The Future of Work, and the Enterprise

I recently attended the Technology Alliance's "Washington Innovation Summit," where Geoffrey Moore was the lunch keynote speaker. Geoff focused his remarks on his upcoming new book Escape Velocity which digs into how the enterprise business space has been quiet in terms of overall market noise, but certainly won't stay quiet.

Interesting insights, and Geoff posits that there are three pillars of enterprise change:

1. Access counts. Companies are having to deal with multi-dimensional market communications, brought on by rapidly adopted technologies such as social networks, blogs, Skype, Twitter, etc.
2. Broadband. No longer just enabling the media of the mind, but the media of hearts and souls. Pictures and videos are the new killer apps, while newspapers and magazine are toast and TV and radio are being re-engineered into new shapes/forms
3. Mobile: Privacy is almost gone, and mobile is the replacement PC for emerging markets.

The millenials' lament then is what will drive enterprise IT to embrace the consumerization of IT? Fundamentally, Geoff believes that global business dynamics will drive the enterprise IT revolution - which started with outsourcing, then globalization, commodization, differentiation, specialization, and finally economizing. All in all, this is the virtuous or vicious cycle that companies find themselves in.

So, with specialists all around, we now have the rise of collaborative business networks changing the fundamental structure of business. Business networks have increased demand for communications coordination, collaboration, relationship management, and trouble shooting. The challenge is engaging with peers globally to solve problems, which requires an interactional form of work and fundamental empowerment.

The collaboration burden falls then on the middle tier of organizations, not those focused on transactions or those strategizing. The net is that enterprises need to invest in the IT for the middle tier, and the systems of engagement must meet four design goals: mobile, social, adhoc, and real time. By focusing on moments of engagement in this collaboration layer, real differentiation for companies will occur.

The future of work then is really going to be about the virtualization of work - where we move from vertically integrated corporations to horizontally collaborative value chains. Work will become portable in space and time, and we'll move from supervisory management to outcome accountability where employees are contracted with deliverables, and employers operate as the client with acceptance criteria. We can already recognize this transition with younger works seeing themselves in highly contractual ways.