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07.22.08 How Technology Is Changing The World  By
Ross MayfieldI'm at Fortune BrainstormTech, an event that relates technology to the bigger problems it can solve. Today I am moderating a lunch lab on the problem of Governance, with Daniel Kaufmann, Director, Governance and Anti-Corruption, World Bank Institute. Managing Editor Andy Serwer introduced Brainstorm to attendees as "a respite from the problems you work on and talk about bigger problems we can solve" and recommending "Try to be cool and immerse yourself in the stew of the people and what is about to happen." "What makes it different is trying to understand technology in the context of how it is changing," said David Kirkpatrick. "A lot of reporters and bloggers are here, so whatever that means to you, keep it in mind." What's Tech got to do with it? • Marc R. Benioff
Founder, Chairman, and CEO salesforce.com, Inc. • Michael S. Dell Chairman and CEO Dell Inc. • Gary Hamel Director, Management Lab. (has a new book) Visiting Professor, London Business School • Christiane Salm Is tech making the world better? Dell: of course. Majority of the new internet users today are from developing countries, total is doubling from 1B to 2B in two years, 500k new internet users a day. Economic growth is driven by technology, but it is just the beginning. Is it changing politics? Sure, I'm not the world's expert on the topic. Sure, but that's why I asked. The whole idea of empowerment, the theme of this conference. One clear change is that countries used to be isolated and competitive. When you think about staying competitive individually, company or country, the dynamics are radically changed. Raises serious questions, particularly for developed societies, where here in the US we have a disperportion of the population vs. wealth. The pie will get a lot bigger and we have to adjust.
Hamel: Unarguably so. We have to think about our purposes for technology, and if they are getting better. The net is empowering people like never before in history. For the first time we are emancipating human imagination and it will change everything. You find creative apatheid in some places and we will put a light to it. My interest is in the social technology of management. We are using 100 year technology in the enterprise. The average company 100 years ago had 4 employees and 9/10 worked for themselves, but then in 25 years all that change, because of the invention of this kind of technology called management. We are going to see a bigger impact when technology changes the way organizations are structured and decisions are made. Something more dramatic in the beginning of this century and it will make a lot of managers today very uncomfortable. Dell: We put our big ears on. Listened. But the mechanisms you could use to listen went massively turbocharged with the net. We will have 2B conversations with our customers this year. Somethign fundamentally different managerially? The nature of the tools changes how groups are formed and managed. A central top down organization will not be the most responsive, engaged and creative. We are creating new businesses all the time as teams see new opportunities and it is not as centrally planned as it once was. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory. He also writes Ross Mayfield's Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings. |
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