June 12, 2006

"archy" … organizing and/or governing principle (as in architecture, monarchy (rule of one), oligarchy (rule of powerful few), matriarchy (rule of maternal), etc.

"wired" … the state of being surrounded by, and engaged with, activities (work, life, shopping, viewing) encoded in or supported by electronic information systems that deliver or enable various types of interactions, between people and people or people and organizations.

"Wirearchy" … an emerging principle that suggests a two way flow of power and authority, based on trust, credibility, knowledge and a focus on results .. enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Examples …

1. The growing influence of blogs, podcasts, video clips streamed from the Web, photo-sharing, social media platforms, the use of hyperlinks to allow people to view and share other pieces of (sometimes, not always) pertinent and relevant information of interest to them

2. The influence of said ’social media’ on traditional forms of communication such as broadcast television, institutionalized journalism, political lobbying and citizen representation

3. The growth of citizen journalism

4. The use of blogs, podcasts and streaming video in educational settings

5. The growing realization that exchanges of information, opinion and financial support via the Web supplements or circumvents the ‘official’ stories in which established power structures are vested.

6. The continuing growth of hyperlinked-enabled business logic and infrastructure, most notably eBay.

The next area to watch, in my opinion, is organizational life, processes and structures. The possibilities offered by hyperlinked infrastructure with respect to purposeful sharing of useful information, and the weaving of this into increasingly productive collaboration, will sharpen the issues that have all too often been the subject of rhetoric by organizational leaders about culture, innovation and focus on customers.

Here’s an example of the quickening, growing realization that this is an area of latent potential. Via David Weinberger’s JOHO, I found this announcement of Worldblu, a conference on the core issues of organizational democracy. exploring this of course begs the issue of power, most notably the positional power of organizational hierarchy on which most leaders depend for enacting an organization’s purpose, vision and values.

Given the accelerating retirement of Baby Boomer digital immigrants, and the growing influx to organizations of digital natives … the next decade should be an interesting one.

I’m betting that the field of eOD will grow significantly (eOD = electronic organizational development).

WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL DEMOCRACY?

Organizational democracy is freedom within a business framework.

It is both an rganizational strategy for companies and a leadership style. It is achieved when a company uses the principles of democracy to design the way it operates daily, cultivating a company that enhances employee potential, thereby achieving its business goals and positively impacting the community.

Democratic Design + Freedom-Centered Leadership =A Democratic Company

The term democracy comes from the Greek words demos, “the people,” and kratein, “to rule.” The essence of democracy is the concept that people have the power and ability to shape their lives and their future both individually and collectively. Organizational democracy acknowledges that democracy should not, and cannot, be limited to the political sphere alone but can also be extended to companies – with effective, empowering, and profitable results.

Update: Candidia Cruickshanks thinks organizational democracy is silly. For the record, i agree with her that it’s not likely to happen much in my lifetime, and if it does to any extent at all, it will be in the rare organization where the other C-level hierarchs suffer the leadership of a person who adheres to quaint notions of Minim-like nobless oblige, or in the even more rare case there will be some enlightened entrepreneur who really belives in her or his talent … note that there’s still a possessive of sorts to “her” or “his”.

Tags: organizational structures, hierarchy, wirearchy

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Here’s a blog post outlining some issues on which I have recently worked … the work I was involved in is cited in the bottom half of the post.

 It’s really just a way for me to acknowledge to myself and my colleagues that the research and analysis we carried out was effective and essentially accurate … or at least that a similar conclusion was reached by some specialists in the field.

           ………………………………………..                     ………………………………………………

The recent Banff World Television Festival 2006 featured a session from the author of Desperate Networks and the release of a "green paper" titled The Future Of Television by the Nordicity Group, in which the consulting group suggested that the traditional television networks still had some advantages in terms of the distribution of the content being broadcast.

Here’s a report on the Nordicity green paper via the Globe and Mail.

Web not seen supplanting TV any time soon
GRANT ROBERTSON

The Internet poses a smaller threat to Canadian television broadcasters than many of the industry’s doomsayers believe because the Web is still "an expensive way" to distribute TV shows compared with cable and satellite feeds, a new report says.

The report, which will be debated Wednesday at one of the industry’s largest annual gatherings in Banff, Alta., comes six months after a study by IBM titled "The end of television as we know it" predicted Internet distribution would be a death knell for broadcasters.

In the new paper — called "The Future of Television" — the Nordicity Group Ltd. says the risk posed by the Internet may be overstated. Nordicity is a consulting firm specializing in policy and economic research for the TV sector.

Bandwidth costs associated with broadcasting over the Web, particularly in high-definition (HD) formats, remain considerably higher than the mass distribution offered by cable and satellite TV, the report says.

Internet broadcasts also reach smaller audiences for advertisers than traditional, "linear" television can, though the Web is better at reaching specific types of viewers, it says.

"We accept that on-demand television is threatening the linear model . . . but we argue that the end of linear television is hardly nigh," the report says, adding that high-definition television "would tax [the Web's] capacity."

Happily, we can report that we reached the same conclusion in a recent (May 1, 2006) report to the Canadian Culture Online department of Canadian Heritage.  You could argue that we took a different angle with which to approach the issue, and perhaps have made slightly different observations or general recommendations as to how the core issues might be addressed. 

Nevertheless, the relevant paragraphs of our report, outlining the results of the research, set out very similar conclusions in essentially the same level of detail as the work by Nordicity.

Enterprises in the telecommunications and media industries are now engaged in a fight to the death; while it seems probable that co-opetition is a more realistic and more profitable approach.  We note also that while television over IP promises to offer the same services at reduced cost levels, the traditional methods of content distribution still have an attractive future before them.  The (possible) solution: beginning by identifying niche markets in which television over IP offers services not available anywhere else.  Evidently, the new distributors should from time to time refrain from the impulse or desire to introduce new services too early.  Also (and we cannot say it often enough) it is always and forever necessary to validate that the services offered are the services that customers want.

At the same time, according to the Gartner Group, television over the Internet (IPTV) will not be profitable over the short term.  In effect, if the number of members should multiply by 11 times between 2005 and 2010 to attain 16.7 million customers, the profits realized by the telecom operators will only be 8.9 times greater than in 2005.  And the growth of membership is tending to slow down, with a growth rate of 134.5% between 2004 and 2005 but only projected at 22.4% between 2009 and 2010.

IPTV may have difficulty becoming a major source of revenue for the telecommunications companies in the next five years, states Gartner.  In effect, according to the consulting firm, the suppliers should limit the initial levels of fees to battle against the offers from pay TV and other offers like TNT (digital satellite TV), or in the cases where a member can receive a bundled package of quality programming.

In spite of all this, these battles must be fought. In effect, while the profits over the short and medium term are at best projected to be modest, the suppliers of access and content cannot afford to miss the game.  Those who are expecting too much will risk reducing their chances to be key long-term players of the infotainment distributed over the Internet.  IPTV is not a simple, unique service but "a new distribution platform on which various services can eventually be created and offered”.

Tags: IPtv, traditional television, bandwidth costs, net neutrality, competition

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