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John Seely-Brown

On Past Wisdom

"Past wisdom must not be a constraint, but something to be challenged."

-- Ghoshal, S. & Bartlett, C.A., in "Rebuilding Behavioral Context: A Blueprint for Corporate
Renewal," Sloan Management Review, Winter 1996, pp. 23-36.
(Editor's note: Sumantra Ghoshal is with the London Business School where he heads up Stretegic Leadership Research Programme, he has published several articles with Christopher Bartlett and others.)

Successful Technologies Should Resonate With Human Behavior...

"The technologies that will be most successful will resonate with human behaviour instead of working against it. In

Paul Strassmann

fact, to solve the problems of delivering and assimilating new technology into the workplace, we must look to the way humans act and react.... In the last 20 years, US industry has invested more than $1 trillion in technology, but has realised little improvement in the efficiency of its knowledge workers and virtually none in their effectiveness. If we could solve the problems of the assimilation of new technology, the potential would be enormous. "

-- John Seely-Brown, in "The Human Factor", Information Strategy, Dec 96-Jan 97.
(Editors note: John Seely-Brown is head of Xerox Parc in Palo Alto California)


It is Not the Computers, but What People Do with them...

"The lack of correlation of information technology spending with financial results has led me to conclude that it is not computers that make the difference, but what people do with them. Elevating computerization to the level of a magic bullet of this civilization is a mistake that will find correction in due course. It leads to the diminishing of what matters the most in any enterprise: educated, committed, and imaginative individuals working for organizations that place greater emphasis on people than on technologies."

-- Paul Strassmann, Excerpt from his new book The Squandered Computer