NOBO Business Benefits

With reference to Peter Gloor's book "Swarm Creativity", NOBO can be considered as a virtual community of practice working in an ecosystem of connected communities of practice. There are three types of virtual community of practice but it is the collaborative innovation network (COIN) that delivers the primary business benefits.

"Members of COINS self-organise as cyberteams, teams that connect people through the Internet - enabling them to work together more easily by communicating not through hierarchies, but directly with each other. The individuals in COINs are highly motivated, working together toward a common goal - not because of orders from their superiors (although they may be brought together in that way), but because they share the same goal and are convinced of their common cause."

The business benefits to NOBO that embrace the concept of COINs are substantial;

• Organisations are more innovative and more collaborative
• Organisations are more agile
• Infuse external knowledge into the organisation
• Uncover hidden business opportunities
• Release synergies
• Reduce costs and cut time to market
• Help organisations locate their experts and reward hidden contributors
• Lead to more secure, transparent organisations.

"COINs will be the foundation of virtual teamworking for tomorrow's increasingly virtual global enterprises. Innovation is crucial to the long-term success of an organisation, and COINs are the best engines to drive innovation."

NOBO Culture

More than anything else, NOBO is about developing a culture of participation devoted to passionate expression of ideas, implementation of a shared vision, and ongoing improvement. The rewards are huge, leading to sustainable, profitable business.

But within large organisations cultural change is not easy. It requires commitment from everyone. Steve Benton and Melissa Giovagnoli in their book "The Wisdom Network" identify numerous ways to adjust attitudes thereby promoting a culture of participation. Here is a selection of their ideas;

1. Judge ideas on their merit rather than on their place of origin - Most companies believe that they judge ideas on their merits, but they often labour under subtle prejudices of which they're not aware. It takes a conscious effort to evaluate new ideas without favouritism, politics, or biases getting in the way.

2. Accept reasonable failure - Wisdom networks thrive when people feel free to float all types of ideas and proposed concepts, in addition to what they deliver. Wisdom networks draw tremendous energy from one successful idea, even if nine others fail before that success.

3. Foster a participatory climate where networking is a way of life - Without this attitude, people are often reluctant to share information or ideas, are a bit cynical toward management, and find the thought of contributing to communities of practice or other knowledge exchanges anathema.

4. Establish a mentoring culture - Every organisation has people who mentor others, but not every one possesses a mentoring responsibility that permeates the culture. With a mentoring culture, the most experienced naturally embrace the knowledge-sharing role and derive satisfaction from helping others to grow and succeed.

5. Embrace an alliance mentality toward external groups - Some organisations are natural partners, establishing relationships with key suppliers and vendors that contribute to a shared vision and common values, each encouraging growth in local business communities.

6. Recognise that knowledge exchanges generate a superior Return On Investment - When a sufficient number of people are excited about working on pet projects that are also important to the business - and when they see how such contributions will benefit the company and their careers - the system springs to life.

7. Recruit people who know how to share, not only people who know what to do - In years past, companies generally hired for experience and expertise first, and for attitude second (or not at all). Fortunately, we are seeing a shift in this philosophy as organisations recognise that communication, teamwork, and helping others are critical qualities in a knowledge-centric world.

NOBO culture is about organisations realising that one brilliant individual may not be as valuable as several highly competent employees who excel in mentoring, communicating, and other forms of knowledge sharing.

NOBO Business Drivers

This blog explores global business drivers for NOBO. In essence there are four aspects to be considered;

Transparency - An old force with new power is rising in business, one that has far-reaching implications for most everyone. Firms that embrace this force and harness its power will thrive. Those which ignore or oppose it will suffer. The force is transparency. People and institutions that interact with firms are gaining unprecedented access to all sorts of information about corporate behaviour, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information about matters that affect their interests, stakeholders now scrutinize the firm as never before, inform others, and organize collective responses. The corporation is becoming naked. Corporations have no choice but to rethink their values and bahaviours - for the better.
( Extract from "The Naked Corporation" by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll )

