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The Fall 2016 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review contains 14 short essays from researchers and businesspeople on the transformative impact of 21st century digital technology (social media, Big Data, mobile, AI, robotics, IoT) on the practice of business management; it's part of a feature section called Frontiers which they intend to run on a regular basis.
Two of my favorites (warning: open access may be withdrawn at a future date) were:
Tim O'Reilly, tech book publisher, contrasting workers in Silicon Valley's customer facing businesses (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, etc) with factory workers of the previous century:
If you think with a 20th century factory mindset, those workers spend their days grinding out products, just like their industrial forebears; only today, they are producing software rather than physical goods. If, instead, you step back and view these organizations with a 21st century mindset, you realize that a large part of the work of these companies — delivering search results, news and information, social network status updates, and relevant products for purchase — is performed by software programs and algorithms. These programs are the workers, and the human software developers who create them are their managers.
Rita Gunther McGrath, prof. at Columbia Business School, wrote on unintended consequences of technology and the emergence of novel "complex systems" (chaotic, subject to unpredictable destabilization) in the business world. She used the analogy of the introduction of shipping container technology 60 years ago:
Once it became possible to ship even low-value goods and make a profit, the rules of competition changed. Rather than being a relatively fixed commodity located in one physical place — the docks — labor could now be sourced from anywhere containers could be packed. And rather than employer and worker being tied to each other in one relatively enduring relationship, an army of outsourced and freelance workers came into play and redefined the dynamics between management and labor. The advent of shipping containers created global competition for jobs and transformed entire supply chains. As former Intel chairman and CEO Andy Grove lamented in 2010, the unintended consequences of all this were to undermine job creation in the United States, even as employment growth among U.S. trade partners in Asia skyrocketed.
BTW I just picked up my dead tree copy of the Fall issue of the Sloan Review; well worth it for $12.95 (there's a full complement of regular-length business articles in addition to the short Frontier essays). Look for the retro comic book graphic.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:07AM
(warning: open access may be withdrawn at a future date)
So it is not actually open access, then, is it? It is just some corporate whore strutting down the tubes of the internet to seduce naive nerds with how cool they are, what with the "temporary" open access! "Yeah, we get it! Open Access! We're cool!" Until they are not, and the tightening tentacle of intellectual property wraps around your neck, tightening bit by bit, until you Google the "user" agreement, and realize it has been changed and you pray they do not alter it further. And then you realize, Google has done it, too. You expected no less of the tie ins to the defense establishment, MicroShaft and Appal, but for Google to take you down the primrose path, and not even say "thank you". You feel used, violated, almost ready to install BSD. Worst of all is the dawning realization that Stallman is right, he has always been right, and you have been a fool not to listen. Too late, newbie! Yes, it has been twenty five years that you have been in the arena, but you are still a newb. Oh, the shame! Oh, the humiliation! Oh, the Huge Manatees!
Oh, by the way, investments will not save your sorry ass. We eat the financials first, when the apocalypse comes.
(This One is for You, Marand! XX0X!)