Enterprise Toilets

"Toilets are necessary but not sufficient for success in the telecommunication industry"

Succinctly delivered by Kjell Nordström of Funky Business fame.

Water, electricity, and toilets are necessary for any organisation. As are accounting programs, CRM, ERP systems and (with time) any state-of-the-art enterprise software application.

Those are the resources that any business can have, necessary but not sufficient.

To quote his co-author Jonas Ridderstråle:

"It's the ability to combine and recombine things that will make the difference, because most of the technologies, most of the raw materials, most of the knowledge is available in these increasingly efficient and increasingly global markets"

Why then are businesses spending so much on analysing, buying and installing better toilets, eh, contemporary enterprise software?

What they need is a tool that allows and strengthens the ability to combine and recombine. That's what they should focus on. Now.

Comments

[John]

Perhaps it gives them somewhere to hide away.

[sig]

John, you may be more right than you think! :)

Over the years, sitting in "important" meetings like board meetings and such there were always some guy that had some psychological issue with decisions. When pressed they always went deeper and deeper into their "blanket" - aka Excel spreadsheet effectively postponing any decision and driving all others up the wall!

Sticking to something "complicated" (favourite term amongst decision avoiders), digging and digging and never taking a chance - the prerequisite of doing anything important - makes them feel safe.

Huge complicated ERP installs from huge brand name suppliers might be exactly that. The spreadsheet-blanket or toilet to hide away on... hehe.