mindset, those options are not easily visible.

• Process layer (represented by the BPMS) should not serve as source of record. For instance, it’s not desirable for Customer Order information (managed through a CRM) to be edited and stored in the BPMS.  The other business systems and Applications in the organization need to continue doing their jobs.

Actually, any aspect of the implementation – integration, security, deployment, and even how to document the requirements – could sway one completely off the process footing. One would want everyone involved from business to architects to developers to testers focus on the process aspects, and build & validate against the process requirements.

So, if you actually want a process management solution, don’t treat it as an Application.

My daughter loves playing with her Doctor’s kit. She puts on the stethoscope, with her Doctors’ kit on the table, and make me pretend like a patient. She’d so much like to be a Doctor. And this kit makes her believe she is one. And she’d so much like to be a princess (thanks to Disney!) and she’s got all those kits that make her believe she’s one – and that makes me feel like a King, obviously!

I also remember my school days – when I felt I was Maradona (you know the times I’m talking about now) whenever I’d put on my football shoes…

The other day I heard one of the leads in a project say – “Hey, I’m into Project Management now. Just got my MS Project installed.” I couldn’t help but chuckle, and gave him a nice little ‘Hello Mr. PM’ lift.

And so often I hear people say – we’ve got the BPMS installed. We’re serious about doing BPM, and we’re doing a lot of it now!!! Well, think again! Getting a tool installed or just possessing a kit is not equivalent to practicing a discipline. And BPM is one – discipline, not kit! There’s much more to BPM than tools.

And I actually wonder why it is so hard to get this straight!!! My daughter knows very well she’s not actually a Doctor and is just playing with a kit. Can we stop playing with these investments in BPM(S) and actually practice BPM? When tools become everything – it’s not business, it’s child’s play.

What is common among Avatar, iPad, and Justin Bieber… and sets them apart from the other crowd too? They all come in good packages! Well, yes. But so did many others as for as content is concerned. What sets them apart is everyone you know “seems” to like them, and the fact that you know it.

There was a time when a suburban population would not know what people in the metro thought about a particular movie during its first weekend. The word of mouth did travel but slowly. Plethora has been written on promotions, buzz marketing, product quality over time on how companies succeeded (or not) in that era.

Times have since changed drastically. The opening weekend is “the” decider of a film’s success. Reception to a product like iPad from Apple is decidedly positive even before the release announcement reaches the last paragraph. Justin just doesn’t seem to be taking any break from trending list on Twitter.

The “hype” has become a big game-changer. And the one sole factor behind all this is the groupthink phenomenon, and in the highly interconnected world today it has become a very powerful marketing tool.

Humans have an inherent tendency, in general, to conform and to fit-in. This is well-engrained in our mind-sets from the time we set out foot in school, & in society. The most neutral reaction (that originated from isolated processing within one’s brain) to a product is only possible in the consumption of the product in absolute confinement. Most of us consume the information in context of what our friends are thinking, & what majority of population is saying. In the highly inter-connected world, it is impossible to remain oblivious to the first reactions or pre-occupied responses of the world before one consumes the product oneself. And good marketers are leveraging this to a huge advantage!

How is one not going to like iPad?! The whole world loves it, and it’s from Apple!!! How much of that is first-hand reaction? Well, when an avalanche with tonnes of snow heads your way, you wouldn’t want to think of the gunshot that triggered it! This is Avalanche Marketing!!! Better get used to it and use it too.

PS: The other day, I saw some of my friends on Twitter tweeting about #chai (Tea). Almost everyone seemed to be pitching in with tweets on #chai, it didn’t matter if that made any sense. I tweeted a #chai song or two, and felt really good – I managed to fit in, didn’t I?!

I stumbled upon a fantastic website, a treasure of information actually. http://www.gapminder.org. It’s replete with data on world and countries.

One interesting graph that I came across was on economic growth of landlocked countries v/s those with coastlines (with couple of other parameters on How far to the north the country is located and the population of the country depicting the size).

Couple of points from there:

• Landlocked countries have a much tougher time in terms of economic growth

• Among the few countries that really had a good enough growth are the ones in up north (i.e. in Europe & mid-east)

It all boils down to accessibility.

Having a coastline enables trade, and reduces the need for those firewalls that landlocked countries need in conflict ridden geographies. Some of the European counties have done well even after being landlocked thanks to their being surrounded by open partners and the fact that they didn’t let those impact their trade accessibility.

Well, countries cannot decide where they have to be located. Businesses actually can. Not geographically, but they can choose to decide how accessible they can be to the other parts of the business world.

So if your business and systems are landlocked, move them out of that landlock now. Unless, of course, you own oil wells that the whole world needs (well, even that isn’t a safe harbor any more)! Be accessible, be transparent, and be open to integrate if you want to survive, let alone grow, in this increasingly collaborative world.