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 )