The Valentines of Partnerships

Come Valentine’s Day, I will get ready to make my candle-lit dinner reservations (with the bottle of champagne in the ice-bucket and a bouquet of fresh roses for my spouse), I eagerly look forward to a quiet evening with her, and am thankful for how she completes me in achieving our goals – as a couple – as partners. Just like us, there are many such “Valentine Pairs” who may very well set aside precious moments to recognize this vital relationship on February 14. Such mutually dependent partnerships are not unique to our personal lives. Competitive enterprises of the future must ensure that similar partnerships are in place to make it all relevant in our digital world. Partner with me as I walk through various relationships that are vital for enterprises to differentiate themselves in the foreseeable future!

Collaboration & Innovation. The best type of innovation is driven by collaboration. As mentioned in this article, Gartner VP Marcus Blosch explains, Open innovation is the idea that a team should leverage the entire business for ideas, complementary capabilities and resources in order to come up with the best solution. Cognitive Diversity and open mindsets are great catalysts to fuel such partnerships! A Happy Valentine’s Day to meaningful innovation resulting from purposeful collaboration!

Dev & Ops. Containers are serving as the energizing force where Infrastructure meets Applications. The partnership that emerges at this confluence brings together the conflicting mindsets of agility (dev) and stability (ops). The culture of collaboration could be the most effective tool to go DevOps by bringing these mindsets together. A Happy Valentine’s Day to enterprises that have brought together the right mix of people, process and culture to go DevOps with the right tools.

Business & IT. Your IT may have gone DevOps but how about your business? The partnership between Business & IT is not just about alignment. Emerging technology trends can change business models. The Business of IT could bring forth concepts and paradigms that can drive behavioral change in the Business of The Enterprise! Perhaps, this is secret sauce for IT teams to generate revenue! A Happy Valentine’s Day to those companies who are disrupting their business models taking a cue from the emerging technology paradigms!

CIO & CMO. Successful Digital Transformation Starts With A Beautiful CMO-CIO Relationship, say Peter Horst and Waheed Zaman in this article on Forbes. "The CIO’s and CMO’s worlds have steadily converged in recent years. Marketing, with traditional strengths in consumer insights, creative development, brand strategy and story telling, is undergoing transformation as the means to engage a networked consumer become increasingly dependent on data and technology. Similarly, IT, with strengths in operational reliability and project management, technology architecture and specifications, is undergoing transformation with cloud computing, the consumerization of IT and the escalating brand risks posed by cyber threats.". A Happy Valentine's Day to the CIO who has a Digital relationship with the CMO!

Data & Information. The “I” in IoT is for integration was the title of my session at a Meetup in Milwaukee recently. Data collected in IoT devices must be processed and analyzed for timely, meaningful and actionable insight. Information yields more value for the enterprise as long as it partners with accurate, timely data with context. Just think about the 5th principle of retail digital transformation. A Happy Valentine’s Day to those IoT devices whose data is being connected and analyzed in a timely manner to generate valuable insight.

Culture & Leadership. With the right leadership, culture can be a catalyst to drive change. This was evident from the roundtable moderated by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst with different leaders weighing in with their own experiences that bore evidence to the concepts he outlined. Now, that's what I would call a game-changing partnership! A Happy Valentine’s Day to those leaders who are driving change across the ecosystem starting with an open organization within their enterprise.

Those then are some of the partnerships that come to mind in the digital world we live in today.

But then, the digital world extends beyond the workplace into our personal lives. Don't be surprised if your smartphone turns out to be your Digital Valentine!!

What are other partnerships that come to your mind?

Please let me know. 

Wait a minute! First, a very Happy Valentine's Day to the partnership you plan on celebrating today!

And that is exactly what I plan on doing with my own Valentine -- hello dear, ready for a candle-lit dinner at 7 PM?

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NadhanEG