Young Managers Already Know Where The Future Business Opportunities Are

The initial series of Creating Your Future in the Digital World programme has revealed how managers understand the important role the new generation of digital technology in the Web 2.0 world will play in the future success of their organisations. There is deep frustration though amongst these employees those senior leaders within organisations are slow to understand the opportunities these new technologies offer. Information technologies are stilled viewed as operational, as a cost to their organisations and new technologies suffer poor word-of-mouth amongst senior leaders because of the many bad experiences organisations have had in implementing new systems in the past.

One delegate to one of the sessions, the Chairman and Managing Director of a major Australian financial services operation spoke frankly about how he had spent hundred of thousands of dollars attempting to implement a new business system that was nowhere near completion and still required further funding. His senior information team had failed him and he was seeking either a way forward or a way to mitigate his losses. He was shocked to learn how the new digital technologies offered a prototype solution that enabled him to fully test his business hypothesis for a cost of around $30 per month initially.

Younger managers born into the digital world or those working permanently in the area know digital technologies facilitate powerful new inexpensive ways of thinking strategically and creatively about business. Senior managements' challenge is to listen to their younger charges and to absorb this emerging knowledge.

The Practical Visionary (Spring 2008 edition strategy+business) is an excellent background article to this dilemma.