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The Future of Information Work

Being a futurist means never being wrong today

Social Networking is Good for BusinessOctober 30 2008

Demos reports that social networking is good for business (read Social networking sites "good for businesses).

Here are my recommendations for making social networking work at work:

• Don't block sites. People will find a way, either on their phones or at home
• Set expectations through learning, not policies. One of the best ways to change behavior is to reinforce it through ongoing learning. The policy is one thing, but peer pressure is better. Abuse is pretty rare, but if everyone is involved, just like a hundred eyes watching for something is better than two, getting people involved in communal behavior modification and social norm adherence is the way to go
• Get involved. Managers who shut down sites without being involved don't really understand what they are shutting down or trying to police. Get and ID and get online.
• Find ways to integrate the community with the work. I have heard from dozens of managers about the value of these communities for testing ideas and driving innovation. You have many trusted networks available, something market researchers would charge hundreds of thousands for. Employ the relationships your employees already have.
• Write apps. It seems that almost everyone can write a Facebook app. If you want to see how appealing an idea is, or you want to do a little viral marketing, do it by writing an app and see what h

A few predictionsSeptember 30 2008

sent from Windows Mobile

new entrants, large and small will reshape the financial world

we will find the day after the election that the smart and cynical American electorate games polling and predictions of outcomes make no sense in light of actual returns

the Internet will play only a small role in the remaking of the financial system as people migrate to local banking and shun abstraction

inventors (not investors) will quickly recover from the financial crisis and offer new types of odd loans that create orthogonal risk that regulators won't be able to sense

Why Do Organizations Reorganize In a Networked EconomySeptember 11 2008

We have all been there. The cloak and dagger stealth of management working through promotions or transfers and what to do in the wake of change. Where do the other people go? How do the alignments realign.

In a way, the reorganization is actually organic, much like the transformation a cell undergoes before splitting. We think of reorgs as hierarchical decisions because they happens to us from above, but they, as often as not, happen to us at the lateral. They are complex dances of capabilities and assumptions. What is perhaps more unnerving than the reorganization is the immediate promise of stability following one, when in fact, the latest reorg is just one of many many million that reach back into human history. Today's reorgs are much less brutal than those of the Cro Magnon or even the Roman, but they are fundamentally the same - a change in structure that shifts vectors of power and the subtleties of relationship providing a chance for organizational and personal evolution.

Why do we reorganize in a networked economy? Because it is hard for most people to do something different everyday, but as the world becomes one of consultancy vs. repetition, the changes will be more frequent and less dramatic. But like technology, not everyone will take to the change, and thus we continue the debate about models of belief and structure that underlie the labor discussion in our political dialog.

Which candidate, ask yourself, is more likely to support a freel

Popcorn - The Price of Success - and the Challenges of ProtectionismJuly 15 2008

Anybody who knows me knows that I love popcorn. It can be a snack, it can be a meal. If you go to a movie, it can be an investment. And it seems that with fuel costs rising, along with fertilizer costs, the price of popcorn is going up - not to mention it is too small a crop to own its own future, so its price is tied to corn in general, which is rising because of Ethanol diversion from the food supply (listen to more from NPR here).

Let me just take this moment to reinforce my anti-protectionist stance. I do love popcorn, but we need to have a free market - as free as possible. The subsidies for Ethanol and other farm crops, and our dumping of crops in developing nations has created a crisis that a free market would avert. Ethanol's golden corn syrup luster is nearly burn to a dull golden brown, and we continue to divert funds to the military rather than active development (teaching people to farm rather than how to open burlap sacks full of US grain). Because of the imbalances created by policy, poverty is getting worse as governments can't afford to provide food to those starving - a consequence of policy of giving away food in the first place. (hear more at the To the Point discussion on "The World's Biggest Challenge: Feeding Humanity" from KCRW).

If we had free markets, we would see more of the devel

The Work of Satire - Obama and the New Yorker CoverJuly 15 2008

The New Yorker is not known to always face the direction of political correctness when creating a cover. The Obama cover that pokes fun at America's preoccupation with Obama's preoccupations, is a good case in point, and one that has New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, on the air discussing the magazines choice (hear it here on NPR).

We have to take ourselves a lot more seriously, and a lot less seriously.

First, conservatives, those of the very far right activist ilk, need to understand that despite graduation issues in our high schools, and that some children are left behind - American is not stupid, nor dumb, at a basic level. Yes, we can be manipulated to buy a certain soap, but when it comes to the Presidency, there is so much coverage along so many channels that questioning Obama at this point on loyalty is near ludicrous. Yes, we can keep those with fear in their heart fearful, but the spread, if at all, will be slow - too slow to do anything to affect the election.

And for liberals, of the far left, activist ilk, just get a sense of humor. The New Yorker is not endorsing the attack POV. If you think that, then you don't read the New Yorker. All of those people who are worried that the New Yorker's cover will influence people don't know the New Yorker reader - and if they think a New Yorker cover will change the hearts and minds of those in the corn belt and the south,