In business today I see an increasing emphasis on defining “business processes” as a knowledge capture method. While these business processes deal with how information is handled and used what I find is, and have even heard stated, the intent is to minimize the “human element” so things get done “right”. However, I think there is a fundamental flaw in this approach. I believe Brown & Duguid say it well when they note “focusing on processes draws attention away from people”. Also, when I think of Dr. Jay Gillette’s quote “Information is Knowledge in Motion” I want to add “only when it is moving through people”. As Information Renaissance leaders I believe we need to understand this and work to make our information processes embrace the “human element” by making them “people-focused” and “knowledge-focused”. Brown & Duguid indicate that by doing this the attention is turned away from the process and instead the focus becomes on the “knowers”; i.e., the people with knowledge. Also, as the business environment becomes more complex, both because of the increasing amount of information available and due to the quick and discontinuous changes that can occur in the business world, people are who adapt and not the process. If the process adapts this is because people gained the knowledge to know the process needed to be changed. This is because a business process is designed based on “know that” which is different from “know how” as Brown & Duguid point out. “Know how” is people practicing what they know and this is why focusing on just the process leads to potential problems in today’s dynamic business environment. Being able to recognize this and bring the focus to the “knowers” in the process is one of the challenges we have as Information Renaissance leaders of the 21st century.

As Information Renaissance Leaders for the 21st century I believe that we need to understand and appreciate not only this concept but also other non-linear changes that can lead to disruption. Just remember that if you recognize a coming disruption in your industry, or even better if you are the one causing it, you have a competitive advantage to exploit.

Please follow this link: http://www.financialhack.com/2007/12/04/10145_lessons-of-the-square-watermelon.html

turns was so that one can view the garden from the bridge from a new and different perspectives as you walked across it.

I believe this same concept can be related to leadership. As a leader we walk across the bridge of time and view our garden of vision and like on the 9-turn bridge we need to strive to look and see this garden we have created from a new perspective not only to better appreciate and understand it but to also try to see it in a new way each time.

The proceedings look the Information Revolution as having three dimensions: Political/Governmental, Business/Financial, and Social/Cultural.
The Political/Governmental dimension is seen as changing for two reasons relate to the information revolution. First, the traditional mechanisms of government like taxation, regulation, licensing, etc. are becoming increasingly problematic since information technology is allowing action beyond the reach of national governments to occur. Second, the distribution of power is shifting as new non-state actors are becoming empowered through the information revolution in business, social, and political realms at all levels, the sub-national, the trans-national, and even the supra-national. The question to be answered is: “How will the different governments around the world choose to deal with these issues and how will it affect the information revolution?”
The Business/Financial dimension is seen as being strongly impacted by the rise of e-commerce and by new business models driven by the information revolution. E-commerce is seen as having an effect because it is growing so rapidly and also because it is not only affecting business but also because it is affecting how governments do business and because these changes affect people both in good (e.g., greater access, lower costs) and bad ways (e.g., social exclusion). Relative to the new business models they appear characterized by the centrality or focus on the customer; real-time, real-world, and non-linear information driven business processes; a customer service orientation to developing everything, especially closely integrating business and technology; recognizing the global nature of business today; and finally, a willingness to redefine basic business functions beyond conventional paradigms. How this will happen is seen as varying from nation to nation.
The Social/Cultural dimension discussion fell into two camps. Some felt that for developing countries that the globalization of information could exacerbate societal differences and destabilize some governments. Others felt, and this was the more widely held view, that social and political turmoil would not really occur and if so only in a very few places.
The vision of the future of the Information Revolution was described as “The Great Information Revolution Attractor”. This is an analogy based on the “Great Attractor” description of the region 200 million light years away towards which all the galaxies near the Milky Way are being drawn towards. The attendees felt that this was apt description since the future of the Information Revolution is characterized by a number of interrelated features. These are: A rise in information work and information workers; new business models for both the internal and external functioning of the enterprise; a rise in e-commerce; challenges to the power and authority of governments; the creation of sub-national, trans-national, and supra-national groups, communities, organizations, and enterprises; an increasing porosity of borders (remember this was pre 9-11); and many new winners and many new losers; and finally, new fault lines between and within nations driven by information and cyber-privilege.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/110480/web-20-sites-failing-to-impress-users-study-says.html
This site says that Web 2.0 is failing to impress users based on a study/report from Hitwise that shows only a small fraction of people going to Web 2.0 sites take advantage of and use the information sharing or user-generated content features.

http://www.newfangled.com/delicious_as_web_2_benchmark
The article on this site uses delicious as an example of a Web 2.0 application whose features are representative of a number of Web 2.0 applications. The benchmarking here appears to be a comparison between browsers and Web 2.0 features. First, a browser’s favorites menu uses a hierarchical structure to assign sites to; whereas, delicious allows for users to assign personal tags to bookmarks. Second, delicious does something browsers do not it allows collaborative tagging such that a user can see how popular that bookmark is with other users. Third, delicious uses the tagging and collaborative tags to generate “tag clouds” and uses these to do ranking and categorization instead of the editorial or math based determinations used in browser applications.

http://www.bivingsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/2007-magazine-study.pdf
This is a report on that indicates that magazine websites are behind newspaper websites in adopting and implementing Web 2.0 type content. There are a number of statistics comparing things like tagging and RSS feed usage.

http://www.nemertes.com/press_releases/enterprises_moving_toward_web_2_0
This site reports that a study by Nemertes Research indicates that enterprises are increasingly adopting Web 2.0 applications such as RSS feeds, blogs, and wikis.