A couple of experiences in the past few days have made me realise that the worlds of technology and business are converging in a way that technology companies are maybe not realising. The first was Seedhack, where 120 folk put in a weekend’s work to try to develop out new business ventures based on technology, and the second was a tweet I saw earlier in the week:
“A #CIO is no longer a technologist, but rather a business leader with a keen interest in technology – @gbeach”
My rather curt response to that latter point was that if it’s only a “keen interest”, the CIO better start retraining.
Anyway, where this has got me to thinking is that technology companies have a tendency to segment their communications into two categories: stuff about business to non-technologists, and stuff about technology to technologists. And that now feels really anachronistic.
Any good business person needs to have a handle on technology these days – not necessarily down at the kernal level, but enough so that they don’t get bamboozled by tech folk trying to sell them something they don’t need (or selling things in a way that don’t make sense). Conversely, any tech folk who don’t think that it’s important to understand the business context of the use of technology are going to be in for a bumpy career ride in the next few years as the twin forces of consumerisation and commoditization take grip and challenge the “IT says you must” views that have still such strong currency in certain quarters.
mmitII 