Novell BrainShare 2010, the flight out

How interesting it is.  On my way out to SLC, on the short flight to Minneapolis, I sat next to a semi-retired business owner from West Bend.

We shared niceties.  He asked me what I do and his eyes lit up.  He shared with me what he was reading.  It was an idea/strategy plan on how businesses must change from the traditional industrial revolution model to what is call the "knowledge-based business model"

He shared me me that the basic idea behind this model is access to information and the capacity of people to take this information and transform or put it all together it into something more useful than the sum of its parts.

Sharing that he is a senior citizen, he shared how difficult he found to unlearn and relearn a philosophy of business that he embraced for nearly 50 years.  However, once he got it, he begin to understand how crippled his company has been by hiring the cheapest labor, who, in his own words, are the least educated and least intelligent people he could find.  There is the common practice in getting a body for the least cost.  He's had to retrain himself that in the information/knowledge revolution the smartest people are the commodity.

Strange though, he didn't blame the educational system.  So many people are ready to begin pointing fingers and say 'if only they would ...'.  His stroke was much broader.

He says that the success of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers have lulled us into becoming lethargic both intellectually and work minded.  Once we worked our tails off to survive, now our culture feels we are owed a survival, and a fairly cushy one. 

The people can produce change are paralyzed by those who resist it.  As long as those who feel owed something are able to feed off of and take from those who do work, they won't have to work!  And as long as there are more people that can vote for someone who won't make them work and will take from those who will work, we'll have an upside down society.

Now, what does this have to do with technology?  This guy will not hire anyone who doesn't know technology.  He has a series of technology questions that usually have nothing to do with their job function.  He is so set on the idea that information and knowledge is the next revolution that he makes sure his employees are smart.  How cool is that.

More tomorrow.

Tom