The Connected Company: An Inventory of the Possible
French historian Fernand Braudel once said that a great city is an inventory of the possible.
For thousands of years, cities have perfected the art of enabling complex social interactions at scale. A city is a social network, and so is a company. But there is a difference.
As companies grow in size and complexity, they become less productive per capita. But as cities grow, they become more productive, by almost every measure. Why?
It’s getting more and more difficult for companies to handle complexity: increasing customer demands for more customization, more convenience, lower costs and faster innovation. At some point the machine breaks down and companies just can’t handle it.
The 21st-century company will have the same kinds of dense, dynamic, and complex properties of well-designed cities: fast pace, high energy, rapid innovation and high productivity. And some companies are doing this today.
In our panel we will talk about who those companies are, what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it works. We will show you how you can use the same principles to organize your company for a complex, networked, rapidly-changing global marketplace.
Presenters
Dave Gray is an information designer, educator and management consultant focused on visual thinking and cross-disciplinary group creativity. He is the founder of XPLANE, a global consultancy serving the Fortune 500, which is now part of the Dachis Group, a social business consultancy started by Razorfish co-founder Jeff Dachis. Dave is also a partner at the Dachis Group as well as the co-founder of Vizthink, an international community of visual thinkers. His most recent book, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers was published by O'Reilly Media in 2010.
Gordon Ross is VP of Strategy for ThoughtFarmer, the social intranet. An 18 year veteran of the web development industry, Gordon has led numerous web strategy, user experience, and intranet projects for clients like the City of Vancouver, Mountain Equipment Coop, the Government of British Columbia, and the World Bank. He's spoken at Enterprise 2.0, Social Intranet Summit, OpenGovWest, and LegalIT conferences, and is a frequent blogger on the theory behind social intranets.
Megan Murray is a pioneering Enterprise 2.0 practitioner. She arrived at Moxie Software after more than a decade with Booz Allen Hamilton where she focused on emerging technologies, collaborative strategies and Enterprise 2.0. Megan served as Community Manager and Project Coordinator for Booz Allen’s award winning Hello.bah.com. She brings extensive experience in collaboration strategy, community management, and enterprise social governance.
She is a board member at The Community BackChannel, a member of The Community Roundtable, as well as a former charter member of the Social Business Council (formerly the 2.0 Adoption Council). Megan frequently speaks, delivering talks, workshops and webinars focused on Community Management, Governance, adoption methodologies and the importance of an authentic enterprise.
Web anthropologist, clairvoyant, futurist.
My work is social tools and their impact on media, business, and society.
Sunday, March 11
