Intellectual Capital/Stewart 185-191

191 That is--in this metaphorical version, at least--each business can draw sustenance from the whole and also flourish because a big, varied ecosystem gives it room to grow, complete, and evolve.

Certainly redundancy carries costs; but it also creates opportunities and savings. First there's knowledge sharing.

You see constant self-reorganization and self-redesign, without the need for a whole lot of coordination across the company.

The best structural capital,...allows a company to act almost reflexively.

The job of management used to be to plan, organize, execute, and measure--POEM. IN the networked organization, the manager's job is best described in organic terms--indeed, in terms of the fundamental material life. The manager's job is DNA: Define, Nurture, Allocate.

Define: Who are we? Why are we in business? What business are? What are our mission and vision and what value do we seek to offer to our customers? The networked company often organizes itself; people gather around projects that need to be done. It's not management's job to run those teams and projects; instead, management's role is to decide what needs to be done, to keep those projects from spinning off every which way by defining the direction in which the organization is headed. Vision-and-values stuff isn't mushy gobbled-gook; it's truly important.

Nurture: The human structural, and customer capital on which organizations depend need to be supported and nourished by managers. What kinds of people and knowledge do we need? What skills are essential to our business? How do we get them, how do we keep them at their best, how should results be rewarded: What kind of environment do they need to do their best? What systems can connect specialist knowledge workers with the least amount of bureaucratic drag? How can we grow relationships with our customers so that they share our fate and we share theirs?

Allocate: Management is about choosing. Among a dozen opportunities, which should we pursue, and with what vigor? What resources do we need? What's the best way to get them--do we grow our own, buy them through an acquisition, or rent them through an alliance? How strictly or loosely do we manage teams' use of those resources? How do we measure results?