Content Circles

Ah the inevitability of it all – Humans the world over crawling out of their beds, bound and determined that this year – THIS YEAR!! – we will quit that habit/change that behavior/lose that weight/do something different. Gym owners love this time of year. Tobacco companies hate it. Millions of people on a mission, what a sight! What a sound! What a mighty fury of effort and intent!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a company an “enterprise, “ and I’d love to say I’ve cracked that one. I’m sure Wikipedia could serve up a compelling distinction, but I don’t have access to Wikipedia right at the moment. Because I’m typing this on my laptop, somewhere over the Atlantic ,en route to Ireland.



So I’ll focus instead on what makes an organization a “Virtual Enterprise” or “Enterprise 2.0” or a “Small Virtual Enterprise (SVE).” I’d like to trademark that last one as it’s probably going to get used quite a bit by me in future posts. To me a virtual enterprise is highly distributed; flexible in how and where work is conducted; composed of a core group of employees who in turn manage the output of a team of specialists. Those specialists are not employees (but they may play one on TV). A virtual enterprise can respond very quickly to changing needs (internally) and market conditions (externally). It’s not bounded by traditional enterprises constraints such as hiring freezes, assignment of office space, network and system configuration, and all the other processes that always seem to take months to implement.

In his 2001 book Free Agent Nation Daniel H. Pink quotes some ponderous statistics about the growing trend amongst American workers away from the “Company man/job for life” philosophy to one more in keeping with the values of the individual. Specifically he estimated there were over 33 million Americans working for themselves. He identified three categories of independent worker:

• Soloists (16.5 million) – professionals performing discrete contract work for others. Graphic designers, plumbers, computer programmers, house painters – you get the idea.
• Temps (3.5 million) – skilled individuals performing non-project work, typically in larger organizations.
• Microbusinesses (13 million) – individuals or small teams developing, selling and supporting goods in the marketplace. These businesses are frequently home-based.

Add it all up and you get 33 million people operating as free agents.

Ok. Let's face it. This blog has been WAY too quiet. The reason is that we have been in "stealth" mode for the last several months… unwilling to say a whole lot about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

That's all in the past. We're coming out.

So keep an eye on this space. We will be talking a lot more about what we are doing.... and why... and most importantly how we believe that a new approach to working with documents and content will shift the way business users think about how work gets done. I know...lots of sizzle, but where's the steak? Frankly still on the grill... but it's almost done.

We'll be posting more frequently over the next several weeks. Stick around and see what else is on the plate.