Over the years I've always railed against the concept of "best" practice. It annoys me probably mainly because I'm a bit of an iconoclast. But less emotionally the concept jars for two reasons: first of all because "best" practice is something that a team achieves through learning, rather than something that can be simply adopted, and trying … Continue reading Best Practice versus Good Ideas
Category: innovation
Organizations have a natural tendency to think of IT systems as repositories or as machines. Places for things to be stored or for processes to be executed. But when it comes to collaboration platforms, we might be better to think of them as places. As Danah Boyd’s “It’s Complicated” describes of social networks being like the … Continue reading The time and place
The True Church of Information Technology holds a few articles of faith. One of the most enduring is that belief in the One True System. This monotheistic doctrine is one born of a time when computing power was scarce and the search for "one version of the truth" was the holy journey. Right, let's stop … Continue reading 5 reasons why “one” enterprise collaboration platform might be a bad approach
I had the pleasure of spending yesterday at the Leading Edge Forum event in London, listening to some of my research peers, leading figures from the world of technology, and others, about the need for organisations to build up new capabilities to cope with both "Big D" ("Uber-esque") and "Little d" (self, from within) disruption. … Continue reading Curiouser and curiouser
There is a peculiar phenomenon that I seem to be identifying in the research for the #sharingorg project - something that I'm provisionally calling the "Instant Messaging tipping point of functional uselessness". It goes a little something like this... A new tool or service is developed to address a particular need or niche. That tool is then … Continue reading Less is more
I have written in the past about how the language that we attach to failing is part of the fundamental challenge of organisations dealing with the ambiguity of the world we are in. Failure is pejorative, so it's no wonder that people find it so hard to embrace. The lessons from the world of agile … Continue reading Happy mistakes
I had a fascinating chat with Mark Earls yesterday in the vague sun of Holborn. Towards the end of our broad conversation we got onto the subject of Behavioural Economics, and Mark's frustration that the entire field seems to be dominated by a meme that describes our human ability to shortcut processing (effectively Kahneman's System … Continue reading Cognitive strengths, not bias bugs
The innovation agenda appears to be high on the minds of much of British management. How can our organisations become more effective, more competitive, sustain themselves in the face of the global onslaught? But if you look at the profiles of the people (mostly men) at the top of British organisations, then, well, how can … Continue reading “I didn’t get to where I am today by being innovative”
As I get older, I get increasingly to a functionalist position on the world around me. That the social structures and constructs that we see around us are there through a process of evolution and serve some sort of positive benefit because otherwise they would have fallen foul of natural selection. Sometimes this can seem … Continue reading Social evolution
I'm just back from a family trip to the remarkable Italian city of Venice. Former city state and global power, the web of islands and canals is now a powerful magnet for tourism. It's nearly fifteen years since I last visited. In many ways the city remains unchanged. The water taxis are still eye-wateringly expensive. … Continue reading Selfie Stick
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