Being part of the generation that set-up the racks of dial-up modems that made the Internet happening in +1995 - we never asked the question "Who is the president of the Internet?" Apparently some did.

More than 10 years later - we learned our first lessons how to be part of the network effect - sharing stuff online with friends and co-workers is part of our daily live. Having a deeper look into organizational structures - like in large corporations - it still looks like time has stood still - moving Word documents from A to B - reviewed by C to be approved from F together with M and Y. The ability to decentralize the decision making and using "open systems" to keep transparency among the collective, are goals I try to propagate.

Reading "The Starfish and the Spider" gives a solid overview and a lot of real-world examples how organizations can learn to adapt working methodes to be better prepared for the future. Reacting on trends - ability to outperform new competition - scale operations with less over-head. Some industries like in music, advertisement, newpapers have seen dramatic change in the last few years - and I'm sure we will see more happening.

I remember a speech I gave in 2002 - I use the sentence "Banking is essential, banks are not" (I think it's a quote from B. Gates) to visualize what possible could happen - PayPal isn't yet there! (though I heard, that in US people already use PayPal to pay their rent)

Posted by Cedric on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 6/19/2007 12:27:00 AM | Permalink