Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Many angles to progress in networked economy.

I will gradually dive deeper into this fascinating phase of transformation of business, public sector services, learning, relationship building, democracy and transparency, corporate governance etcetc. Just to list a few points when wanting to speed up the move - which surely must be in everybody's interest:

1. Remember to network - nobody can deliver it alone
2. Understand how the enduser´s practise can be served in a way that makes him move faster - no progress happens without him taking his first or next e-step (resuse familiar tools)
3. Understand the power of social production - how a billion users are producing content that a billion users prefer to read - no monopoly for corporate bullshit any more
4. How a networked world by necessity means that software should be interoperable by design
5. How exponentially cheaper processing, storing and transport of data has turned the picture upside down - what used to be too expensive because of IT is now the only cheap enough way of doing things - because of IT
6. How IT and business managers must join forces - so that we understand what new technology can do and how much and how customers can take in - before we decide not to change business models and before we invest
7. How IT must be made agile and loosely coupled to enable much more agile business
8. How WEB2.0 has connected the best minds and passes on crystallised thoughts to the next level in real time - globally crossing all sorts of borders - is intra-enterprise working equally well? - surely not - now it is time for Enterprise2.0
9. How it is time to start simplifying offerings and corporate structure - complexity must be eliminated to free up resources for creative work and better personal services
10. How interoperable software and common standards for messaging together is improving productivity big time - and freeing up resources for more value adding work

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Excellent list!

I am probably approaching these themes from a different angle, but nevertheless a couple of comments:

# 6 you mention that IT and business managers should join forces in order to... I would add to this list sociologists, and antropologists etc that understand social behaviour, and the complexity of markets. Unfortunately very few of these people are able to provide this understanding into a business context.

# 9 I have thought a lot about reduction of complexity. I think marketing is one of the "bad guys" in increasing complexity. Marketers see the market fragmented and see a need to "differentiate" approaches. Take for example industry verticals... Is this really needed? Or would it be possible to find universal "needs" that could be tackled in a direct non-differentiated, and focused manner.

BoHarald said...

Oskar's comments to my list:
6. How IT and business managers must join forces - so that we understand what new technology can do and how much and how customers can take in - before we decide not to change business models and before we invest:

Oskars comment: # 6 you mention that IT and business managers should join forces in order to... I would add to this list sociologists, and antropologists etc that understand social behaviour, and the complexity of markets. Unfortunately very few of these people are able to provide this understanding into a business context.
me: agree - as they are few the more valuable is the input from sociologists and antropologists who understand the business environment

9. How it is time to start simplifying offerings and corporate structure - complexity must be eliminated to free up resources for creative work and better personal services:

Oskar: # 9 I have thought a lot about reduction of complexity. I think marketing is one of the "bad guys" in increasing complexity. Marketers see the market fragmented and see a need to "differentiate" approaches. Take for example industry verticals... Is this really needed? Or would it be possible to find universal "needs" that could be tackled in a direct non-differentiated, and focused manner.

Me: I saw an example from Boston consulting stating that a they had come across an enterprise where 25% of the workforce (1bn$) was needed to handle complexity. Certainly marketeers have kept adding features needed by very few - without anything being taken away. The next steps have then been to add concept upon concept to handle the complexity. For example in banking it is rather hopeless for an account officer to know enough complex twists about so many more products.

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