The CTO and co-founder of a tech company chanced to have lunch with me at a conference several years ago. After I asked about technologies that would become important, I mentioned the series of conference themes that seemed to chase the latest fads. He told me that the company does what it does, and that conference themes reflected both the current conversations and the company’s strengths.
My boss induced me into manufacturing software in the late 70s exploring the benefits of a single repository of manufacturing data. The name of that software space has changed at least four times since then. The technologies have become immensely more powerful. The applications remain just as unwieldy to install and use.
Tim Ferriss has been rerunning past podcasts celebrating 10 years of podcasting. This week he featured venture capitalist Ann Miura-Ko. The conversation initially aired in 2018 (and I probably noted this then) and the comment remains relevant. “Enterprise software sucks.” It’s still complicated without providing useful guidance and assistance for users.
These thoughts came to mind when I saw a blog post attempting to explain the latest software—Namespace. The writer explained it as one unified place for all manufacturing data. Professional LinkedIn commenter and serial entrepreneur Rick Bullota commented, “Isn’t that what Lighthammer did 20 years ago?”
Sort of, yes.
Technology moves on. We collect more data. We store more data. We compute more data faster. We even invent new terms such as artificial intelligence (AI).
But, intelligence? I think not.
Executives often bring in high-priced consultants to make sense of the data. They just do a lot of complicated mumbo-jumbo providing a few answers, collecting their fees, and leaving.
I think we still try to solve the problem I worked on 45 years ago as the “kid in engineering”. And, I think we’ve been actually solving the wrong problem.
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