Wirearchy · Productivity in a Networked Era – Assessing ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction)

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Productivity in a Networked Era – Assessing ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction)

Jay Cross and I recently co-authored this piece for CLO Magazine.

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Today’s networked era requires a new way to make investment decisions that incorporates intangible assets and more accurately depicts how value is created.

The industrial age has run out of steam. Look at General Motors. Look at Chrysler. We are witnessing the death throes of management models that have outlived their usefulness.

The network era now replacing the industrial age holds great promise. Networked organizations are reaping rewards for connecting people, know-how and ideas at an ever-faster pace. Value creation has migrated from what we can see (physical assets) to intangibles (ideas). Look at Google and Cisco.

Understandably, seasoned executives, chief learning officers among them, are having a devil of a time shifting from the industrial age mindset of logic, certainty and bounded constraints to the network gestalt of interaction, self-organization, unpredictability and fewer limits to potential. The pressure is constantly on to meet quarter-to-quarter revenue and earnings targets that in turn accentuate the need to take decisions that support achieving those targets. At the same time, we are shifting into an era in which knowledge work and learning occur where re-engineered business processes collide with a participative and interactive ecology of information flows.

How can a chief learning officer hope to make informed judgments in this continually expanding networked environment that’s flowing ever faster, spreading power among its members and producing outsized impacts in unpredictable ways? What to do?

One cherished industrial age concept that is proving particularly difficult to let go of is return on investment (ROI). But like Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, old-school ROI’s day in the sun is waning. In an environment of continuous flow and interaction, there’s a need to ...

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http://blog.wirearchy.com/2009/06/27/productivity-in-a-networked-era-assessing-roii-return-on-investment-in-interaction/

http://blog.wirearchy.com/2009/06/27/productivity-in-a-networked-era-assessing-roii-return-on-investment-in-interaction/