The Big Picture: From Big Bang To Web Do youremember a fellow named Bran Ferrin (vice president of DisneyImagineering), speaking at ACORD's annual conference in 1998, andhis belief that the Internet was the equivalent of fire formankind? Did you chuckle?

The late Michael Dertuzos (director of the MIT Computer Lab)spoke to us in 1999 along the same lines. I recall him waltzingaround the stage while flailing his arms about, suggesting thatcyberspace was not “somewhere out there”, but something thatbecomes part of our everyday lives whether we realized it ornot.

Very often many people dont realize this, while others lackappreciation for the intensity of its potential influence.

I often talk about the digital dividethe gap between businessand information technology that every good chief informationofficer must bridge to succeed. Perhaps my biggest challenge ishelping business people understand IT and industry standards in theface of an ever-changing and increasingly complex world.

Sometimes its helpful to step back and look at the big picture.I often look at other disciplines that deal with change andcomplexity to look for parallels that I can translate back to ourbusiness. So lets go back to the beginning where it all startedthe“Big Bang,” of course.

The physicist Theodore Modis points out that evolution has notbeen a continuous, uniform process. While change is ongoing andcontinuous, the rate of change and its associatedcomplexity will vary. He counsels his students that evolution (ofany kind) includes jumps and growth spurts with periods ofstability in between. He goes on to say, “The 20th Century alonefeatures more turning points in the history of mankind than theprevious five centuries put together.”

Squeezing together all these turning points or milestones hasmade life more complex, and many people are unable to cope with thenew world order.

So what does this have to do with technology?

On his chart of 28 canonical milestones starting with the “BigBang” and the origin of the Milky Way, he lists the Internet asnumber 28. Fire is number 15.

Mr. Modis points out that the year 2028 may represent the peakof the S-curve that resulted from the last few historicalmilestones, including the Internet. He claims that we aretraversing the only period in the history of the universe in whicha single lifetime (of 88 years for the Baby Boomers) can witnesschanges coming from as many as three evolutionary milestones.

The issue is our ability to deal with change and complexity.

The bottom line is that the Internet is a really big deal interms of human evolution, and we have yet to seriously plumb thedepths of the meaning of connecting every person on earth to acommon network.

Larry Downes, author of “The Strategy Machine And Unleashing theKiller App”–and the keynote speaker at this week's 2003 ACORDConference–describes the importance of open standards in abig-picture way.

One of his points is that the uncertain future will bring newdevices, new technologies and new trading partners as well as anumber of surprises along the way. Therefore, building an ITinfrastructure that can anticipate what we do not know isdifficult.

Standards (particularly domain-specific, industry-promulgatedstandards from my point of view) can provide the transparency andflexibility that allows us to be opportunistic in the future. Whenconsidering the value of industry standards, one should not getlost in the details, but look at the big picture.

Aside from lowering application development and integrationcosts throughout the organization, standards have a pervasive andsystemic influence on all business relationships involvinginformation exchange. The bigger picture can easily be overlookedwhen one focuses on the numbers.

Yes, industry standards do provide immediate benefits, but thereis also a long-term positive and systemic effect on the businessitself. And we dont always talk about that very much. A few do.

Those who do recognize that standards are a long-term investmentin business and trading partner relationships. In addition, whilelowering the cost of manufacturing and simplifying data exchangewith trading partners is important, data standards in a marketplacecan change the marketplace itself. They can not only enable ahigher degree of process flexibility, but they can also hasten thedevelopment of plug-and-play applications or the integration of newservices from a variety of solution providers.

IT executives at insurance companies who embrace a consistentand longer view of industry standards do not view standards as theelixir for all ills faced by IT. They deploy a sensible andpragmatic approach for todays challenges but know that the “networkeffect” will prevail over the long run.

Buying a quick (and what may appear to be reasonable)proprietary fix without regard for the long term is not asustainable IT strategy. We need to begin to “seed” a newgeneration of suppliers of software and services that build onindustry standards to provide the means to assemble solutions andshape a process to meet changing needs.

I often view IT as a portfolio of strategic investments(spreading the risks) and use industry standards as a long-termhedge on those investments. As you know, most IT spending isdevoted to maintaining existing systems, so harmonizing futureinvestments within an industry standards framework will certainlylower maintenance costs, while enabling creative development thatcan actually transform products and services in new ways.

IT solutions come and go, but industry data models and standardsendure since they are technology agnostic and platform independent.Even the syntax used for industry standards (todays W3Cs XML) canchange dramatically, while domain-specific vocabularies anddictionaries remain “relatively” consistent over time.

We can learn something from physicist Theodore Modis as he looksat the big picture. Yes, the next quarter financials are importantto shareholders and Wall Street. Yes, we want to maximize thereturn on investment on our IT investments today.

Yet I encourage you to step back and think logically about thebig picture. Reflect on the human genome, modern physics, theIndustrial Revolution, the printing press, agriculture, rock art,fire and stone tools.

Also consider that unlike previous generations, we will bearwitness to the consequences of the most recent evolutionarymilestones within our lifetime and can influence them prior toreaching a period of stability (the top of the S-curve).

Those who fail to recognize the longer and less conspicuoustrend beneath the daily ambiguity will not be able to fullyappreciate the impact of ACORD Standards or the price that theywill pay as a result.

Gregory A. Maciag is president and chief executive officerof ACORD, the non-profit, standards-setting association based inPearl River, N.Y., with offices in London.

IT solutions come and go, but industry data models and standardsendure.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, May 19, 2003.Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.