How Apple is positioning itself to reinvent mobile payments - the real story behind the new iPhone and the Touch ID sensor

The new iPhone 5s has been all over the news recently but I have seen little analysis on the way they enable a totally new market for Apple: the reinvention of mobile payments through a combination of the new TouchID sensor, support for the Bluetooth low-emission standard and Apple’s huge database of credit cards numbers.

Read the full story on Medium

A road warrior’s preferred iOS apps for communications, productivity, travel, reading and more

Many friends have asked me about my preferred iOS apps after seeing the time I invested over the summer to review the best applications for a road warrior.

I work as a consultant, travel extensively, am known for being quite efficient (too much say some of my friends) and am a tech addict. So I thought about sharing the best of the apps I use, split across Communications, Productivity, Travel, Reading and Hobbies.

I am not trying to be exhaustive, original or complete. But I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed by any of these, that they work well and that the overall collection will be a complete set of power-tools. For most of these, I have tested 3-5 apps in the same category before deciding on my recommendation.

Read the complete write up in Medium (September 2013)

Hitting the ground running as a new CIO: An interview with Barclaycard’s Ian Buchanan

In a career as CIO or COO spanning more than 20 years and five diverse financial institutions, Ian Buchanan has developed an approach for the first 100 days that has served him well regardless of the corporate environment.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing. After rising through the ranks at Nomura to become the investment bank’s CIO, Ian Buchanan confesses that he didn’t realize he was stepping into a very different role “that was all about relationships and credibility,” where execution wasn’t all that counted. Buchanan eventually progressed to take a seat at Nomura’s executive table and won a reputation as a transformational leader. However, wizened by the experience, he took a more proactive tack when he later walked through the door at Alliance & Leicester, Santander, Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking, and, in October 2011, Barclaycard, where he is now COO. In a recent interview, Buchanan revealed his key insights. Among them: start before you start; listen, listen, listen; and get to the heart of the issues quickly.

Read the rest on the McKinsey website (December 2012) -- with Paul Willmott

The first 100 days of a new CIO: Nine steps for wiring in success

It’s critical to get a good start when stepping into the CIO role. Consider several measures when you shape your course.

The early months of a CIO’s tenure are an extremely important time to learn about a company’s culture and critical issues, shape an agenda for change, build relations with peers and senior leaders, and make decisions—on people, funding, and other matters—that will provide a solid foundation for the future.

By working over the years with many senior executives stepping into this role, we’ve learned about elements to cover, priorities to make, and mistakes to avoid. We have attempted to distill the most important topics to address during these critical first months. Of course, the particulars of each situation will have an impact on the priorities of each CIO. But we believe every new CIO will benefit from reviewing these elements and using them as a starting point to shape his or her own course of action.

Read the rest on the McKinsey website (December 2012) or in the Financial Times -- with Paul Willmott

Elevating technology on the boardroom agenda

Businesses are becoming increasingly digital and it’s not just a matter of process automation or resource-planning systems. Technology trends such as big data, cloud computing, mobility, and social media are giving rise to new marketing and operational capabilities. Indeed, technology has become too embedded in the fabric of the business—and too critical for competitive performance—to be left to the IT function alone.

As a result, many senior-executive teams have been called upon to get involved in technology issues. Boards are also beginning to take a strategic view of how technology trends are shaping their companies’ future. More boards than ever before are asking questions that ensure executives focus on the right issues. Deeper board involvement is also serving as a mechanism to cut through company politics and achieve endorsement of larger, integrated technology investments.

Read more on the McKinsey website (October 2012) or a summary in the Financial Times (September 2012) -- with Brad Brown and Johnson Sikes

Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value

Large IT efforts often cost much more than planned; some can put the whole organization in jeopardy. The companies that defy these odds are the ones that master key dimensions that align IT and business value.

As IT systems become an important competitive element in many industries, technology projects are getting larger, touching more parts of the organization, and posing a risk to the company if something goes wrong. Unfortunately, things often do go wrong. Our research, conducted in collaboration with the University of Oxford, suggests that half of all large IT projects—defined as those with initial price tags exceeding $15 million—massively blow their budgets. On average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted. Software projects run the highest risk of cost and schedule overruns.

These findings—consistent across industries—emerged from research recently conducted on more than 5,400 IT projects by McKinsey and the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford. After comparing budgets, schedules, and predicted performance benefits with the actual costs and results, we found that these IT projects, in total, had a cost overrun of $66 billion, more than the GDP of Luxembourg. We also found that the longer a project is scheduled to last, the more likely it is that it will run over time and budget, with every additional year spent on the project increasing cost overruns by 15 percent.

Read the rest on the McKinsey website (October 2012) or a summary in the Financial Times (August 2012) -- with Sven Blumberg and Juergen Laartz

Israel: an innovation gem, in Europe’s backyard

Israel is a first-tier innovation hub, second in the world only to Silicon Valley in its concentration of start-up companies.

However, it seems as though European companies have yet to get that message. US companies and investment funds currently make the vast majority of all investments in the Israeli market. In an effort to help all firms, especially European and Asian companies, tap into Israel’s innovation leadership, we collaborated with Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, to research pockets of opportunity for multinational companies looking to boost their innovation metabolism.

We identified four sectors that we believe are rich with promise. This article will briefly discuss Israel’s performance in innovation to date, highlight the results of our research, and suggest some ways companies might try to tap into the opportunity.

Read the rest in the Financial Times (September 2012) -- with Dana Maor and Jonathan Kolodny

How CIOs should think about business value

Grasping the business value from IT is challenging. CIOs who are successful in this endeavor broaden their scope of action beyond the technical sphere and traditional IT levers.

If there’s any issue that routinely frustrates executives in many organizations, it’s how to get a true fix on the value that information technology adds to the businesses it serves. IT is undoubtedly central to creating value and therefore continues to account for a rising share of total investment. But defining, measuring, and maximizing that value remain elusive. To throw light on this crucial issue, McKinsey collaborated with CIGREF¹ to study the best practices of major French and international companies across various sectors.²

We interviewed 11 CIOs from French companies over a period from March 2007 to November 2007. The in-depth nature of these interviews provided valuable insights, as it allowed us to draw directly from the experiences of CIOs—many of whose companies have successfully used IT to gain competitive advantage. Analyzing their approaches to information technology helps to show how it can promote economic performance. We complemented these insights with international case examples.

Read more on the McKinsey website (March 2009) -- with Andres Hoyos-Gomez

From internal service provider to strategic partner: An interview with the head of Global Business Services at Procter & Gamble

P&G’s support services have made a ten-year journey that many global corporations are studying with interest and, perhaps, envy. P&G has saved around $600 million to date by consolidating all back-office functions, such as finance and accounting, HR, facilities management, and IT, into one unit—Global Business Services (GBS)—and by outsourcing many of the nonstrategic activities involved in providing these services. What’s more, GBS played a key role in the speedy integration of Gillette, which P&G acquired in 2005, and it has emerged as a strategic partner with the operating units of the global consumer products group by providing innovative solutions in consumer and customer interactions and in product development.

Read the rest on the McKinsey website (July 2008)  -- with Liz Lempres

In memory of Friends of Mike

This blog was originally meant to share my adventures when living in the US. It was then called "Friends of Mike". That content is now much less relevant and was removed.