A queste for new management science

In a Gartner blog, on "wild and new" ideas, one of the VPs suggests some interesting developments.  "Many of the management science techniques applied in business today originated from the industrial era. Computing has put them on steroids and made them more effective (for example, via the spreadsheet). But it's the completely new techniques that could be operated only in a networked computerized era that may prove revolutionary. Management culture takes decades to evolve (whole generations of leaders must sometimes pass by before new techniques can take hold). I read about ideas like "beyond budgeting" and "real options" with interest, but recognize that very few companies are ready to take them on...yet."

An interesting new light on both the role of IT and the one of managers.  I sometimes say that we haven't seen anything yet.  Once we are going to combine the learning capacity of computers, with the (though different) learning capacity of managers, we are really going to see some exponential learning taking place and a new kind of management might emerge.  But in the mean time, managers just try to copy the computing power of computer, in which they are of course very weak.  Computers and managers all together underperform seriously. 

Comments

[Roy Grubb]

I would like to invite you to try a tool that I have developed over the last few years as a small contribution to reducing complexity in one area: Maintaining and finding reference material. This uses the mindmapping or concept mapping approach but overcome some limitations by working in three dimensions. The software is called 3D Topicscape and can be found at http://www.topicscape.com

It aims to overcome the limitations of a 2D presentation of notes, computer files and folders by building a 3D landscape that is laid out according to the associations between topics that the user specifies.

There is some valuable indexing and word searching software available free nowadays, but it always assumes that the user can think of the word or phrase that the original author used. 3D Topicscape allows users to search by concept as well as by word.

I would be interested in your view on the value of this, particularly in the context of management's needs today to marshall, control and share ever-more complex collections of information.

Roy Grubb