The business game is changing in a profound way. Recently, I met John Hagel from the Center for the Edge, who discusses his radical proposition that management practices and institutions themselves are broken.
According to the Center for the Edge, asset profitability for US firms has fallen more than 75% in the last 40 years. John Hagel’s book, Power of Pull, builds on the concept that this changing landscape requires organizations to embrace informal and dynamic interactions. Push tools, such as static structures and defined relationships, fall short as problems become fuzzier making pull tools, such as dynamic platforms and ecosystems, much more useful.
The Western definition of innovation has been product and technology focused, wheares institutional innovation, which has been happening in emerging markets has remained invisible to Western executives.
For my own personal life this got me thinking about trends I see in my daily life:
- Personal vs. Professional Connectivity: Today, I live in a world where Facebook and Twitter are checked almost as much as my email and I am using social media to connect to professionals in more informal ways.
- Talent migration: I’m seeing more and more of my friends and colleagues leaving their ‘cog’ jobs for more creative opportunities across the world at social enterprises, foundations, and startups.
- Companies struggling to keep passionate workers: The most passionate people about work tend to do the best. Self employed people are twice as likely to be passionate about their work than those who work at firms. Large corporations are realizing they need to shift their mindsets in order to retain the best talent.
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