In his blog, Cognitive Edge, knowledge management guru Dave Snowden makes an excellent point about the importance of diversity of IT systems:

“IT departments are simply deciding to go with a single procurement from a dominant player, rather than allowing locally contextual solutions to emerge.  They don’t even have the excuse of cost saving (…). One software package cannot replicate the richness of the web, and your employees deserve that richness as does your organisation if it is to be effective and successful.”

This quote reflects quite well my frustration with intranets (and to some extent with HR transactional systems approach). Instead of waiting years for the hailed individualized Über-portal or the One HR Process Management System(tm), why can’t we allow units to build simple local solutions, learn deeply about our processes when implementing them, and then connect or even integrate them?

Link: Cognitive Edge: The Shire Hall and Sharepoint

In a recent post, the ReadWriteWeb blog discusses “Brandstreaming“. This term is a reference to the term “Lifestreaming”, or the online record of a person’s daily activities. Web applications such as Friendfeed, Tumblr or, catching up, FaceBook allow people to connect all of their online activities onto a publishing platform, collecting everything he wishes to share with the world about himself. For example, my own lifestream – I use both Facebook and Friendfeed – includes

• my (private) blog posts
• my tweets (Twitter updates)
• my latest Flickr photos
• the videos I put on YouTube
• the music I like on last.fm
• and my latest del.icio.us links.

It allows my friends to stay up to date with what I’m doing. And since I’m doing these activities (such as posting videos) anyway, there is no extra effort in posting an update, because the feed is generated automatically.Brandstreaming is the same concept, but for brands. The RWW blog thinks that this approach would be suitable only for brands with a strong lifestyle appeal; I disagree: Speciality products with strong customer loyalty – for example medications – could benefit of it as well (if regulations allows, of course).

Link: ReadWriteWeb: Brandstreaming – what is it and who’s doing it?

The Signal vs. Noise blog has an interesting post on why Pixar, the animation company behind Toy Story, Monsters inc., Finding Nemo, and the upcoming Wall-E, produces much better quality movies than its competition. I especially liked the following statement:

Thanks to Pixar University, employees learn to see the company’s work (and their colleagues) in a new light. “The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization,” Nelson said. “Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn’t just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There’s no company on earth that wouldn’t benefit from having people become more observant.”

Link to “Pixar’s tightknit culture is its edge” via Signal vs. Noise and Readburner