October 2011 – ManageWithoutThem

Vision, original or second hand, is obvious in retrospect…

Happy birthday iPod.

”It’s a nice feature for Macintosh users,” said P. J. McNealy, a senior analyst for Gartner G2, an e-commerce research group. ”But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, disputed the concern that the market was limited, and said the company might have trouble meeting holiday demand. He predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod.

(Via Mises Economics Blog)

This thought has kept occurring over the last few years:

“Information management is management”

This is true in a number of ways:

traditional styles of management maintain their power by withholding information
market-based management increases transparency through information
there is now to much information – and managing it sometimes feels like the whole deal
market-based management ensures integration of feedback – usually in the form of information
market-based management ensures the manipulation of the right information has appropriate impact on the performance of the organisation (i.e. manage the information and you manage the organisation)
The Hayek “The Use of Knowledge in Society” sense

Month: October 2011

What a difference a decade makes

Thought of the day: Information management is management