Emerging Technology - Within a decade, the major population centres of the planet will be saturated wuth trillions of microchips, some of them tiny computers, many of them capable of communicating with each other. Some of these devices will be telephones...some devices will read barcodes and send and receive messages to radio-frequency identity tags. Some will furnish wireless, always-on Internet connections and will contain global positioning devices. As a result, large numbers of people in industrial nations will have a device with them most of the time that will enable them to link objects, places, and people to online content and processes. Groups of people using these tools will gain new forms of social power, new ways to organize their interactions and exchanges just in time and just in place. Tomorrow's fortunes will be made by the businesses that find a way to profit from these changes, and yesterday's fortunes are already being lost by businesses that don't understand them.
( Extract from "Smart mobs: The Next Social Revolution" by Howard Rheingold )

A New World of Organizations - The Internet allows even the smallest of companies to have a global presence and contract for work anywhere in the world. There is a variety of digitally enabled business networks for marketing, locating materials and resources, and expanding distribution, all providing value for their participants. There are also social networks, political networks, professional networks, and networks for communities and enthusiasts - all purposeful, all providing value for their participants. The centre is moving. It is moving out from corporate hubs to more diffuse and distributed webs of business relationships and alliances spreading across the globe.
( Extract from "The Future of Knowledge" by Verna Allee )

Sustainability - Globalisation, the knowledge economy, technology, deregulation, e-business, sustainabililty and accountability - this is the new business reality. How companies respond to these challenges and opportunities will determine whether they succeed in the early years of the new millennium. Business has had a profound impact on the environment. There is hardly a CEO that does not recognise that our rivers, air, forests and oceans are under severe threat. There are also many company executives that see their own survival and prosperity linked to solving some of these pressing environmental and social problems. A new business paradigm is emerging where trade-offs between environment, community and business interests is no longer sustainable. Corporate environmental and social performance is now seen as an important business issue that needs to be evaluated against other competing strategic decisions.
( Extract from "Sustainability: The new business reality" by PricewaterhouseCoopers )

NOBO Business Challenges

The nature of contemporary business poses certain challenges to NOBO knowledge workers organising for productivity and prosperity. With reference to "The Wisdom Network" by Steve Benton and Melissa Giovagnoli I believe the following are the key NOBO business challenges;

• A higher degree of integration -Different backgrounds, cultures, races, sexes, experience levels, or any difference among people provides the atmosphere for innovation to thrive. When too much like-mindedness is prevalent, new thoughts are hard to come by.
• The need for speed - A results-focused world often requires compromises to get work done faster, cheaper, and more cost effectively. This may mean resources are allocated to direct, short-term ways of making or saving money rather than to the less-direct, longer-term effects of social entrepreneurship.
• Quality - When communities form around topics focused on clear business goals, information turns to knowledge, and knowledge that is acted upon turns to wisdom. When communities form around topics that are not in any way connected, organizational wisdom cannot flourish.
• The shortage of skills - NOBO communities are hampered by individuals who are stubborn, egotistical, and unwilling or unable to work well with others. They may be brilliant, but they keep that brilliance confined in their heads or share it on a limited basis.
• Changing technology - The Internet and its technologies are evolving rapidly causing many interesting problems for enterprises trying to implement social software technologies. To succeed NOBO should take stock of how they implement these technologies and develop a plan to manage constant changes with users acting as co-developers.

Social Computing

This blog describes the seventh and last step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It takes a look at how thriving alliances leads to social computing.

Social computing is the key enabling tool for NOBO knowledge workers and their alliances. It includes technologies such as social networks, wikis and blogs. These technologies support social interaction and communication. The tool heralds a new age whereby building and maintaining online business relationships can enhance productivity and prosperity across the globe.

Social computing is principally about people but there are four perspectives which help to define the essence of the concept;

• Web as platform - The web is transforming the business landscape. It allows even the smallest of companies to have a global presence and contract for work anywhere in the world. Business is moving. It is moving out from large organisations to more diverse and distributed webs of business relationships. Tim O'Reilly provides a good overview of Web 2.0
• Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly says an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into "a kind of global brain". Collective intelligence promises to transform the traditional business ecosystem into a NOBO ecosystem: an ecosystem embracing emotional intelligence, social responsibility and sustainability. However there are many forms of collective intelligence and correspondingly, many "tribes" of its practitioners. This is an abbreviated overview by George Por.
• No formal hierarchy - Web 2.0 is about people and Enterprise 2.0 will be less about less top-down structure and more about structure developed freely through lower-level interactions, say Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew McAfee and Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. Low-level interactions create pattern and order enabled by Web 2.0 technologies.
• Online Community - The quality of community in tomorrow's wired world is an important concern says Howard Rheingold, a veteran of online comminity. "In order for a virtual community to succeed, the software must have a usable human interface". Equally significant, O'Reilly asserts trusting users as co-developers of social software has become a core competency of Web 2.0.

