The optimists among us would like to think that the abundance of information, easily transmitted, will result in companies that are less hierarchical and more democratic. That perhaps the firm as we know it will become extinct. I was, for a brief, tongue-in-cheek moment, one of those optimists.
Others, like Andrew McAfee at Harvard, suggests that […]

No, sorry, not the secret kind. Although if you don’t know about software agents, they may seem secret and mysterious. And I’m sure 007 would have found a use for them.
Learn about agents and one of their many uses in Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant James Odell’s recent E-Mail Advisor. It’s reproduced below, and your comments […]

This is the second post on the German book “Evolutionary Management” by Klaus-Stephan Otto and others. If you missed my first post on this, you may want to start there.
Traditionally evolution is connected with fight and competition. Darwin phrased the mechanisms “Survival of the Fittest”, which is often interpreted as “Survival of the Strongest”. Otto […]

I recently ran into a book by a German psychologist and executive consultant on “Evolutionary Management” (If you speak German, you may be interested in the full reference below). Since this book is not published in English (yet?), I’d like to share some of their thoughts on this blog.
“Evolutionary Management” sees itself as counter concept […]

Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole is at it again! He’s come up with a list of the top ten things he’d say to “management” about technology. I’ll just post three of his items here for you to react to, but do read his entire list in this week’s Business Technology Trends & Impacts E-Mail Advisor.
4. Please […]

The following is from a chapter in the book The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, which I have read and highly recommend. Meant for those with an academic research bent, the book brings together a lot of research regarding what makes for experts. Most of the book is dedicated to understanding individual expert […]

When I read Steve Andriole’s recent post (via Cindy Swain), What Are the Rules, I looked at the calendar…no, this was not April 1st.
What a thought-provoking post!
Yes, as some of the comments to Steve’s post indicate, there are definitely some controversial “rules” put forth. To put it mildly. Writing about them all would […]

I want to pick up on something Ken Orr mentioned in his recent Trends Advisor essay on summer reading. He wrote briefly about research that has confirmed a human faculty theatre artists have exploited for a couple of thousand years, and which we can put to use in working together. In the theatre it’s the […]

Have you read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s best-selling book “The Black Swan” yet? Like his first, “Fooled by Randomness”, it’s a terrific read - although lots of critics are hammering him for arrogance and self-indulgence, both in the media and on Amazon. Taleb is smart, self-made, opinionated, and a maverick. His main thesis is that human […]

The Cutter Blog is a multi-author blog, a platform where Cutter’s expert Senior Consultants and Fellows present their opinions on and reactions to what’s happening in business technology. But it’s not just about espousing opinion — it’s really about debate. At Cutter, we don’t believe in one-size fits all. We thrive on intellectual sparring. And […]