The Next Big Thing
The world doesn't need another blog. There are 80 million or so of them already. But this one fills a gap that has gnawed at me for some time. My endeavor is to put the latest management innovations under a microscope, trying to identify the ones that have staying power versus the ones that don't.
Management trends can have lasting power. Beyond their historical significance, management innovations make business life interesting. Without them we'd be forced into a ho-hum existence of managing the same way all the time. It's much more exciting to try new ideas, especially during periods of rich innovation like the one we're in now.
Don't expect me to seize upon every trend. I'm scanning the horizon for ideas with heft. Also, my postings are apt to have an IT flavor because it's part of my background, but I will roam into other territory as well. I can also pledge not to pull punches when I see a bad idea taking grip, and I'll fess up when I've missed a biggie. You may also see a guest appearance every now and then.
Why would I choose the role of Nostradamus? I've been at this game for quite awhile. I was first out of the gate with business process reengineering, very early on knowledge management, even earlier (perhaps too early) on the management of attention and first on the competitive use of business analytics. I've also missed a few. I didn't think Six Sigma was all that significant (ouch!). Nowadays, I'm skeptical about much hyped concepts like Web 2.0. The effect of Web 2.0 has been amazing, but I question its potency as a management concept that outlasts the ballooning rhetoric.
Whether you are a management thinker, investor, or a manager trying to take your company to the next level, your voice is important to making this blog work. It's not The Next Big Thing, after all, unless all of us are talking about it.
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Tom Davenport holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, where he also leads the 
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I just bumped into this site while searching for Harvard Business Review articles on-line.
I am an ardent follower of Mr. Davenport's management solutions..so this is a real goldmine for me.
I just started my own consulting firm in Toronto specialising in BPR and Change management and so need all the insight and experience of gurus like Mr. Davenport
- Posted by wale Obimakinde
December 17, 2007 13:34
I just got done reading the book, Human Sigma. Wanted to get your insight. Human Sigma is a methodology which applies Six Sigma prinicples (reducing variance) to an organizations human capital.
- Posted by Kenan-Flagler
December 27, 2007 14:07
The Next big thing at this point is anyones guess. However, one can try to build a construct, kinda like a house of cards idea using some of the facts that our perfectly free, unbiased & honest media has been reporting.
So based on facts we can assume that a crisis is slowly growing in peoples mind, this crisis being reported in increasingly greater number in the media today then it was 10 years ago, and this crisis go the very heart of human fears, i.e. Survival. Yes! you guessed it right! it's the Ecological crisis in our minds!!!
It is the fear that we all will drown someday or get afflicted with lung cancer due to pollution or have babies with developmental diseases. Fear drives people into consumption, this I believe is a well established fact.
This fear of ecological catastrophe is going to drive consumer behavior, governmental policies, investment decisions, reorganization or redesign of infrastructure and guys this will be big!!! so big that it has potential to fundamentally change our societies. And it's given that there will be massive wealth & resource transfer. So if anyone is still not paying attention to the Green bandwagon, they are probably not well informed by the media yet, which as I said earlier is reporting this in increasing number and thus reprogramming the brains of new consumers and leaders as well in my humble opinion.
- Posted by Shri
January 29, 2008 18:27