Company

I was making dinner tonight, getting down with a vegetable peeler and some thumping Techno (not necessarily a good combination) when - silence. Deep Mix Moscow Radio apparently forgot about Glasnost and my dance needs and went back behind the curtain, taking their internet stream with them. Reminding me yet again why it's a really dumb idea to depend on the Internet to deliver anything, consistently. I scouted the list of Techno internet radio stations and most were "not available now." I'm happy to report that I finally found a consistent stream (FG Underground, if you're interested) and dinner got taken care of, but like I said, foolish me, getting caught out on a cold night with no tunes.

Loss of streaming Techno while making dinner might not seem like a big deal, and it's not. But loss of access to my business content at a critical point of my day is simply a non-starter.

Maybe I still have some residual resentment at having had to do an in-depth analysis of Google Apps over the last few days, when a sane, objective glance at the concept is enough to convince me - DUMB IDEA! I love Google, I love to type in search words and have all sorts of surprising results come back. But there's no way I'm going to trust them to format, store, manage and deliver my business content. It's like trusting the US Postal Service to bring me my coffee in the morning - thanks, but that's way too important a task to mess around with. It's like trusting SuperCuts to give me a killer haircut right before that big date. It's like handing my bags to the official-looking woman at the airport in Bangkok and trusting she'll have them delivered to my hotel for me. Dumb Dumb Dumb.

And it's unnecessary. There are solutions already out there that millions of people use every day. Those solutions are not perfect by any means, but we believe our software will make a big improvement in the process. We do NOT think the right answer is "Start from scratch and change everything." I have a word for that approach and it begins with "D," which may not surprise you. People don't like change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." "If it's slightly broke and you expect me to change my ways to help fix it, then don't fix it." In almost every process that relies on people, change comes slowly, if at all.

We know that things can change, and change quickly. Work practices and attitudes can be radically altered by disruptive technologies such as the internet. But Google Apps isn't one of those disruptive technologies (unless I'm speaking personally, in which case it's definitely disrupted my week). Maybe in a few years, if Google brings the quality of the tools up to the then-current standard of Microsoft Office. Maybe if they somehow can guarantee uptime and accessibility under all circumstances. And most importantly, if they can deliver something extra on top that makes the whole deal so much better, faster, easier and cheaper than the alternatives. THEN, maybe, they'll get professionals to abandon their old tools and processes.

But we're not hanging our hat on that happening in the immediate future. Meanwhile we see a critical need TODAY to improve the way people collaborate on and share information that already exists on their hard disks or enterprise servers. Content they're creating using desktop applications, not Google Apps. Our goal is to solve this Here & Now problem with some smart applications that work with your Here & Now computing environment. Oh, and our apps are really handy for accessing your music files too...

In their book “The Starfish and the Spider” Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom highlight the differences between traditional enterprises (“spiders”: rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership) and the new breed of enterprises (“starfish”: distributed leadership and peer relationships of power). Peppered with great examples, it’s a fresh read – especially if you’ve already canned that new year’s resolution and are looking for a legit-looking tome to curl up in front of the fire with.

Ah the inevitability of it all – Humans the world over crawling out of their beds, bound and determined that this year – THIS YEAR!! – we will quit that habit/change that behavior/lose that weight/do something different. Gym owners love this time of year. Tobacco companies hate it. Millions of people on a mission, what a sight! What a sound! What a mighty fury of effort and intent!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a company an “enterprise, “ and I’d love to say I’ve cracked that one. I’m sure Wikipedia could serve up a compelling distinction, but I don’t have access to Wikipedia right at the moment. Because I’m typing this on my laptop, somewhere over the Atlantic ,en route to Ireland.



So I’ll focus instead on what makes an organization a “Virtual Enterprise” or “Enterprise 2.0” or a “Small Virtual Enterprise (SVE).” I’d like to trademark that last one as it’s probably going to get used quite a bit by me in future posts. To me a virtual enterprise is highly distributed; flexible in how and where work is conducted; composed of a core group of employees who in turn manage the output of a team of specialists. Those specialists are not employees (but they may play one on TV). A virtual enterprise can respond very quickly to changing needs (internally) and market conditions (externally). It’s not bounded by traditional enterprises constraints such as hiring freezes, assignment of office space, network and system configuration, and all the other processes that always seem to take months to implement.

In his 2001 book Free Agent Nation Daniel H. Pink quotes some ponderous statistics about the growing trend amongst American workers away from the “Company man/job for life” philosophy to one more in keeping with the values of the individual. Specifically he estimated there were over 33 million Americans working for themselves. He identified three categories of independent worker:

• Soloists (16.5 million) – professionals performing discrete contract work for others. Graphic designers, plumbers, computer programmers, house painters – you get the idea.
• Temps (3.5 million) – skilled individuals performing non-project work, typically in larger organizations.
• Microbusinesses (13 million) – individuals or small teams developing, selling and supporting goods in the marketplace. These businesses are frequently home-based.

Add it all up and you get 33 million people operating as free agents.

Ok. Let's face it. This blog has been WAY too quiet. The reason is that we have been in "stealth" mode for the last several months… unwilling to say a whole lot about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

That's all in the past. We're coming out.

So keep an eye on this space. We will be talking a lot more about what we are doing.... and why... and most importantly how we believe that a new approach to working with documents and content will shift the way business users think about how work gets done. I know...lots of sizzle, but where's the steak? Frankly still on the grill... but it's almost done.

We'll be posting more frequently over the next several weeks. Stick around and see what else is on the plate.