Systems of Engagement and The Future of Enterprise IT

Over the past decade, there has been a fundamental change in the axis of IT innovation.

In prior decades, new systems were introduced at the very high end of the economic spectrum, typically within large public agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Over time these systems trickled down to smaller businesses, and then to home office applications, and finally to consumers, students and even children. In this past decade, however, that flow has been reversed.

Now it is consumers, students and children who are leading the way, with early adopting adults and nimble small to medium size businesses following, and it is the larger institutions who are, frankly, the laggards.

Our initial response might be to dismiss this trend as not really relevant to the issues of business.

After all, if there really were useful productivity gains here, surely we would already be investing in them. Isn’t it far more likely that this proliferation of consumer services, social sites, and interactive games is simply digital entertainment which, if anything, should be banned from corporate computing?