My daughter is graduating college next week, and I’ve been thinking about all the advice this next generation will get from relatives and friends. In the 60s, Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate) received well-intentioned advice from Mr. McGuire, a family friend, to pursue the plastics industry. Plastics and U.S. manufacturing conjure up an image of the industrial age economy we once knew. Well, 45 years later, all that has changed. Plastic is out and “elastic” is in.
I caught up with my former colleague Nick Vitalari yesterday at the third annual Austin IT Symposium. Nick and Hadyn Shaughnessey who covers innovation for Forbes wrote, The Elastic Enterprise: the New Manifesto for Business Revolution. The book is well-researched with conclusions drawn from over 80 interviews with leading companies practicing open, elastic strategies. Essentially, the books lays out how enterprises will have to re-conceive “how we scale and operate businesses in the 21st Century.” Based on five core “dynamics,” the book simplifies and makes crystal clear how large enterprises will need to transform. The book is a quick read, highly accessible and chock full of great examples. Pick it up for a flight or download it to your favorite e-reader.
The Symposium agenda was centered around the issues CIOs need to understand to embrace the Elastic Enterprise. A special thanks to my friend Keri Pearlson and the Austin SIM chapter for an invite to the event.