It is important to stress again social computing is a very powerful tool for knowledge workers in the 21st century. Rheingold observes "Intelligent and democratic leadership is desperately needed at this historical moment, while the situation is still somewhat fluid". It is a significant opportunity for leaders especially pioneering leaders as communities of practice.

My next blog will consider the business challenges facing knowledge workers organising for productivity and prosperity across the globe.

Alliances

This blog describes the sixth step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It considers how knowledge workers in value networks build alliances.

The Internet enables knowledge workers to consider alliances as a new kind if strategy opportunity. The value proposition of an alliance is collaboration for a common good. "Participants form a community that designs or makes useful things, creates and shares knowledge, or simply has fun together" writes Don Tapscott et al in the book "Digital Capital:Harnessing the Power of Business Webs". Alliances represent not the usual commercial sense of the word but more sharing and development of collective intelligence.

How do you guide these alliances? This article by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and William M. Snyder describes seven principles on cultivating communities of practice:

• Design for evolution - because communities of practice are organic, designing them is more a matter of shepherding their evolution than creating them from scratch.
• Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives - effective community design is built on the collective experience of community members.
• Invite different levels of participation - people participate in communities for different reasons—some because the community directly provides value, some for the personal connection, and others for the opportunity to improve their skills.
• Develop both public and private community spaces - dynamic communities are rich with connections that happen both in the public places of the community—meetings, Web site—and the private space—the one-on-one networking of community members.
• Focus on value - rather than attempting to determine their expected value in advance, communities need to create events, activities, and relationships that help their potential value emerge and enable them to discover new ways to harvest it.
• Combine familiarity and excitement - lively communities combine both familiar and exciting events so community members can develop the relationships they need to be well connected as well as generate the excitement they need to be fully engaged.
• Create a rhythm for the community - the rhythm of the community is the strongest indicator of its aliveness.

The next blog describes the seventh and final step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It takes a look at how thriving alliances leads to social computing.

Increasing prosperity through Value Networks

This blog describes the fifth step in the NOBO Vituous Circle. It examines how knowledge workers can increase prosperity through value networks.

"The emerging knowledge economy and networked world of enterprise have the potential for dramatically increasing economic and social prsoperity in a much different way than we have experienced in the past" writes Verna Allee in her book "The Future of Knowledge". Allee asserts that by viewing an enterprise as a value network brings greater understanding of the web of relationships that generate both tangible and intangible value. The bigger the network of knowledge workers...the greater that value is to the knowledge workers themselves.

For NOBO what might this value be? Etienne Wenger in his book "Cultivating Communities of Practice" tables the benefits for individual community members and for the organisation as a whole. Individual long-term benefits include:

• forum for expanding skills and expertise
• network for keeping abreast of a field
• enhanced professional reputation
• increased marketability and employability
• strong sense of professional identity.

Organisation long-term benefits include:

• knowledge-based alliances
• emergence of unplanned capabilities
• capacity to develop new strategic options
• ability to foresee technological developments
• ability to take advantage of emerging market opportunities.

The next blog describes step six of the NOBO Vituous Circle. It considers how knowledge workers in value networks build alliances as a new kind of strategy opportunity.

Entrepreneurship

This blog describes the fourth step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle by exploring how the art and practice of the learning organisation in the knowledge economy can bring about social entrepreneurship.

In the last few decades, especially in the US, the dominant view of business has become that its only legitimate goal is to make money for its stockholders. However more and more people take into account their non-financial values in deciding how they want to work and invest their money hence this view is no longer sustainable. Social entrepreneurship is gaining credence.

