The Info Technology Revolution Has Failed Us

The jury is finally back and the verdict is not what anyone wants to hear—the information technology revolution has failed us. After spending untold $billions over the last two decades on computer hardware and software, knowledge workers today still spend 15-30% of their time looking for the information they need to do their work—and find what they are looking for less than half the time! Who could have possibly imagined at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that individuals would still be spending 10 weeks or more per year looking for the information they need at work and still not be able to find it? And this dismal result after installing an endless number of three-letter acronym systems: ERP, CRM, CMS, DAM, DMS, LMS, etc., etc.—not to mention the explosive adoption of the Internet, Google, and countless other tools for creating and finding enterprise content.

I’m told the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How many more $billions do we need to spend over how many more decades to realize something is seriously amiss here? When are we going to understand that a change in thinking and approach is needed to address the single biggest productivity challenge organizations face? Fortunately, the convergence of video, search, web 2.0 and social networking has resulted in the emergence of a trend that that is overcoming the limitations of traditional approaches and is reducing this enterprise productivity gap for a number for global companies—Collaborative Knowledge Sharing.