Different Mission from Information Tech. Competitive advantage will come from IT projects that enable business growth by augmenting the behaviour of k

Gartner: Web 2.0 will play critical role in improving knowledge worker performance Businesses that succeed today and in the future will be those who are best equipped to do the non-routine; that is find opportunities, create concepts and build teams to develop and deliver competitive advantage. To achieve this, companies need to take what Gartner calls a 'high-performance workplace' approach. This combines technologies, processes and management structures to enable knowledge workers to collaborate and find new ways to create value for their companies. Adoption of Web 2.0 concepts will encourage and enable the move towards a high performance workplace. The role of IT has been primarily focused on cost cutting - often by automating routine processes. Although some automation benefits remain, this alone is not enough to keep a company competitive. Businesses need a fundamental shift in the way they use IT to create value. The biggest revenue impact will come from IT projects that enable business growth by augmenting the behaviour of key knowledge workers and making them more innovative, creative and productive. Gartner stressed that this will create far greater competitive advantage because it is much harder for competitors to emulate. The bottom line is that today's successful companies are both agile and innovative, and a key ingredient is the way they leverage IT to raise the impact of their talents for structural and breakthrough innovation. The source of competitive advantage is people. If you can raise the impact of your people you can achieve competitive advantage. Using technology to improve employee effectiveness rather than to replace workers with machines demands a fundamental change in the way businesses are organised and operate. The rise of the knowledge worker engenders a total rethink of the concept of productivity, which can no longer be measured by output per hour. Web 2.0 technologies, in particular, will play a crucial role. They extend the scope, scale and potential for communities and collaborative working by enabling decentralised innovation and generating rapid consumer-driven change, which will significantly enhance business growth. Within ten years, 80 percent of the work performed by employees will be non-routine, non manual and collaborative. Collaboration and community are tools of innovation - people are developing new social norms and changing technology direction with these tools. They are also tools of learning; people learn how to discover, join, use, influence or even manipulate communities.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Barcelona

Publ 20060522