What's Next in Tech
Thanks to my new friend Brian, I found out that Nike has dumped (WSJ – requires registration) its longstanding Advertising agency relationship in search of a partner with more digital expertise. This may be the seminal event/wake-up call that will rattle the cages for marketers everywhere.
Interactive Agencies are the game changers in the new marketing economy. Young, digital zealots pumped up on Red Bull, what’s not to love?
One of my favorite words, mokita. They say it’s from New Guinea. For those of us in the e2.0 echo chamber who’ve been tracking the developments in this sector, the mokita on e2.0 is that IT and “the movement” are somewhat at odds with eachother. Jeff Nolan put it out on the table this week and threw down a gauntlet with this post. It was promptly responded to by Mike Gotta.
Chris Anderson (the Long Tail) posted his remarks on speaking at a recent CIO conference:
CIOs, it turns out, are mostly business people who have been given the thankless job of keeping the lights on, IT wise. And the best way to ensure that they stay on is to change as little as possible.
That puts many CIOs in the position of not being the technology innovator in their company, but rather the dead weight keeping the real technology innovators–employees who want to use the tools increasingly available on the wide-open Web to help them do their jobs better–from taking matters into their own hands.
In fairness, the CIOs have a pretty tough job. Nobody thanks them when the network works and the data is backed up, but they get fired when things go wrong. No surprise that they’re so risk-adverse and conservative. The pesky users keep trying to, you know, do new things. This causes unpredictable outcomes. Which must be avoided.
The consequence of this is that many CIOs are now just one step above Building Maintenance. They have the unpleasant job of mopping up data spills when they happen, along with enforcing draconian data retention policies sent down from the legal department. They respond to trouble tickets and disable user permissions. They practice saying “No”, not “What if…” And they block the ports used by the most popular services, from Skype to Second Life, which always reminds me of the old joke about the English shopkeeper who, when asked what happened to a certain product, answered “We don’t stock it anymore. It kept selling out.”
Chris goes on to talk about the Gen-Yers who will populate the business community in the near future. The comments from readers are as interesting as Chris’ original post.
Meanwhile, we’ve been discussing these issues in the groups. In defense of IT, Thomas Otter had a good comment for me:
I’m with Mike on this one.
Why is it that the original posterchild for enterprise 2.0 is
DresdnerKleinwort and the driver was the CIO?
Casting this as “battle” with IT is simply wrong. Some CIO’s and IT
departments get this. Others don’t. At least in my experience, it is
often the IT department that is likely to be using WIKIS and the like first.
If I look here at SAP the developer wiki use is far richer and deeper than
that of sales marketing accounts etc.
I’d suggest rereading Andrew McAfee’s Mastering the Three Worlds of
Information Technology.
There is more innovation going on in the average IT department than most of
us imagine. Check out what the guys are Colgate are up
to…
http://theotherthomasotter.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/dad-stop-using-my…
What I know for sure is… this revolution we’re starting may not be bloody, but it’s about to get loud.