Some may wonder why we set up this blog, and the partner international blog. After all, in a knowledge/information economy, isn’t it crazy to give away so much of your intellectual capital? Why would you put your internal discussions, creative thinking and the basis of your competitive advantage out into the public arena? Why not just make this website an internal intranet, not publicly accessible?
There are a few reasons…
Firstly, we are convinced that we are no longer in an information economy. By that, we do not mean that information/knowledge/services are not important – they are! They are necessary for success. The infrastructure they necessitate and enable are critical. But, being necessary does not mean that these things are sufficient for a competitive advantage these days. We believe that we are in transition to a connection economy, dominated by relationships, connectedness, globilisation, emotional intelligence, teamwork and the like. The world has changed, leadership will change and so will corporate structures. Values of today’s young generations are clearly different, and the workworld is changing. We believe that these changes can all be explained, predicted and effectively managed by understanding the context of the connection economy.
In this environment, it is the relationship between things that is more important than the things themselves. In this environment, the cleverest thing to do is to share your content with as many people as possible. Some clever economist can probably tell us why this works (I was watching A Beautiful Mind a day or so ago, and maybe John Nash’s theories on equilibrium and groups could be helpful (see: Nash Equilibirum and biography of Nash). Nash Equilibrium refers to a situation in which individuals participating in a game pursue the best possible strategy while possessing the knowledge of the strategies of other players. It won him a Nobel Prize in Mathematics, and forms the corner stone of much of modern game theory, hedge funds and derivative trading, international trade and globilised capital markets.
In other words, we’re moving from an environment in which information is power and must be hoarded, to an era in which information must be shared. This is not just for “the greater good” or altruistic purposes, but because it is also good for us (all the players win in the long term, if not necessarily the short term).
Secondly, without trying to be arrogant, we have way too much intellectual capital. Our team has more ideas than we can ever use on our own. We’re constantly growing our ability to utilise what we know, and to service our clients more effectively, but we will never be able to keep up with our own creativity. Every new person we add brings IN more than they can take OUT, so we’ve got an enormous pool of IP just waiting to be used.
What a tragedy if some of this was lost, simply because there was no effective way of recording it. That must have happened so often in history. Most of the world’s most famous thinkers are remembered for just a few things (often capable of being expressed very simply). Einstein and e=mc2, for example. How many of Einstein’s thoughts, musing, random observations and creative ideas were lost forever because his knowledge management systems did not allow for their capture and later analysis and synthesis (by himself and others)? We now live in an age where technology makes this kind of capturing available.
Of course, if we were to capture every human’s every thought, we’d be totally overwhelmed by a crushing wave of data. Computers can help us sift, filter and synthesize, but they’re not yet good enough (and may never be) to spot the patterns and develop the applications that make sense of it all.
We humbly submit that our team is one of the best in the world when it comes to spotting the patterns and developing the applications. In and amongst the wall of noise out there, we offer this website as a portal of sense-making. We invite you to look around and make up your own mind about our abilities. If you like what you see, please tell others about it!
Thirdly, at TomorrowToday, we try not to talk about the future and a new way of doing business – we try to live it and experiment with it ourselves as well. Knowledge Management is critical, and many companies are experimenting with all sorts of ways to do KM – from simple to really complex (and expensive) systems. We believe that one of the basic building blocks of any KM system is to get your key Knowledge Workers to share their data, thoughts, musings and ideas. Because of this, we prefer to refer to it as “Knowledge UnManagement”. That’s the point – the systems can be managed, but the flow of knowledge and the interactions of knowledge workers (i.e. everyone!) should not be. Its in those crazy spaces that the creativity will come.
Fourthly, if you like what you see on our free-to-air, “musings” site, imagine how impressed you’ll be with the stuff we actually charge people for? Check out our resources, presentations, books, articles and organisational alchemy processes at our main website, http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com.
So, why do we blog? Because we can. Because we want to. Because we have to. Just because.
Enjoy.