Gartner PCC Summit 2007 (part 13)

"Transforming Business and Workplace Performance - Technology as Great Enabler” (by Tom Austin from Gartner) at PCC 2007 Summit.

The transformation in the workplace is all about externalization.
Tom gave a couple of examples (that can also be found (mostly) in the book Wikinomics):
1. Proctor and Gamble: "connect and develop" instead of internal research and develop, want 50% of innovations from outside the company, 200 times as many researchers outside than inside the company.
Lots of this doesn't require technology!
What they did was sign up to open networks, such as: NineSigma, InnoCentive, YourEncore and yet2.com. They posted questions on difficult issues they had here.
They set up internal idea changes, web-community-based market.
IT was the great enabler here.
2. US Patent and Trademark organisation wiki experiment. Started with posting the software patent requests.
3. Threadless: design T-shirts together. Post your design, people vote on them and based on voting the design is manufactured.
4. Goldcorp, refer to Wikinonmics book.

Contest etc are not new, but they took much longer. E.g. 'fly over the Atlantic Ocean contest' started in 1919 and ended in 1927.

Megatrends in role of IT in the workplace:
"welcome to the post-digital world"
- people and IT (the schism is here)
- nature of business (ecosystems, not enterprises)
- nature of work (automation returns declining)
- technology markets (buyer behaviour, vendor and business models, channels)

Within the next 5 years we will use technology (ICT networks) pure socially (social interaction).

IT has changed the nature of work - are we reversing the Industrial Revolution?
- mind-numbling routine >> terror-inducing novelty (ad hoc work)
- hierarchical command and control >> self-organisation and regulating systems
- etc.

There is a large increase in demand for people with non-routine skills. Process automation is asymptoting. It's about person-centered computing: content, context & services. We'll see cloud-based services in the years to come.

Tom presents a contextual framework which has two lines: technology investment areas and business goals (with increasing levels of abstraction).
This framework helps you think about how you spend your money. You'll find that it's mostly on the "Operations"-side.

Actions:
1. assess culture and engagement (are you a leader or director organisation?)
2. look for return beyond cost/ROI (help people be more effective and able to transform things)
3. check governance and management (get social, set up MySpace for your company, stress agility and diversity, use social controls)
4. risk: acceptable use and security
5. question assumptions.

Conclusions and recommendations:
- internalize the framework
- question your assumptions
- invest to rapidly raise agility
- incenting people to help others (tread carefully with pay off measurements)
- user-driven opportunistic choices (encourage them, local tools and SaaS)