When organizations want to justify budget cuts, workforce reductions, or a freeze on hiring, they often use the shopworn sentence “Well, we’re going to have to do more with less.” At which point, in any organization, be it a nonprofit, a corporation, a small business, or even a church, the Read more…
There is a way that work realities are constructed that betrays a lack of understanding and acceptance of an uncomfortable, likely future reality; and betrays a comfort with creating a reality that is comfortable, but unlikely: The comfortable reality is that employers keep hiring (albeit at a lower/slower rate) and Read more…
Human civilization doesn’t need another social network. It is a sign of the limits of our present level of creativity and value addition, that the top websites on the Internet right now, tend to be ones that are focused around two areas: Sharing, collecting and curating information to a wide Read more…
Ghettos are popping up all over the virtual place. In the physical world, the ghetto began as a way to segregate Jewish populations from other populations in Italy and all throughout the rest of Europe. Then, if Wikipedia is to be believed, ghettos came to the US, first as a Read more…
Perhaps its bad form to use a word coined by a website dedicated to pirating digital products, but so far, physibles is the best way to describe the next wave of items that exist in the digital and physical worlds. Physibles can best be described as objects created on a Read more…
The building Roman Coliseum was begun by the Emperor Vespasian in the year 72 A.D. and was completed by the Emperor Titus in 80 A.D. We all know what happened in the coliseum (or colosseum, if you prefer that spelling) and we have used the historical knowledge of “death and Read more…
We need to figure out what kind of Internet we want to have. The business model currently funding and pushing the growth of the Internet is based upon monetizing a base of users who come to a project and use it for free, or for a nominal price. The user Read more…
I was sitting with another consultant the other day and was having a conversation. In passing, he happened to mention—after hearing my response to his question about how long I’ve been in business with HSCT—that I have actually succeeded. I paused for a moment, and then corrected his term “succeeded” Read more…
Nostalgia for the future is a terrible thing. As a matter of fact, we have heard recently that nostalgia for the past might be poison. Human beings, without much great reluctance, tend to romanticize the past, and believe that the future will be exactly the same. Only slightly cooler. However, Read more…
The future conflicts we can’t predict, the ones that come out of the sky and surprises us, are the easiest to prepare for. But we have to work at it. Interpersonal conflicts come from both places: the places we can predict (that family member who’s “always been a problem,” or Read more…