Fallling Walls
I recently attended an interesting event in Berlin to commemorate the momentous falling of the Wall in 1989. Speakers from a variety of arenas speedily conveyed how they were 'knocking down' walls in respect of science, art, poverty and industry.
It occurred to me that there are a couple of rather large walls to be knocked down in respect of business. The first being the wall the separates the IT function from the users. This wall only serves to create distrust and dampen service quality.
The second wall being the one that partitions the business from the marketplace.
Nature clearly doesn't like walls. Users are increasingly becoming early adopters of technology and are questioning the need for an IT function in the light of consumerization.
Businesses increasingly recognise that the market is simply an extension of the organisation and can sometimes provide greater insight and support than can be sound inside the moat. Crowdsourcing is an example of this.
CEOs and CIOs who fight nature in this respect will find themselves becoming increasingly stressed, irrelevant and ultimately ridiculed.