“Social entrepreneurs differ from traditional entrepreneurs not only in terms of their motives with respect to profit and personal wealth but also with respect to their time-frames, being more concerned with long-term capacity building than with short-term outcomes. Equally they are different in terms of their ‘scavenger-like’ use of resources, recognizing that most communities have under-utilized resources that need to be harnessed for the good of society. Whatever, there is an increasing interest in this form of entrepreneurship…” says David Kirby, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Surrey, England and author of “Entrepreneurship”.

Structural changes in the economy have also exacerbated knowledge-based acrivities. Globalisation has increased competitive pressure on manufacturing firms which has led to a shift in production capacity to low cost countries. These changes have led to opportunities for new entrepreneurial initiatives particularly in the area of knowledge work and associated services. However, the capacity to adapt to economic change is crucial for competitiveness. To become the most competitive and dynamic, knowledge workers in a learning organisation need to develop social entrepreneurial competencies and act on the following;

Exploit creativity and innovation – Social entrepreneurship is first and foremost a mindset. It takes creativity and innovation to enter and compete in an existing market, to change or even to create a new market.

Learn from the best - in many aspects of social entrepreneurship some knowledge workers may outperform others and might serve as inspiration. It is wise to learn from each other on the basis of 'winning by sharing'.

Develop ‘wisdom’ networks – Identify the people who share their expertise consistently and effectively. Build and maintain networks of people who share NOBO values.

Knowledge workers in organisations of the future need to foster social entreprenerial drive more effectively so the next blog will describe how knowledge workers can increase prosperity through value networks.

The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation

This blog describes the third step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle by showing how a shared vision can support the art and practice of the learning organisation.

Peter Senge popularised the concept of the ‘learning organisation’. His idea of a learning organisation as a group of people who are continually enhancing their capabilities to create what they want to create has been deeply influential. This paper explains the five disciplines Senge sees as central to a learning organisation. The five disciplines are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision and team learning. This blog focuses on the significance of building a shared vision in network-centric learning organisations looking at generative learning, systems thinking and leaders’ stewardship.

“Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply them. In fact, the whole idea of generative learning – ‘expanding your ability to create’ – will seem abstract and meaningless until people become excited about some vision they truly want to accomplish.” (Extract from Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline) The practice of shared vision creates increased clarity, enthusiasm and commitment.

Senge also believes that the discipline of building shared vision lacks a critical underpinning if practiced without systems thinking. “Vision paints the picture of what we want to create. Systems thinking reveals how we have created what we currently have.” Systems thinking in network-centric organisations transcends linear thinking in traditional hierarchical organisations thereby increasing the possibility of the realisation of a shared vision.

Peter Senge also argues that learning organisations require a new view of leadership. He identifies three aspects – leader as designer, leader as steward and leader as teacher. Within the context of building a shared vision leader as steward is the most critical. “In a learning organisation, leaders may start by pursuing their own vision, but as they learn to listen carefully to others’ visions they begin to see that their own personal vision is part of something larger. This does not diminish any leader’s sense of responsibility for the vision – if anything it deepens it.” Senge believes being the steward of a vision shifts a leader’s relationship toward her or his personal vision. It ceases to be a possession and becomes a calling. You are part of the shared vision as much as it is yours.

The learning organisation is able to adapt to change and move forward successfully by acquiring new knowledge, skills, and/or behaviours. By building a shared vision a learning organisation can transform itself. The simple fact is a shared vision in a network-centric learning organisation becomes a living force whereby people truly believe they can shape their future.

The next blog describes step four of the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It explores how the art and practice of the learning organisation in the knowledge economy brings about social entrepreneurship.

Changing Conversation in Organisations

This blog describes the second step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle and begins with an extract from Arthur Battrams's "Navigating Complexity" to set the scene for NOBO...

“Because complex systems have built-in unpredictability, the certainties of the ‘command-and-control’ approach to management no longer hold true. The implications of complexity theory for organisations are massive.... Dialogue is the tool which we can explore the complexity space. It is a special kind of conversation and requires people to listen at the same time, which isn’t easy. As a result dialogue requires the application of simple rules which allows one person to speak unchallenged while others listen and seek clarification of their understanding." Dialogue is a valuable tool for leaders to bring forth new and previously hidden meanings and understandings.

Along with dialogue, NOBO leaders need certain capabilities to effectively change conversation in organisations. These capabilities are described in this MIT Leadership Centre paper “Leadership in the Age of Uncertainty”.

