In several recent conversations I was reminded of the core stimulus for the concept of “wirearchy” … the last paragraph(s) of Peter Drucker’s 1999 Atlantic Monthly article “Beyond The Information Revolution“, written at the height of the dot.com boom:
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“And then, probably within ten years or so, running a business with (short-term) “shareholder value” as its first — if not its only — goal and justification will have become counterproductive.
Increasingly, performance in these new knowledge-based industries will come to depend on running the institution so as to attract, hold, and motivate knowledge workers. When this can no longer be done by satisfying knowledge workers’ greed, as we are now trying to do, it will have to be done by satisfying their values, and by giving them social recognition and social power.
It will have to be done by turning them from subordinates into fellow executives, and from employees, however well paid, into partners..
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That was then, this is now. Watch Clay Shirky, Don Tapscott and others discuss the societal impacts we have experienced from connecting with each other and sharing and distributing information.
Remember, technology without trust is just traffic.
The movie Us Now speaks to me of “wirearchy” – a dynamic two -way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.
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