Tom Davenport is on the money with his comments on sustainability. And whilst I have been critical of his views on social networking software, I can understand his frustration with the focus of the comments he receives.
For business, the early 90s was about efficiency - BPR, ERP, firing lots of people - in short, sobering up after the 80s. Then the late 90s was also about technology - the internet. Once we'd recovered from that particular over-indulgence session, this decade has been all about globalisation - those Indians & Chinese folks.
The last 18 months suggest that the Next Big Thing will be sustainability. Just as globalisation was going on quietly throughout the 90s, sustainability has been around for a while. Rocketing petrol prices and climate change fears are just bringing it centre-stage.
At the moment, it's just focusing on things like energy & water efficiency. These aren't bad places to start but it's going to have to go deeper than that. And bigger. many problems are cause by local solutions being sub-optimal at the global level - e.g. putting my rubbish the street is great for my garden but not for the neighbourhood.
A question I would like to pose: How do the LBTs (Last Big Things) help us with this one? We tend to see globalisation as having a negative impact on the environment but what can we do to change that? And how does all this social software malarky help? Something around co-ordination may be....
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