EDITORS’ NOTE

Prior to assuming his current position, George Pohle led the communications sector for IBM’s Business Consulting Services’ strategy consulting practice. He joined IBM in 2001, when the company acquired Mainspring, a strategy consulting boutique. There, in 1999, Pohle started and built the technology, communications and media sector strategy consulting practice, attracting a world-class team of consultants that rapidly created relationships with numerous Fortune 500 companies in the high tech, telecommunications, media, and entertainment industries. Before joining Mainspring, Pohle worked at Lucent Technologies and, previously, at Gemini Consulting/The MAC Group, as the leader of their U.S. strategy consulting practice. Pohle holds an MBA from INSEAD (Institut Europeén d’Administration des Affaires) in Fontainebleau, France, and a BS in electrical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Institute Brief

The IBM Institute for Business Value (www.ibm.com/iibv) provides thought leadership, strategic insights, and recommendations that address critical business challenges and that help clients capitalize on new opportunities. The institute’s research is used by senior executives to help them anticipate changes in their industries, prioritize strategic and operational alternatives for action, formulate road maps for change initiatives, determine the best metrics for measuring success, and quantify the expected return on their investments.

What does the IBM Institute for Business Value [IBV] do?

The primary function of the IBV is to help our clients think through how they can combine strategic, operational, and technological change to position themselves in their markets and improve their business results. We create practical thought leadership on these topics by combining skills and insight on emerging technologies, particularly on information and communication technologies, with business management expertise to define implications and insights for our clients; then we publish our results.

We select and research our topics using two lenses. The first is an industry lens, which enables us to describe, on an industry-by-industry basis, the changes that are taking place, and to recommend the kinds of responses that our clients could put in place to adapt to those industry dynamics. We also use a business functional lens that focuses on areas like customer relationship management, business strategy and transformation, financial management, human capital management, and supply chain management. We examine our clients’ businesses through those two lenses, and then we create analytically supported insights, taking our analyses of industry trends and combining them with insights gained from real-world activities that our clients are pursuing with our consultants in the field. That’s what adds the practicality to the work.

You mentioned your industry approach to this work. What advantages do you gain by adopting that approach?

The industry focus is very important, because there are distinct differences in the challenges and opportunities faced by the different industries that we serve. At any one time, we’re doing work in around 13 or 14 industries, and inside those industries, there may be several distinct industry sub-groups. For example, the electronics industry is not homogeneous; it is made up of consumer electronics, communications equipment manufacturers, and semiconductor manufacturers, all of whom face very different markets and operate with different business models. As a result, the actions companies can take, strategically and operationally, are different. Clients find value in hearing about their own industries, but they also are eager to learn about things taking place in other industries.

That said, there are a number of management issues that are common, horizontally, across industries, and that’s where our business functional lens plays a role. A lot of the basic principles of how you operate, for example, in terms of creating shared service organizations, or establishing effective policies to manage human resources, are operating principles that can be applied across many industries. Although, at the end of the day, for the principles to be acted upon they still need to be tailored to each client’s particular circumstances.

IBM is a global company dealing with global clients. To what extent are you focused on global issues?

Because our clients are increasingly global, our work is very focused on global management issues, both today and in the future. Because the IBV is an organization that is limited in size, we have to be selective about picking topics that are globally applicable in order to have the biggest impact in the market. However, we do some work that is geographically focused. For example, we recently released a study about multinationals in China, authored by our local team in China. While the analysis was targeted at understanding the dynamics of the Chinese retail and distribution industries, the implications were very broadly applicable globally to any company that has any interest in going into the Chinese market. So even when we do pick topics that are a little bit more locally focused, we tend to write about them in a way that’s applicable to global businesses.

Once you have carried out your research and produced your findings, how broad is the distribution of that thought leadership information?

We have a number of subscribers externally, and we reach about 150,000 people directly. Typically, we publish our material as white papers. We’ll supplement that with points of view that will get published in compilations, magazines, and other media. We also do a large number of external speaking engagements. Lastly, our consultants take our materials directly to clients as part of their ongoing interactions with them.

Looking ahead a year or two, what are the key priorities of the IBV?

We will be spending much more time and energy on the implications of globalization, with a focus on corporate citizenship and the role of the corporation in broader society, as well as on gaining access to global skills, resources, and assets.