There is nothing special about "enterprise"
by Volker Weber
Big companies, IBM likes to call them "enterprise", are often run like China. Build a great firewall around them, and impose strict rules within. They are slow to adapt, and like large ships, they can take on a lot of water before getting in trouble.
The people who work in those places have a private life as well, or so do we hope. And these days, they are much more advanced at home than at work. Much like kids who can educate their teachers about the Internet, they have adopted way faster than their "enterprise".
The real fun starts when the experts of collaboration venture out into consumer space and find themselves behind the herd.
Comments
Protecting the innocent by not naming the enterprise experts of collaboration? One unique skill you most likely are to learn in an enterprise is to use collaboration to spend more time on discussing and vetting suggestions than it actually would take to implement them.
But that seems to be a law of physics: the larger the mass, the higher the inertia. Just imagine the enterprises would be as agile as the small players --- it would be the small players doom.
In The same sense there is no difference between elephants andere mice. But I've never seen elephants dig into The ground or a mouse cover 50km in a Day.
While we're all doing analogies, mine is IBM is the super-tanker in a market where the speedboats are getting the job done just fine..... easier to avoid the rocks to.
@Gulio,
"Who Says Elephants can't dance?"
@Volker,
indeed from whatching this space for quite some time inside IBM and outside:
Its always kind of a grassroots movment that gets things going.
