Publishing has indeed changed a lot, and the iPad is sure to change it more. It will be exciting to watch.

- Greg

These days, technology is taking a bite out the book industry. Many publishers are struggling with how to leverage technology to distribute their content to the market. People are looking more towards the web (new technoloty) to get information, and less towards books (old technology). But what is going to be the winning technology? The Kindle? The iPad? Smartphones? But what about school age children who are learning to read?

This is a big problem for publishers. They have a lot of content that needs to be out in the market. But what technology is the public going to accept for the delivery of that content?

Just some rambling thoughts on a Thursday…

–Greg

That’s a great point. “Information in the hallways” is really an often overlooked factor in works on communication and collaboration. Even I overlooked it in my post above and it took two readings to get it

Stan

As always, thanks for some good points. I think that one thing that is often overlooked is the “information in the hallways.” You often have impromptu collaborations when you bump into people around the office or around town.

- Greg

What you say about virtual organizations is true. Despite the fact that technology enables work from distance the experience so far shows that knowledge workers are more efficient when co-located. In software development for instance there is a pair-programming practice – two developers work together on the same computer. What makes co-location so good is easy exchange of knowledge and ideas, better understanding and collaboration. Face to face communication is best for that. Probably we are still to find best organizational practices for virtual teams that overcome this barrier. Virtualization also has its advantages like bringing in talent that is not available locally.

At cross company there is also value in placing hi-tech firms close to each other in hi-tech hubs, etc.

Thanks for the praise.

In your business I guess it would be mostly about efficiency, unless you use technology to actually produce more innovative designs. I would guess you use a computer to do a lot of things that 20 years ago you would have to outsource or hire people to do.

- Greg

I couldn’t agree more. Everybody always thinks it’s about the technology, it never is.

- Greg

And developing this understanding requires a knowledge of the business processes now in use, plus an insight into the biggest problems the organization is trying to fix, plus an understanding of how people change their behavior, plus a knowledge of what the technology can do. Notice the techie side is last!

In many years of helping people to automate business processes, I have discovered that most people do not actually do this. They rush out and acquire technology, perhaps even do exhaustive comparison studies of available tools and options, or design and then build expensive digital systems, and then they install the system and switch it on and wonder why their results are so different from the promises made by the vendors, or their design aspirations.

In these cases, it’s not usually that the software doesn’t perform, it’s more that the users don’t, or can’t, because their business processes were not changed to suit the new way of doing things. And changing the way people do their jobs is a difficult and often frustrating exercise – I wrote a post about this Process of Change. For those who want to know more here’s the link: http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca/blog/2009/10/04/difficulty-getting-your-sales-and-marketing-automation-project-started/

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