of the business as well. This usually meant dealing with Foreign Chambers of Commerce and helping organise their plans for action. In those days, everything was manual. You had to manually do everything. Paper ruled the office and tools like CAD were a joke among the architects. Regardless of how hard you tried the ecosystem the business operated in was rigid. It did not allow for innovation easily. This relationship lasted for over 5 years till just after I completed university.
If we look at how things are today. CAD based design is the norm. MS DOS has been successfully replaced by Windows Office. Windows Office is now being replaced by G Drive and One Drive. Lotus 1-2-3 has been replaced by Excel. By the way, Excel has also become the preferred way to record data as much as means of using it for automating your calculations. You are on top of your cash flow for no other reason you can access your banking online. In other words, technology has finally made it into the mainstream. This means decisions are made in near real time. Information vacuums have been plugged. In fact, work has successfully left the office altogether. You could be sitting in the local cafe enjoying your coffee while having a business meeting - online !
All this changes the social dynamics of how we organise ourselves. It also changes the kind of value we generate. This is having a profound impact. It changes how we structure our organisations to how we go about building relationships. For instance, anyone with access to the internet can be in business. You can be based anywhere in the world and access the global markets. For example, platforms like Etsy allow micro businesses based in villages to engage with clients globally. Platforms like these also help small businesses scale without much extra effort. This in turn has an impact on how local communities exist. The days when families had to be broken up to gain an education or employment are on their way out. Platforms like edx.org / coursera are helping large numbers of people access good quality education usually only available to a few. Cloud based platforms are changing the need to be physically based in one space. VOIP and social media are allowing for near real time communications across vast geographies. These changes are being factored into the social makeup of the 21st Century Organisation.
All this change includes more people in the mainstream. This means as the digital divide is bridged a fundamental change is occurring. The vast majority of the 7 billion people are gradually being included in the market place. This changes the structure and social dynamics of the marketplace itself. For instance, it changes how marketers organise their profiling metrics. For example, socio economic profiling no longer applies. Behavioural data does not exist to establish behavioural profiles. In the same way CAD has profoundly changed the way architects organise their projects. These global platforms are changing the way we exist in the same way.
I look forward to your thoughts on how these changes are impacting your lives.