Simon Barratt

The future of work - Tom Malone

The future of work has been delayed due to the absence of a speaker...

it also somewhat impacted by the inability of server to serve up an IP address on the conferences Wireless LAN!!!

drum drum drumming of fingers :-)

9:15am... here we go...

The future of work - Tom Malone (MIT) .  I remember hearing Tom speak before when I went to MIT with the CITA organisation.

Where are we going?  Next few decades. How will collaboration shape business?

'Early stages of an increase in human freedom in business'

wikipedia.org - Raindance.  How does it really work?  watchlists, communities and groups are formed to look after the content.  Many thousands of people all around the world working on it, in multiple languages - all volunteers.

What is the secret of wikipedia? 1) Free access to the some of all knowledge - freedom and scale. 2) Fun!


eBay
$3.3B revenue in 2004

• 430,000 people make their living from selling on eBay
• If they were all employees eBay would be one of the 5 largest employers in the USA.

Freedom and scale!  Online store holders sell globally whatever they want.

Bands  ------------------------------> Kingdoms -------------------------------> Democracies
Decentralised                              Centralised                                            Decentralised
Unconnected                                Connected                                             Connected


Writing then printing, were the key enablers of democracy, due to the falling cost of communication.

More information available to allow more business decisions to be made by more people.

These people typically are: Higher motivation, more creative, more flexible (depending on real time issues), people prefer to make their own decisions.

Loose hierarchies

• Lots of decisions get delegated
• AES Corp, largest global power
•         30,000 employees
•         Decision making rule: approval not required, but you have to ask for advice.
•         email is the primary tool for supporting this 'advice' structure

Democracies

• Mondragon

Markets

e-Lance - electronically connected freelancers
ability to outsource specific tasks, through to business functions.

"How much of the intelligence of people throughout an organisation can we use in a decentalised origanisation?"

Most orgs today do not take advantage of the potential of the people

To change this we need to give more power, freedom and control to the employees.

Management and Style

From 'command and control' to 'co-ordinate and cultivate"

Paradox of standards -

more rigid standards can allow more flexibilty in another part of the system.

Paradox of power -

sometimes the best way to gain power is to give it away.

The organisational layer of technology - how you use it, processes

New ways of organising work using new technologies.