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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 Fingers in many pies IT is now common practice for company directors and officers to be non-executive directors and/or advisers to other companies. This serves as a mechanism that is hard to surpass for broadening, educating, diversifying and disseminating business concepts, practices and wisdom. This has long been established in industry worldwide, and has also spread to other sectors in a slightly varied form - government, education and healthcare, for example. Interestingly, in industry a key concern is a clear demarcation to ensure that information and experience do not benefit or disadvantage the parties involved. So, for example, a director in technology may seek out extra appointments in retail or transport to minimise such opportunity. However, in government, education and healthcare the converse is generally true - here there are positive benefits to being occupied in exactly the same arena. For all sectors it is the physical travel and time demands that constrain the number of such additional appointments to no more than four at a time. Industry tends to be the more complex environment because of the legal, ethical and commercial constraints coupled with some serious human limitations. To be blunt, while the upper echelons of a company might be happy to participate in and profit from this practice, they often take a dim view of their staff doing so. And yet, it is not unusual for manual workers to work at two or three jobs at the same time. It seems obvious that this is all about to change dramatically as the bit economy overtakes our traditional experience and practices. If someone can manage four simultaneous executive appointments in the world of atoms, then in my estimation he or she will be able to manage around 40 in a world of bits. Certainly, all my working life has seen me employed full-time by one company while I have been engaged in part-time education, publication and other orthogonal activities in my free time. It has been easy to maintain the necessary separation of knowledge, and a correct ethical and legal stance, due to the diverse nature of the sectors involved. But this certainly will not be the case in future. In a curious inversion of values germinated by an increasingly networked world of bits, the need to protect knowledge and information will evaporate. The need for absolute orthogonality will no longer be paramount - in fact, it will be a disadvantage. When professionals have a portfolio of 40 or so simultaneous business endeavours, then a little information incest becomes a powerful tool in the creation of new business and wealth. In this domain it is the freedom of information access and linking of experience and knowledge that are the catalysts for new industries. Imagine the impact an individual might have if his main employment were in electronic publishing, while his secondary activities included electronic retail, security, arts, games, education, car hire and more. The potential is huge as the catalytic actions would transgress today's safe business and ethical lines. Now imagine what a few hundred similarly linked individuals might achieve across the planet. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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