In today's New York Times, Farzad Nazem, a Yahoo veteran and now Chief Technology Officer, commented that in the new world technology is part of the planning and not just an after thought or something that's tied to execution. Maybe it is time for organizations to really start thinking about how technology can change their businesses rather than looking at technology as something that can fix an existing problem.

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If you haven't had a chance to read the special section on Knowledge and the Organization in the January 21st, 2006 edition of The Economist magazine, run out and buy a copy. The insightful articles in the section discuss how organizations in the 21st century need to be structured and how there are no real tools for measuring employee productivity of knowledge workers.

The articles especially "Thinking for a Living" titled after a book by the same name, also discuss the relative importance of email, voicemail, mobile phones, intranets, text messaging, corporate websites, information portals and corporate extranets.

To quote from the article, "There are three broad approaches to knowledge management. One is to create a system where all information goes to everybody, which is hugely inefficient; the second tells people what others think they need to know, which may not match their real needs; and the third enables them to find for themselves whatever they want to know. Companies like to say that their aim is for the third approach, but they do not always find it easy."

Probably though, one of the most interesting quotes is from Yves Morieux a consultant at BCG who simply says, "The most valuable human mechanisms are not measurable." He goes on to say that companies should concentrate on designing the processes that knowledge workers carry out, rather than measuring their performance. No wonder it is difficult to measure ROI.

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Innovations, a supplement to CIO Insight had some interesting statistics culled from Forrester, Gartner and IDC in its latest issue. A few of them are - three out of four corporate telephony lines will be IP-based by 2009, nine out of ten major US companies will either test or use VOIP this year and roughly one out of five users lost a mobile device in 2005. It is obvious that the new enterprise workplace is going to gather steam in 2006. The question really is which companies will be the early adopters and whether their investments will produce significant ROI. We'll all be watching.

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Intranets Today has published on the evolving enterprise workplace (subscription required) by Shiv Singh. The article discusses how companies are on the verge of transformative changes in the way their employees communicate and collaborate with one another. Disruptive technologies, the need to multi-task and frustration with existing technology solutions are driving this change.

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The workplace continues to attract more and more attention in the mainstream press. The most recent example is Time Magazine's recent cover story on How to Tune Up Your Brain (subscription required) which among other things, discusses the trials and tribulations of living and working in the digital age. It discusses how to manage information overload, device proliferation and the burning desire to stay connected continously.

The article discusses research that shows that an employee who is interrupted while beginning or ending a task is far less likely to return to complete the task than if interrupted mid way through it. The article also alludes to new technologies, that by serving as gatekeepers, will prioritize and limit the interruptions that prevent us from accomplishing tasks. Now where is that Apple Knowledge Navigator when we need it?

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According to the McKinsey Quarterly, macroeconomic factors, environmental and social issues, and business and industry developments will all profoundly shape the corporate landscape in the coming years.

But most interesting is their last trend which is titled, "Ubiquitous access to information is changing the economics of knowledge." The article talks about new models of knowledge production, access, distribution and ownership emerging. It emphasizes that companies will need to learn how to leverage this new knowledge universe - or risk drowning ina flood of too much information.

We certainly agree with them and feel that 2006 is going to be an exciting year for the knowledge management world. Read the article to read about the other trends they mention.

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Universities across the country continue to bring innovative technologies into the classroom. The latest example is of schools using podcasts to distribute class lectures, study notes and background reading. Not surprisingly, these efforts have been successful as they provide the students with the information in a form that suits their lifestyle. NYU, Harvard Medical School, Duke, UCLA and Babson College are just some of the ones that are leading the way. In fact, Harvard Medical School is making its whole curriculum via podcasts.

Other interesting technologies used include audio clips attached to spreadsheets, clickers for real-time in class polling, which allows professors to adjust learning plans on the fly and blogs of course. As you read this Businessweek article, ask yourself if your organization is using technology as innovatively. Also learn what the University of Connecticut is doing. Lisa Crowley at Avenue A | Razorfish brought this to our attention.

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Jotspot, a builder of applications that enable online collaborative authorship, has introduced a product that combines spreadsheet information with wikis. In recognizing that excel spreadsheets are used for much more than computational purposes, Jotspot has created a web based spreadsheet application that allows teams to edit the spreadsheet simultaneously. Check out the innovative tool at Jotspot.

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The latest McKinsey Quarterly includes an interview with Jeff Joerres, CEO of Manpower as he talks about the future of the global workplace. Manpower is the world's second-largest provider of employment services with $15 billion in revenues. Jeff Joerres believes that the global talent crunch is creating structural changes in the workforce that can dramatically affect a company's health from one year to the next. He also believes that employees aren't being trained enough as job definitions and skill requirements change very quickly.

Is your intranet or information workplace environment maturing to cope with these 21st century challenges?

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