Issue 3, 2017
Greetings.
The hand above is my favorite among the hundreds of figurative cave drawings from 36,000 years ago that were discovered in the Chauvet Grotto. You cannot visit the original cave (closed to the public since its discovery in order to protect the artwork) but there is a minutely detailed, nearly full-sized replica north of the original grotto. A tour through this is truly breath-taking. You walk in the dark, see detailed scenes of animals around you, and then come upon the hand. The guide suggested the artist was making a statement: “I exist”. No way of know what the artist was thinking, of course! (More about the Chauvet Grotto here and photos here.)
You might say it is a stretch to compare our ice-age artist with people in the workplace today, but when I see the timid advancement of individual autonomy and experimental initiatives in organizations today, I feel the emergence is happening very slowly indeed.
The emergence of the individual, the theme of this briefing note:
Two pieces by myself:
- Workplace Orientations: Where to Focus
- Media is going individual. Enterprise is following.
Recommended reading/watching:
- The Heineken ad I love because it shows individuals meeting other individuals and what happens then.
- A thought-provoking article about how machine have knowledge today that we, humans, can never understand.
As always, please get in touch and share your thoughts.
Jane
Enterprise Digital Summit 2017: Challenges of the Next Wave of Digital Disruption
At the June Enterprise Digital Summit in Paris, presentations, talks, conversations and workshop activities all reflected a key challenge today: How can we bring about change from a human viewpoint?
The real challenge of the next wave of digital disruption is people!
In the photo above, you see Céline Schillinger (Sanofi-Pasteur), myself, Bonnie Cheuk (Euroclear) and Anne Landréat (Humanside) discussing with Björn Negelmann, Head of Conference, about the people aspects of organizational change: how to make it happen!
Inspiring case studies from AccorHotels, Sanofi-Pasteur, Euroclear, Zeppelin, DB Mobility Logistics, Vinci and Air Liquide demonstrated that people are at the top of the priorities for many. See the agenda for details.
Workplace Orientations: Where to Focus?
I ran a workshop to deepen my 2011 and 2017 data on the question: Which future workplace scenarios will bring the greatest value, and what are the opportunities and risks of each? See what data and people say.
Media is going individual. Enterprise is following.
Mary Meeker in her 2017 Internet Trends report shows the evolution of media from the network and cable eras to our current digital era. I was struck by her phases and how they match what is happening in inside organizations.
Recommended reading
Individuals meeting individuals.
Four and a half minutes you won’t forget. Read the article. Watch the ad here or at the link in the middle of the article, which will give you context.
Our machines now have knowledge we’ll never understand.
“We are increasingly relying on machines that derive conclusions from models that they themselves have created, models that are often beyond human comprehension, models that “think” about the world differently than we do. But this comes with a price. This infusion of alien intelligence is bringing into question the assumptions embedded in our long Western tradition. We thought knowledge was about finding the order hidden in the chaos. We thought it was about simplifying the world. It looks like we were wrong. Knowing the world may require giving up on understanding it.”
From Wired.
