Todd Thibodeaux Posts

Economic growth covers up a lot of warts, but when growth isn't there, those blemishes start to look pretty ugly. Elected officials at the federal, state and local level are beginning to wipe the steam off the bathroom mirror and they aren't liking the options staring back at them.Everyone is better at managing when times are going gangbusters. Really, how difficult was it to manage the U.S. economy in the second half of the 1990s? The economy was growing at near emerging market rates. Federal a ...

There’s no doubt about it; whether it’s local, state or federal budgets, discretionary dollars are going to be in scarcer supply. Deep cuts are coming at all levels. But not all cuts are the same.A large part of the growth of the IT industry over the last 30 years has been a result of the wholesale buy-in and adoption of IT as a means to make government and municipal services more efficient and effective. Data processing, document management and networked systems now make room for cloud-based st ...

I was witness this week to an event becoming more frequent across the U.S.: the charter school lottery. CompTIA is a big supporter of charitable efforts in the Chicago area around education and workforce development, but one group in particular has gotten our full attention. The Chicago Tech Academy is now in its second year of operation and just this week held its third student lottery.Soon-to-be freshmen rejoice at winning the ChiTech lottery.The kids who attend ChiTech (as the students have n ...

People often use the words IT and tech interchangeably, but they aren't entirely the same thing. The tech industry does include parts of IT (and maybe makes up most of it), but it also includes industries like bio, green, automotive and other "techs".What separates IT from the others is that IT is first and foremost about bringing the pieces together. The IT industry is about bringing hardware, software, services and infrastructure all together to power, connect and enable. And that's the indust ...

In my recent visits to Washington, D.C., I've noticed a not-so-subtle lack of appreciation for the role IT solution providers play in the IT industry and the U.S. economy in general. Manufacturing jobs are all the rage now. If a company isn't making a tangible product, producing patents or IP, they aren't getting noticed by lawmakers and federal agencies. Much of the structure of the Department of Commerce and the Small Business Administration was built around the manufacturing base. Look at t ...

Most people have heard the phrase "creative destruction." It has many different definitions, and according to Wikipedia, it can be traced back to Marx and his take on capitalism. In more recent years, creative destruction has described the results from rapid technological advance.

When you think of powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill, how come the IT industry doesn't come immediately to mind? No industry in the U.S., or the world for that matter, plays such a diverse and integrated role in the global economy. Nor has any other industry done more to advance society to this point while continuing to raise the bar for a better future. Is it ignorance on the part of legislators? Is the IT industry just taken for granted because it is so pervasive? Has it been by design? Has the ...

I’ve always been a bit of a leadership / management book junkie. I’ve probably ready Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People five or six times and every time I do I come away with a new nugget or perspective I didn’t know was there. Another book I’ve recommended a bunch of times over the course of my career is from Kenneth Blanchard. It’s one of the One Minute Manager series called The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. If you ever meet someone who has never managed people befo ...

I was recently asked to contribute to an Information Week piece on the state of the US IT industry - which got me thinking about the United States’ technological strengths and weaknesses relative to the other players in the global IT landscape.  The US hasn’t been the dominant base for IT production for many years.  We still don’t graduate all the engineers and PhDs we need, we don’t have the fastest or furthest reaching broadband nor do we have the most Internet users per capita.However, the US ...

You know the saying “it’s all over but the shouting”? That’s probably a good characterization of where we are now with health care reform. It’s been passed. It’s been signed. And as it loosens it’s myopic mental hold on DC politics, the hard realities for US businesses of all sizes will start to take shape. In the IT industry, and for solution providers in particular there are going to be a new set of challenges. With the institution any new bill of this size and complexity will come a myriad of ...