Accepted papers for 2016 conferences (Abstracts only)

1. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
Advantage Note 20
Digital Business Maturity Model
by
Declan Kavanagh
2016 Conference Paper Abstracts

2. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
The 4th
International Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance
ICMLG , 14th
& 15th
April, 2016, St. Petersburg, Russia.
 Agile Entrepreneurship a model to improve start-up success rates
 The impact on governance in a digitally enabled collaborative
organisation
The Second International Conference on Organizational Strategy, Business
Models, and Risk Management (OSBMRM2016)
July 26th
to 28th
,2016 in Manchester, UK
 Managing Performance & Risk with Capability Maturity Models
 Collaborative Performance Management
Agile Entrepreneurship a model to improve start-up success rates
Traditional approaches to guiding entrepreneurs tend to follow a sequential process,
centred on the business plan, and with focus on the start-up phase of the business. This
type of approach often leads to a tick box  approach from the entrepreneur, rather than
taking a strategic view of the entrepreneurial advantage and opportunity, then engaging
with the target community of stakeholders. This means getting out there into the market in
shorter engagement cycles managed within a framework. This assures the entrepreneur
and his/her team have contact with customers and stakeholders, can learn and adapt to
continuously refine the proposition that optimises its value proposition and scaling
capability. In addition many entrepreneurs may have limited previous business experience
and/or support ecosystems, hence failure rates remain stubbornly high globally.
A recent study by Harvard Business school indicates that New Venture failure rates are
between 30% and 90% depending on how you define the criteria for failure:
• 30% to 40% where investors liquidate and lose most or all of their investment.
• 70% to 80% where the business stakeholders fail to see expected ROI
• 90%-95% where the business declares a projection and fails to meet that projection

3. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
This paper proposes and new model that enhances our methodologies for supporting
entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The model draws from latest thinking
relating to “Agile” approaches which first came to prominence in the software development
industry in 2001.
By adopting the new model proposed we enable the entrepreneur to create “Agile
Advantage” in their new venture and continuously build that advantage through the
organisations life cycle.
“The Business Advantage Model” is an Agile model which guides the entrepreneur in
“doing the right things, the right way, at the right time”, with the objective of improving
start-up and scaling success rates . Central to the model is the need to base milestones and
deliverables on facts and information rather than descriptive deliverables, while having a
focus on Advantage across the business . Advantage creates differentiation and value
internally & externally.
Understanding the information and decisions an entrepreneur has to make as they proceed
through the start-up and growth cycle and, providing a model that guides them through
each phase where they consider only the relevant importance of the key functions at any
point in time make them more effective. This means that the entrepreneur can be
responsive, flexible and agile, and the model acknowledges the continuous learning, sensing
and adaption that entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organisations must deal with day to
day and period to period.
The Model looks at the six key phases for an entrepreneurial organisation
Advantage Performance
Potential Validate
Create Verify
Prove Confirm
Protect Secure
Leverage Scale

4. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
Change Innovate
The Model was derived from many years of study and review of entrepreneurs and
organisations and has been validated in organisation.
The adoption of Agile models in Education, Incubation and Enterprise development
agencies should improve success rates and deliver improved economic outcomes.
The impact on governance in a digitally enabled collaborative organisation
New digital technologies are enabling or requiring organisations to change their business &
operational models. Staff through access to new technologies , whether proprietary to the
organisation or public platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook are empowered to greater
interaction with stakeholders of the organisation. This comes with great potential benefits
and also some risks.
It also comes with challenges for innovative leaders who which to adapt and exploit new
technologies. Many of the new technologies enable new ways of working, communicating
and collaborating and the change is as a minimum transitional and for many organisations
transformational. The change is an Organisation Development initiative enabled by
technology, rather than a technology project .
In this paper we consider social collaboration platforms as a key change catalyst.
Organisations may have a compelling reason and/or business case that is the driver for
adopting a social collaborative approach, such as Customer/Citizen engagement, Growth,
Financial performance etc. The adoption of these platforms in organisations brings many
benefits such as:-
• Speed up responsiveness
• Accelerate Innovation
• Reduce duplication & increasing re use
• Enhance Learning
• Grow and extend the competence mass of the organisation
• Grow and extend the reach of the organisation
• Facilitate the development and strength of organic relationships between
stakeholders
• Increase the capacity and speed of organisation intelligence
• Improve involvement, engagement and sharing of responsibility
These benefits are often referred to “Releasing the talent in the organisation”

5. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
The leaders of the organisation must consider the new management & governance
challenges not just relating to enabling successful adoption and change but also the ongoing
facilitation, control and compliance challenges. We are shifting from a more mechanistic
approach to a more organic approach and structure in the organisation.
This paper looks at :
 Enabling effective change in how people work and communicate?
 Techniques that empower new ways of working and collaborating
 Measuring collaboration capability maturity in an organisation
 An approach to measuring and monitoring performance in a collaborative system
 Facilitating collaborative practices while maintaining relevant controls
This paper is based on both research and application of the principals and practices
outlined. The reader will have a sound understanding of some techniques that will:
 Allow them be more proactive in driving their digital and collaboration strategies.
 Identify actions to release more value and talent in their organisations for currently
deployed digital technologies
Managing Performance & Risk with Capability Maturity Models
Capability Management is now widely used term and approach for managing performance
and risk in organizations, but, what is a capability in the context of strategy & management?
How can we measure capabilities? How do we select and improve the right capabilities? &
what models are available?
This paper couples the author’s academic and business, research and experience to help
answer the questions, with a view to aiding leaders and managers select and adopt an
appropriate capability building and management strategy for their specific organization
context.
In understanding what a capability is, we learn how capabilities relate and interact with
each other, which allows us create a model that helps us understand and manage
capabilities.
Fundamental to any model is the purpose of capability maturity and its measurement.
Identification of the critical relationship between specific capabilities and the target risk and
performance business goals. Identification of those capabilities that need to be built and/or
improved to attain the target outcomes.
The paper then considers capability management in the context of change management and
the organizations’ systems bringing us to the point where we can look at selecting an
appropriate framework/model from the range of over 50 commonly used models.

6. Conferences 2016 Advantage Note 26
Collaborative Performance Management
Best practice performance management is well understood, however the implementation
is inconsistent at best and a high percentage of individuals and leaders are dissatisfied with
the implementation of the process, and the value derived.
New technologies are changing how people work with increased empowerment,
collaboration, tools, data and information accessible to all.
Our performance management systems need adapt to both the changing nature of work,
and to eliminate the barriers to best practice implementation
This paper introduces a simple new model for individuals and leaders. The model creates an
effective performance management process for the technology enabled enterprise, where
social business practices create a more organic and empowered workforce and leverages
these new technologies to improve the implementation of performance management.
The Collaborative Performance Management Model should deliver:
 Significant reduction in manual administration for Individuals, Teams and Leaders
 Ability for Individuals & Teams to manage their own Goals, KPI's and Performance.
 Ability for individuals to create and engage their own community for their
performance management.
 Automation of scheduling and completion of review meetings anyplace, anytime,
from any device
 A single transparent complete record of Goals, KPI's where performance feedback
and status controlled by the individual.
The model demonstrates how leveraging modern social business technology , to address
changes in the way people work can overcome the obstacles to implementing best practice
performance management.