Sometimes a single session at a conference sums up the good and bad points
about an entire event – I had one of those times this morning. Quite
appropriately given the theme for this conference, and given the current
economic climate, Dion Hinchcliffe’s workshop was entitled “Highly Effective
Strategies for Putting Your Business on a Recession Diet”. Hinchcliffe,
according to his own bio, “is an internationally recognized business strategist
and enterprise architect who works hands-on with clients in the Fortune 500,
federal government, and Internet startup community” – whatever that somewhat
immodest bio means in this pressure-cooker climate where even the doormen have
job titles with a VP prefix (but don’t get me wrong – Google Hinchcliffe and you’ll see his credentials are sound).
Hinchcliffe pointed out the major shifts that we’ve seen in business over the
past few years – value creation, control, transparency and intellectual property
have all been subverted to a greater or lesser extent. We’re striving to make
our products and services cheaper, better and more innovative. Standing in the
way of these aims however are concerns around cost, disruption, risk, difficulty
and dominant cultural norms – fundamentally most of these aren’t technological
problems, rather they’re culturally based. In other words the usual
benefit/barrier speech that evangelists drag out.
Given his livelihood depends on the “new paradigm” it’s not surprising that
Hinchcliffe contended that economics 2.0 is a necessary thing if you want your
business to survive in the years ahead – an understanding and extensive use of
these tools must be core competencies he pronounced. The curmudgeon in me would
ask whether Joe the plumber or Jill the electrician really need to (or should
for that matter) spend their time doing this stuff. I totally agree that
traditional business can find efficiencies by (for example) moving to online
accounting, or internet banking or whatever – but I struggle with extending this
to the plethora of business 2.0 products and services that exists. Those kind of
thoughts however are just cause for corporal punishment here in Silicon Valley
so I vainly tried to push that thought to the back of my mine!
Hinchcliffe used as an example a situation where a worker within an
organisation he consulted to asked “why do I need to blog within my
organisation, I have real work to do” – an understandable, if somewhat backwards
viewpoint. Hinchcliffe’s answer was bullish on the value these tools bring
saying that the employee “has stuff to do because he doesn’t blog”. The
rationale for this viewpoint coming from the fact that the particular employee
has personal knowledge about the way the organisation works, but that this
knowledge is siloed and unable to be leveraged by others within the
organisation. To a point I’d agree, but it doesn’t negate the fact that there is
some baseline stuff that needs to be done and the addition of “new media tools”
to these operations is nothing more than a productivity drain. As an analogy, if
I have a drainlayer digging a trench down my drive I totally fail to see any
business 2.0 tool that adds helps drive efficiencies to that activity.
Hinchcliffe dragged out a number of case studies – somewhat unfortunately the
majority of them where in financial and banking organisations – again I’ll be
accused of being a curmudgeon but are these not the same organisation who
(almost) singlehandedly have brought global economies to their knees? And we
should be following their example of how to drive innovation and efficiency? I
think not…
Oh well, there’s free lunch, the architecture is fantastic and there’s always
tonight’s parties to look forward to!
(Cross-posted at Idealog – Rich With Ideas)
