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Tom Davenport

Tom Davenport focuses on new business ideas, knowledge management, and analytical competition. His posts evaluate the staying power of management innovations.

Can Millennials Really Change the Workplace?December 15 2008

I wrote a post a few weeks back about whether the current economic climate might lead to a somewhat reduced focus on twittering and friending a la Web 2.0. I thought my comments were fairly mild, but apparently not in the view of many commenters. I haven't been accused so vehemently of not understanding the younger generation since I insisted that my teenaged sons to go on vacation with the family.

Now I am fairly secure in my membership in Generation Jones--I still have lots of pleated pants, for example--and I find the accusations that "I just don't get it" amusing. But the comments did make me think about the fate of the millennials as they move into the workforce. Will they bend to the whims of the workplace, or will the workplace bend to suit them?

Of course, we don't know for sure which sort of bending--or mix of them--will eventually win out. But there are some fun clues from two different settings. One is the award-winning AMC hit series "Mad Men," in which the work and lives of 1960's advertisers are fictionalized. I'm watching the second season now on my DVR; the first season is available on DVD. The ad agency chronicled in the series, Sterling Cooper, has de

10 Principles of the New Business IntelligenceDecember 1 2008

Business intelligence--and its predecessor concepts decision support, executive information systems, and so forth--have been circulating for several decades in business. However, I don't think it's ever fully worked. What we've done is to throw data (often in the form of difficult-to-navigate data warehouses) and software tools at business users, and said "Go at it." That's simply been too hard. We used a lot of terms like "ad hoc queries" and "drill down," but it simply didn't happen very often.

I've argued for a while that organizations need to increase their focus on decision-making. In particular, they need to think again about the relationship between information and decision-making. I recently completed a study on this topic, with the sponsorship of IBM's Information Management business unit, in which I looked at 26 efforts to improve decision-making in organizations. I concluded the following ten things about how business intelligence (BI) needs to evolve:

1. Decisions are the unit of work to which BI initiatives should be applied.
2. Providing access to data and tools isn't enough if you want to ensure that decisions are actually improved.
3. If you're going to supply data to a decision

Voting for Behavioral Economics (And Against My Own Self-Interest)November 4 2008

Did you vote today? If you did, was your choice purely based on your own economic interest? When I go to vote in a few hours, I will definitely be voting against mine--not only in my Presidential vote, but also in a state referendum. Massachusetts has a ballot question asking me whether I want to eliminate the state income tax, and as most of my fellow citizens are expected to, I'm voting against it.

The fact is that we vote or take other actions for a wide variety of reasons other than simple economic interest. Joe the Plumber, for example, could get a tax cut from Obama, but he's voting for McCain. The usual rule of thumb that wealthy people vote Republican is breaking down, at least in this election--Warren Buffett is only the most prominent example. If you want experimental evidence that people vote for reasons other than selfishness, see the article in today's New York Times on the other criteria people employ.

What is the implication of this for business and the economy? It's just another nail in the coffin of traditional economics, in which rational self-interest is the only motivation that's considered. I agree with David Brooks that the current economic crisis will drive a

When Economists Make Predictions, Remember: Nobody Knows Nuthin'October 29 2008

The current economic crisis is further evidence that nobody really knows the future of our domestic or global economy. While there are a few economists who predicted aspects of the current situation (Robert Schiller of Yale predicted a housing bubble collapse in 2005, and Nouriel Roubini of NYU has predicted a systemic financial collapse for several years), nobody predicted all the manifold aspects of this crisis and how they would come together.

And some futurists got things spectacularly wrong. Remember, for example, Kevin Hassett and James K. Glassman, who wrote the book Dow 36,000 in 1999? Only a few more declines like those of last week, and they'll be off by a factor of 10. With such economic perspicacity, perhaps they should be working for the McCain and Bush economic teams. Wait, this just in -- according to an article in Monday's NY Times, that's exactly what they're doing. As Monty Python used to repeat, "Say no more..."

And how about Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden, authors in 1997 of

Is Web 2.0 Living on Thin Air?October 14 2008

Have you ever sat at Starbucks with your Mac laptop open, sipping your mochaccino or your chai latte, and looked around at the others just like you? Did you wonder whether our economy had grown a little overly precious? How can we really be producing value if we're all sitting around blogging and Facebook-friending each other?

1999 the British think-tanker Charles Leadbeater published the book Living on Thin Air. It was both an appealing notion and a scary one: that we no longer have to produce anything but ideas. And that was even before Web 2.0--a platform for everyone to share their ideas, opinions, favorite tunes, and relationship statuses with each other. It was all a lot of fun, but I occasionally wondered whether it was really good for economic productivity.

Now all this fervent typing feels like we drank too much grain alcohol punch at a party last night. In the cold light of a morning-after economic crisis, one questions whether social media can really be the basis of a solid economy. Will people really have time to do all this friending if they fear for their livelihoods? Will we have time for Second Life when we have to take a second job?

I am not suggesting that we will be returning to the Dark Ages, or that there isn't some value in Web 2.0. We'll still have friends, and it will still make sense to write on their walls on occasion. Networks are important, and