We hear plenty these days about the dawning age of Generation Y, that generation that has grown up knowing nothing but the availability of social networking, online gaming, ubiquitous computing and the incredible freedom of choice and information that the internet gives them.

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Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

3 Comments
  • ..to run a successful org in the future… it will take some of the same things stellar cos have already been doing.

    I’ve been working on the Epilogue to my book today – on pretty much this topic. I’d stopped for lunch as saw your post. (I think something quantum is happening… it was too weird)

    My summary from looking at Nucor, Gore, Southwest, Quad/Graphics: “I think the common thread is that they signal that each person has the ability to innovate and that the organization is there to support that innovation through transparency and comfort with mistakes.”

    These companies just figured it out a bit earlier — I wonder what they can do now that the tech is there to make it easier for them?

  • I’m not sure the end of the giant companies is inevitable, but I do believe that there is a strong shift away from centralised, command-and-control management principles.
    This is because of the economic advantage of decentralised decision-making which allows employees or business units closer to the action to determine more of their own “rules”.
    A good example of this is in retailing, where franchised retailers with decentralised management have a significant performance advantage over larger, more authoritarian corporates. Their advantage comes from the increased engagement of people at the coalface.
    New ways of communicating via social technology platforms will be the glue that can bind workers and organisations together for common goals.
    But these tools are still maturing and are not yet trusted by many of the information gate-keepers in corporations, so adoption will be slow.

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