Posts tagged Entrepreneur

“In one of the first chapters of “In The Plex”, Steve Levy says it’s the “superbrainy engineering mentality that represented the future of business in the Internet age.” How true! What is not driven by the technology today? Toothbrush - can be electronic, refrigerators could automatically re-order food for you (granted this one didn’t take off just yet), peanut butter is automatically scraped from barrels  with six sigma quality and stuffed into a jar, GE producing PAC imaging systems and American Express tracking fraud and abuse and at the same time partnering with @FourSquare to engage with the consumers.

An then there is complexity in tracking all these data points to be able to make just-in-time, accurate decision support capabilities of the living breathing organization.

An organization is like a human body. Everything needs to function perfectly in perfect unison or else you are sick. Well, corporations are sick today and will be for the foreseeable future.

So why, you ask? This is my theory and please don’t assume that I am talking about 100% of large enterprises. There is a small percentage (I dont have empirical data, maybe somebody does) of companies that are run by “super brainy mentality” that get just GET IT!!!

The business people who are the top of organizations today just don’t get it. They know the phrase “real time”, but don’t know what to do with it or how to “install it”. Decisions are made on stale information. There is so much data that becomes information, but DOES NOT become KNOWLEDGE.

The leaders of today also do not understand that everything is transparent. That there are no more secrets and backhanded deals. Employees have a million ways to communicate anything from inside of the corporation’s skin using today;s technology. Protectionism DOES NOT work

Tomorrow’s corporations need to inspire their workforce, they need to innovate in the marketplace, they need to engage with their customers and most importantly trust the future leaders. The leaders of today do not know how to accomplish this. They don’t understand in what ways technology can help. They just place demands based on inaccurate information, hire CIO’ who are pure operators and not business thinkers and lose the edge… Technology was a back thought of the business goal not the leading dog of the pack. 

And this is why I think corporations as living and breathing organisms are becoming extinct. The future is entrepreneurship. And while, the word “entrepreneur” most of the time signifies two guys in a garage I am not just describing that. It also is a corporation that allows freedom to innovate, freedom to make decisions, acceptance of quick failure and quick recovery as well as rewarding risks at the rank and file.  

There are two lessons here. One is a famous phrase by Esther Dyson: ” “Fail cheap. Fail fast. Fail often. Always make new mistakes.” Secondly is to embrace the new corporate leaders that know how to apply technology to grow a business, innovate and at the end create jobs!!!