January – Cloud Computing in the Enterprise
We began 2010 by releasing A Workbook for Cloud Computing in the Enterprise, which provided a practical distillation of our work over 2009 and helped consider issues such as quality, cycle time and customer/employee satisfaction. This publication proved extremely popular with clients in helping articulate their overall direction and strategy in what is now a rapidly changing business and technology context.

February – Disruptive Change Revisited: It’s Much Rarer Than We Think
Our February Research and Market Commentary covered the theme of disruptive change (following the release of the Apple iPad) and suggested that IT and the internet have been far more sustaining than disruptive for the great majority of industries. Rather than spend time pondering the disruptive effects of the iPad, we believe the real story will be the many new sources of value and the ever-expanding opportunities IT creates to sustain our businesses and industries going forward.

March – Energizing and Engaging Employees
This Position Paper explored the inherent links between social media technology, management practice and employee engagement and offered examples, thoughts and ideas to help the CIO move forward. A key finding of the paper argued that whilst cost efficiency is important, the main challenge for organizations today is to find ways of engaging employees as resourceful humans, not human resources, in order to attain greater business effectiveness, agility, adaptability and innovation.

April – Glimpses into the Future of Enterprise IT
The increasing intersection of business and IT provides a wide range of business/IT changes uncovered by our research. In this web conference, we considered how business and IT are changing each other; how enterprise IT can add more value; what the retained enterprise IT function should look like and how consumer technologies and the internet affect both the business and enterprise IT. All of these issues are closely interrelated and self-reinforcing.

May – The Changing Nature of Work
Our 2010 Forum assessed the changing nature of work and the new cultural and social contracts that will be needed to realize the full potential of the IT revolution. The Internet continues to create many exciting new opportunities in areas such as social networking, mobility and collective intelligence, but it’s also creating new risks and challenges. This intensive day shared the results of our work and integrated the views of business leaders, academics and other forward-looking thinkers.

June – Building and Leveraging Advanced Business/IT Relationships
Building on our first report on Business Relationship Management published in 2006, we revisited this theme to help IT leaders understand how each of the four BRM roles have evolved and where they should be applied in today’s rapidly evolving IT environment. Experience shows that the successful adoption of more advanced relationships calls for much more than the appointment of relationship managers; it requires a profound rethinking of the IT function’s operating model.

July – Rethinking Risk
The financial crash and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster caused most firms to take a closer look at their risk management approach. Many discovered that the traditional divide between business and IT risk is going away and that top-down compliance-based processes are only a small part of the solution. What is needed is a strong bottom-up culture based on ethics, integrity, and values that span both business and IT. This report described the many ways that this goal is being pursued.

August – Business/IT Alignment
Throughout the year, we assist clients to apply our research findings to their own organizations through our Advisory Workshops programme. In the case of Business Relationship Management, we design and deliver formal training and development programmes for business units focusing on improving strategy, change and interpersonal skills. The courses are extremely popular in helping the IT function to create a more proactive and value-added role in the development of the business.

September – Revitalizing Shared Services
Like Janus, the Roman god who could see both the past and the future, modern organizations face backwards to offer value through standards – for example, cost control – and forwards to add additional value through innovation. This report described the emerging organizational approaches used by SSOs to add value on both sides of the Janus to meet increasing business demands.

October – Annual Study Tour – Surf the Change or Be Swept Away ...
The 2010 Tour took over 30 senior executives to the West Coast of the US to examine the latest developments in cloud computing, consumerized IT services, and mobility. Our experience shows that you cannot fully understand, implement or gain the benefits of cloud computing unless you have a broad first hand perspective. Included in the tour were examples of customers successfully leveraging cloud computing for both innovation and cost reduction.

November – Environmental Applications of ICT
This special journal issue (conducted in partnership with Yale University’s prestigious Journal of Industrial Ecology), identified and assessed advanced environmental applications, including peer-reviewed papers on household energy auditing, the energy implications of various music delivery alternatives, ‘smart’ irrigation systems, industrial ecology, and more. We believe it has important implications for senior IT and business sustainability leaders who need to better understand how IT will eventually be used across their wider market ecosystems.

December – Consumerization Success Stories Emerge as Key Theme of LEF Conferences
Two major LEF events featured powerful examples of customers using modern consumer technologies for real business advantage. Whilst we have been promoting the savings, effectiveness and agility of consumerized IT products and services for many years, 2010 may well be the tipping point in terms of the acceptance of this thinking within the enterprise IT community. This research commentary summarized five of the most compelling stories we heard.

Take a look at our research plans for 2011

What’s coming up in our Events Schedule

The LEF remains committed to addressing the major challenges at the intersection of business, IT and management as we provide direction for tomorrow’s leaders today.