Briefly the capabilities are:

Sense-making: making sense of the world around us. The act of sense-making is discovering the new terrain as you are inventing it. In the very process of mapping the new terrain, you are creating it.

Relating: developing key relationships within and across organizations. Leadership is not an individual sport, and in out networked age the ability to connect and build trusting relationships is a key competency. The core capability of relating centres on the leader’s ability to engage in inquiry, advocacy, and connecting.

Visioning: creating a compelling vision of the future. While sense-making creates a map of what is, visioning is a map of what could be. Visions are important because they provide the motivation for people to give up their current views and ways of working in order to change.

Inventing: creating new ways of working together. Inventing entails creating the processes and structures needed to make the vision a reality. It involves implementing the steps needed to achieve the NOBO vision of the future.

These four capabilities, along with dialogue, are complementary but they can also create tensions that need to be managed. It is difficult to hold an image of the future and the present simultaneously. Balancing people and processes, action and understanding, individual and collective aspirations, can be challenging. Yet it is inherent in the framework that managing these very tensions is the essence of leadership and changing conversation in organisations.

The next blog describes step three of the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It explores how a shared vision can support the art and practice of the learning organisation.

Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice

This blog describes the first step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle by stressing the importance of human values and NOBO...

Placing human values at the centre of NOBO is fundamental for ensuring people not only make money but also realise other needs too. In our world today, especially in the advanced industrial regions, many people’s basic needs are fulfilled. They are searching for a deeper meaning to their lives and look towards NOBO as a way of committing to some purpose larger than themselves.

To support and sustain a values-driven NOBO, a new approach to business organisation and leadership is required. Communities of practice demonstrate that it is natural for people to seek out those who share values, knowledge and experience. As people discover each other and exchange ideas, relationships develop and a community forms. This community becomes a place where collective learning occurs and builds into an incubator where new knowledge, skills and competencies develop around core shared values.

As communities mature leaderships emerges to coordinate and cultivate activities. Supporting and sustaining these new leaders is an imperative in allowing communities to build healthy and robust working practices. How can leaders be helped? Margaret Wheatley describes a framework in “Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice: How to Rapidly Develop New Leaders in Great Numbers”.

In summary, there are four key areas of work that can support the development of new leadership-in-community.

Name the Community. Community forms among people acting from the same values and visions. Their practices are varied and unique, but each practice develops from a shared set of values. In this way, the community is very diverse in its expression, and very united in its purpose.

Connect the Community. A community becomes stronger and more competent as new connections are formed with those formerly excluded, as it brings in those who sit on the periphery, as communication reaches more parts of the system, and as better relationships are developed.

Resource the Community. Communities of practice need to be nourished with many different resources. They require ideas, methods, mentors, processes, information, technology, equipment, money. Each of these is important, but on great gap is that of knowledge – knowing what techniques and processes are available that work well.

Illuminate and Interpret the Community. There is a critical need to tell the stories of this community, to get public attention for their efforts. It takes times, attention, and a consistent media focus for people to see them for what they are, examples of what’s possible, of what our new world could look like. To develop this level of public awareness requires skilful working with the media.

Communities of practice develop from a need to do one’s work more effectively but also, more importantly, to align with shared human values.

“Whatever is important to you, you probably have more opportunity than you may realize to pursue those things in business, even in for-profit companies. You don’t have to be limited by the misconception that corporations always have to try to maximize their profits. Nor must you be limited by what other people think are the social responsibilities of business. You are really only limited by what you can imagine and by what you can find other people to support.”

(Extract from Thomas W. Malone’s “The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life”)

The next blog explores step two in the NOBO Virtuous Circle by describing how NOBO leaders can initiate changing conversation in organisations.

Virtuous Circle

Purpose of this blog

This blog should be of interest to all those who wish to understand how NOBO can be successful in the growing knowledge economy. It is targeted at a wide audience.

