We find a lot of value in books that were written a long time ago but usually ignore works that are only a few decades old. To our peril...
I have found some interesting ideas in a bunch of books from the 80s and 90s that I think are not really put into practice as they "should" be in business.
Today I was listening to "Beyond the Goal" that is a follow on to (obvi) "The Goal" from 1984(ish).
Interesting concept:
1. A technology can be useful in improving life if and only if it solves a limitation...
and
2. Before we have a technology to address a limitation we worked around it and usually just considered it a "fact of life."
Here's the problem. When you are living in conditions and rules from #2 and you develop the tech in #1, if you keep operating in the world of #2 then the tech won't work - or at least it won't deliver the value it could.
You see this a lot in commentary that technology hasn't really helped the world improve or businesses to get efficient. But this is exactly the problem these two ideas describe. A new technology is developed and inserted into (usually large) companies who only implement some of it. THis is mostly because many of them are generating a lof of income/profit/cash and so they aren't going to risk that with a new tech. Meanwhile, the old rules and processes prevent the new tech from really changing how things are done.
We're not stupid. We're just creatures of habit.
