Building & Facilities Operations

Like folks living in the 1800s, we likely cannot foresee the deeper and more profound effects that this next wave of technological change will have on society.  However, we can make some simple observations about how it will change the way we work.

First, this new wave of technology will interconnect people more, blurring the distinction between public and private and making it much more difficult for workers to silo components of their lives.  The distinction between public and private will be more difficult to maintain.  People will likely pay a lot of attention to their public personae (what is shown in LinkedIn, or Facebook), and this may become more burdensome to manage.

People will expect their software tools, like Building Engines, to share information seamlessly, to work easily and to be enjoyable to use.

Second, what the current recession has started, the next technological shift will amplify.  These new and highly dispersive technologies will make it easier for organization to outsource smaller pieces of work to consultants and contractors, and the reach these tools offer the small user will enable those contractors to take on more work, work more flexibly and develop focused areas of expertise.  What magazine editor Tina Brown called Giganomics is here to stay.

Finally, the new tools described above will have a profound effect on the culture and structure of organizations that adopt them, one of which will be to make communication more open, information flows more dynamic and organizations themselves much more porous.