To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should transform themselves into communites of practice. Etienne Wenger, a globally recognised thought leader in the field of communities of practice, writes "Knowing is not merely an individual experience, but one of partaking in the knowledge of a community." He asserts that it is the practitioners themselves that manage their own knowledge therefore, connecting practitioners is the heart of their approach for cultivating and co-ordinating knowledge both inside the organisations and beyond its boundaries. They can do this by developing a comprehensive and visionary business strategy grounded in the practical and effective use of Web 2.0 technologies. This strategy can then be implemented rapidly and incrementally in the form of the NOBO Virtuous Circle:

Step One: Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice initiate Changing Conversation in Organisations

Step Two: Changing Conversation in Organisations supports the Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation.

Step Three: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation brings about Entrepreneurship.

Step Four: Entrepreneurship calls for Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks.

Step Five: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks builds Alliances.

Step Six: Alliances lead to Social Computing.

Step Seven: Social Computing enables Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice.

The next set of blogs will take a closer look at the NOBO Virtuous Circle and each of the steps within it.

Adoption Strategy for Enterprise 2.0

Gartner says Web 2.0 offers many opportunities for growth, but few enterprises will immediately adopt all aspects necessary for significant business impact.

“While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full range of capabilities to succeed. By 2008, the majority of Global 1000 companies will quickly adopt several technology-related aspects of Web 2.0, but will be slow to adopt the aspects of Web 2.0 that have a social dimension, and the result will be a slow impact on business, according to Gartner, Inc. The challenge is that Web 2.0 is not just a set of technologies, but also has attributes that have a social dimension…”

What are the challenges?

Recently Socialtext, an enterprise wiki provider published a well documented case study of wiki deployment within Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the international investment banking arm of Dresdner Bank. Wiki had been heavily used by IT since 1997 but DrKW wanted to bring business people on board to enhance collaboration and communication between IT and the business. The wiki deployment was a success and is now being used by approximately 2,500 DrKW employees.

As user numbers were growing, social software consultant Suw Charman was brought in to manage and support and adoption. Charman subsequently wrote an adoption strategy which provides valuable insight into the challenges and process of deploying social software. The adoption strategy is written in the context of wiki deployment but I believe it is appropriate for other social software technologies too.

Briefly, the adoption strategy focuses on four main challenges:

Fostering grassroots adoption. This challenge centres around identifying users who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits.

Management support. As well as supporting bottom-up adoption, it is beneficial for there to be top-down support, but that support has to be based on openness and transparency.

Understanding time-scales. Having a clear adoption strategy, and ensuring that the correct key players are identified and 'converted', helps to speed up the process, but it remains a fact of human nature that it takes time for people to become comfortable with new technology, new ways of doing things and, most importantly, new cultures.

Remember what your goals really are. Adoption isn't a goal in and of itself. Lots of people use email an awful lot, but that doesn't mean that it's being used well. Think about what your ultimate aims are; make them discrete, measurable and attainable.

Social software is a very powerful tool within enterprise, but like any other business project, it takes thought and planning to ensure successful adoption.

Emerging Social Software Technology

“Enterprise 2.0 is an important concept… It represents the most important and potentially disruptive business challenge since the advent of modern management” says Jerry Bowles.

“For better or worse, Enterprise 2.0 has become the buzzword, or neologism, if you insist, to describe the convergence or collision of a new breed of widely available and deployed participative social networking technologies (those things we call Web 2.0) with traditional hierarchical organizational dynamics. No one yet knows exactly what this will produce in the long run or even if it’s a good or bad thing. It is, however, an incredibly BIG thing and one with enormous implications in the world of business which is one of key building blocks of civilizaton.”

Powerful words but in essence containing an important message for NOBO. Social software has the potential to be disruptive and provide the environment to enable core NOBO competencies such as dialogue, learning, creativity and innovation.

Which technologies are these? With reference to Gartner Highlights of Key Emerging Technologies in 2005 and 2006 the following technologies can be regarded as significant in truly empowering the twenty-first century workforce.

Wikis are great for group brainstorming and collaborative projects. Ideas can be collected and developed by a using the simple, web-based collaborative system. Users are able to change web pages created by other users.

Blogging involves the use of online personal journals by knowledge workers either individually or in a group, to further organisational goals.

Peer to Peer (P2P) voice over IP (VoIP) Telephony services like Skype currently enjoy significant consumer adoption and are beginning to make inroads into the business landscape.

