For a while, companies and institutes have considered shared services as support units. However, these days, institutions and companies that share services are under pressure to provide significant assistance. Therefore, the innovation support group has become one of the most crucial issues faced by companies in our society. In an article in The New York Times, it is mentioned that they prioritize enabling innovation through high IT capabilities. In 2006, a development group was established to operate as a shared service for various newspapers, a radio station, and over 50 websites. The main objective of this role is to identify opportunities and create prototypes.
This environment supports individuals in generating fresh ideas and strives to foster innovation within business units. The advantages enabled by shared service empower companies to manage their financial capital, technology, and human capital. Shared service offers numerous benefits such as cost reduction, cross-country and cross-site information retrieval and access, elimination of non-value added activities, improvement of effectiveness and efficiency in non-core processes, and streamlining of administrative processes.
Boston Scientific faces the drawback of a more challenging and time-consuming decision-making process. However, they have implemented software that enables the engineering community to exchange information and control access to product development data, effectively addressing security concerns. To tackle this issue, Boston Scientific is adopting Invention Machines’s Goldfire software. This software provides a balance between openness and security for data and automates tasks such as market analysis and leveraging intellectual property.
The software combines internal company data with information from public sources, like federal government databases, to find connections among different sources. It allows researchers to highlight similar ideas and analyze them for new product development and feasibility studies. The goal is to promote easy access to any engineer’s research within the company. However, data about a project may be restricted to fewer people as it approaches the patent application step.
It is important for researchers and engineers to have knowledge about the work systems, routine, data accessibility provisions, and limitations in this new system. The implementation of this system can be supported by executives. Crucial cultural changes include monitoring all employees who access data and directing authorization. In addition, it is essential to combine these changes with technological advancements as they will mutually benefit each other instead of solely focusing on one aspect.
We would like to emphasize that we are not neglecting security, but instead offering beneficial choices for the organization. The New York Times has developed an interesting interactive map featuring the most popular Netflix rentals in 12 major U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco/Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas and Miami. In collaboration with Netflix, NYT has established this visual database that presents the top 100 films rented on Netflix in 2009 overlaid on maps.
Graphically explore the top 2009 Netflix movies based on four criteria: most rented, alphabetical list, recently added, and films that received praise or criticism from critics. For instance, choose popular picks and when you hover over a ZIP code, a window will appear displaying the top Netflix rentals for that particular region. The map reveals intriguing trends, such as big blockbusters being less popular in city centers. Companies can leverage this data to their advantage. By creating a map showcasing the most popular Netflix picks, they can analyze data from this site.
