Getting Loose

We agree with sig and we firmly believe in Peter Drucker's dictum, "that there is only one valid purpose for any business: to create and satisfy a customer." Everything else, from value and service to profits and market share, follows from that premise. After all, it's customers who pay the bills. It's customers who keep us employed. As I wrote here (Coordination Theory in a Flat World) and here Big Bang theory for blogs and Lead Users and Tossing Pots... as well as several other places, not only does the customer need to be pulled in to the mix, but employees, suppliers, and all the other stakeholders need a greater voice in the Organization of the 21st century.

customer? include, include, include! from sig on thingamy, "A business organisation exist[s] to fulfil[l] a specific need of an individual, the customer. But where is the customer on the organisational chart? Why does he not matter in the process of fulfilling his need? A perpetual state of hit and run?"

I think as more businesses move from their experimental, pilot webservices projects, we'll see more open api's and services, similar to what Amazon is doing but on a much broader scale. How these new webservices change the organization is still up in the air, but one thing I know is that they, the organization, will be much more adaptive technologically. Of course, changing the culture is a different animal. Here is where I think blogs will have a big impact. Simply by tying together disparate silos of people across the business with blogs that share common threads will make any change less painful since everyone will be able to particpate from their own perspective. It becomes personal and more meaningful.