Podcasting offers a way to ‘subscribe’ to radio programmes and have then delivered to your PC.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a simple data format that enables web sites to inform subscribers of new content and distribute content more efficiently by bypassing the browser via RSS reader software.

Collective Intelligence An approach to producing intellectual content that results from individuals working together with no centralized authority.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) SNA is the use of information and knowledge from many people and their personal networks.

The social software technologies I have described in this blog will feature heavily in business landscapes of the future but before they do, organisations are going to have to foster strategies to adopt these technologies…

Competing in the Knowledge Economy

The development of modern knowledge economies reflects a move from an economy based on land, labour and capital to one which the main component of production is information and knowledge. The most effective economies are those with the largest production of information and knowledge and in which they are easily accessible to the greatest number of individuals and enterprises.

To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should tranform themselves into network-centric organisations in which space and time are not bound by four walls and the traditional nine-to-five schedule. These organisations are more flexible, more efficient, more productive in terms of both labour and capital, and more adept at both using knowledge, and producing knowledge and services as outcomes.

Network-centric organisations represent the decentralisation of power and authority in companies, and the creation of networks of information which enable localised decision-making and responses. These responses are adaptive responses to an unpredictable and rapidly changing external environment.

Those organisations that learn how to operate in the knowledge economy will gain significant competitive advantage over their peers. These organisations will be flexible and agile, adapting to an environment where the basis of business competition shifts from cost and value to imagination. Success in such an environment is determined by the speed at which new creative ideas are generated, synthesised and then implemented with entrepreneurial zeal and dynamism.

Competing based on these principles in the knowledge economy demands the development and deployment of some key social software technologies...the subject of my next blog.

Background to NOBO

The next three blogs aim to describe the business environment in which NOBO faces significant challenges.

The first blog focuses on competing in the knowledge economy. The second blog focuses on emerging social software technologies and the third blog focuses on the adoption strategy of these technologies.

Meme Map Narrative

Twenty-first century organisations such as the New Order of Business Organisation (NOBO) is a response to the changing economic and technological forces that exist in our world today. Globalisation and web technologies have precipitated a business revolution whereby dramatic changes in organisations, economies and the cultural assumptions of our society have been challenged and the mindsets of the industrial era are crumbling.

The drive for decentralisation and the empowerment of creative knowledge workers is releasing an unprecedented rise in innovative, pioneering leaders. These are not traditional business entrepreneurs but socially responsible individuals with a passion for sustainable business growth and increasing prosperity through value networks. The emergence of self-organising, self-governed, communities of practice enabled by open source social networking tools and practices is creating a learning environment grounded in emotional intelligence, transparency and dialogue.

NOBO is transforming the conversations between social entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs merging the best of both perspectives. Business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs no longer speak at cross purposes and argue for different values. Instead, the art and practice of NOBO helps entrepreneurs focus such conversations on the value of their products and services in a complex, socially responsible and sustainable business ecosystem. Sustaining advantage in the knowledge economy demands more than superficial actions, strategically, NOBO people understand organisations as participants in multiple business networks where developing and sustaining quality business relationships takes time to cultivate and co-ordinate. Participation in professional online communities ensures access to people who mentor and share their knowledge with the aim of unearthing shared pictures of the future or collective intelligence…

We can choose and design new futures for our organisations in the way we hope. We can choose to be NOBO.

Meme Map

Introduction

This is the first entry to this blog by the author Rosalind Cannell.

It marks the starting point of my musings about NOBO, the New Order of Business Organisation.

The concept of NOBO began with a club on Ecademy (a UK-based online social business network). The club was set up as a discussion forum for turning imaginations into real, practical ideas about how to enable business organisations of the future.

“Imagine organisations in which bosses give employees enormous freedom to decide what to do and when to do it. Imagine electing your own bosses and voting directly on important company decisions. Imagine organisations in which most workers aren't employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life - money, interesting work, the chance to help others, or time with their families.”
(Extract from Thomas W. Malone's The Future of Work)

This blog aims to record my observations on the conversations I'm having within the NOBO forum and without. I intend to develop a strategic framework of new approaches to business organisation and provide insight to enabling social software tools.

Many thanks to all the people who have contributed so far to my understanding of NOBO and to those who will help develop the framework as a result of this blog.