The Infinite Resource

"The big shift has been to release the knowledge living dormant at the bottom of economies, and now it is electrifying business around the globe."

"It's rather obvious now that the hierarchical organization that dominated history is passing rapidly, if not already dead."

"The possibilities for increasing human capabilities, prosperity, and social progress are so vast that most people find them unimaginable, too good to be true."

"The state of management practice today is highlighted by the fact that there are more panaceas than problems."

"At the microeconomic level of the enterprise we usually employ the same kind of economic system as the Soviet Union used before its transformation, one that is centrally planned and controlled."

"What does a corporation look like that has transformed from a centrally planned and controlled economy to one that is based on a free market?"

"The requirement that the executive office operate as a profit center helps ensure that it sees itself as having a value-adding function."

"Proposals for the introduction of an internal market economy are usually received with four types of concern."

"Knowledge companies compete not through size or industrial strength, but through the data they gather and distill about their markets and through the information technologies they use to reach customers in new ways."

"The microprocessor has liberated users, empowered individuals, and decentralized access to information."

"Tip O'Neil said that all politics is local, but in commerce all business is global."

"Everything American business knows about marketing and distribution is up for grabs."

"Competing globally means one thing: forging alliances and joint ventures."

"Embrace change. Most companies go to great lengths to avoid any kind of change."

"In many industries today, the innovation cycle is now shorter than the planning cycle that managers use to introduce new products."

"As managers move from the traditional organizational form to a network, a wide range of issues arise and new problems emerge."

"A spherical organization can rapidly rotate its resources to meet the needs of upstream and downstream partners."

"Cellular structures made up of small face-to-face units tied together by norms of respect and sharing seem to be increasingly common in the most productive knowledge industries."

"New technologies are increasing productivity to such an extent that we can no longer measure the effect of technological investment on growth using traditional yardsticks."

"We will find that customers won't care how they get their information services?as long as the network delivers them in a compelling, low-cost, secure, and easy-to-use way. "

"How do we feed the growing demands of telecommuters, net-surfers, and knowledge workers, and bring interactive services to a mass market at the same time?"

"The more arrows in your quiver, the better the package you bring to the customer."

"In revolutionary periods, technology hits like a rock falling in a pond; then the impact ripples outward as shock waves of change."

"Remember the customer? In this new model the customer is everything."

"CEOs and top managers often liked to call themselves leaders before. But now they really have to do it."

"We are humans, and all those things that humans do will not disappear, they take on a new weight."

"The intelligent organizations of the future will be structured as networks of many smaller interacting internal enterprises, or intraprises."

"It may be preferable to eliminate monopoly by encouraging the development of alternative suppliers and service provides within the organization."

"Without private ownership it is hard to implement free enterprise in nations. Likewise, without something akin to ownership it is hard to implement free enterprise in workplaces."

"The best visions stretch the organization beyond what is obviously achievable, thereby creating the necessity for innovation."

"The following list summarizes the steps to create an intelligent organization."