Way back in 1999 the Cluetrain Manifesto started many of us thinking about the impact technologies were having on our interactions with our customers, and within our organizations. But really, there have only been a handful of people looking at how organizations will change - and how they’ll work from a practical standpoint. Andrew McAfee at Harvard, Tom Davenport at Babson, David Snowden at Cognetive Edge and Jon Husband at Wirearchy are looking at how organizational structures will evolve. Wirearchy is a term coined by Husband meaning “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology”. What a great concept — really the transformation of hierarchies in the wired world. We spend an incredible amount of time, money and expertise integrating technologies into our work processes and organizations, and yet minimal time on how the organization’s structure, culture, performance measures and rewards need to adjust to this integration.

Husband’s October 24th blog has podcast with Dave Snowden to coincide with Snowden’s article in Nov 2007 Harvard Business Review. If you’re working with knowledge management and can’t make it to KMWorld to hear Snowden, you can listen to the interview for 20 minutes (worth the time).