Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The next big wave

The Big Blog Company has a great post and link back to the FT.

The FT quote says: The next wave in office productivity, represented by wikis (editable websites), blogs and other social networking technologies, is here. Experts say these tools will transform the way work is done by encouraging new types of collaboration.

The point being that these tools are handy.

But they have an inherent danger. They change not just the communication capabilities of people, they change the structure of organisations and the offer a new critical path. The capability to examine decisions and the methods derived to come to such decision is open to scrutiny. In addition the professionalism, even the relevance of the management practices involved in achieving outcomes are open to closer scrutiny.

The knowledge and relevance of process, an intangible asset, is now in flux. The ideas and patents lying around (and also assets that can be put on a balance sheet) become liabilities as employees devote more attention to their exploitation. Customers and customer relationships (also part of goodwill on the balance sheet) move from corporate assets to personal relationship assets.

The consequences are pretty profound and go on and on.

Nice article for the FT, a bit shallow and touching only on the immediately obvious.

Down the road is a much bigger story – how new media restructured the companies.

Picture: The Horses Mouth

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