Tomorrow's Info Jockeys

May 11, 1998

11 May 1998

Tomorrow's Info Jockeys

The following article is excerpted from the "Journal of Commerce", 7 May 1998.

When the economic activities of a society change, so do its employment and jobs. For example, at the turn of the last century, almost 50% of U.S. employment was in the agricultural sector.

Today, farm employment is less than 3%, yet farmers feed a vastly larger U.S. population and supply food to the world. Yet, there are not millions of unemployed farmers in the United States. Rather, those who might have been farmers now work in the manufacturing and service sectors.

Today, the information revolution shapes the way businesses, individuals and governments interact. A ... study at Georgetown University brought together the views of business executives, policy-makers and researchers from around the world to explore the effects of these changes on employment.

The principal research findings indicate there will be three new types of professions emerging: knowledge distributors, knowledge erasers and knowledge bundlers.

Here is what these new professionals will be doing:

* Knowledge distributors: These professionals will channel information and knowledge within and between people or organizations. Within organizations, they will make sure that information gets to the people who are able to act upon it.

Today, organizations know how to gather information, but fall short in disseminating it. For example, marketing research information or complaints often go only to the marketing department.

However, this information also may be needed by the engineers so that they can be responsive to consumer needs and wants in their design of new products.

Similarly, many multinational corporations are still unable to distribute information between subsidiaries around the world.

As a result, they miss out on an essential benefit of multinationality, namely intra-organizational learning. In other words, they keep making the same mistakes, only in different country settings. In their work between knowledge units, knowledge distributors will use information to create proprietary channels between suppliers and customers.

For example, one can measure a refrigerator that can measure the consumption of its content and trigger automatic resupply from a grocery store.

This way, a relationship is built between the grocery store and the individual. The store can now serve the customer better and with greater exclusivity.

By managing information flows, knowledge distributors can offer the right product to the right customer at the right time.

* Knowledge erasers: Information often arrives not as an individual snowflake but as an avalanche. There is a growing need to reduce both the flow and the stock of information in order to make it manageable.

Separating the wheat from the chaff will become a critical activity of knowledge erasers. The art will be to reduce the wealth of information held, while still preserving enough skeletal information to reconstruct the past in at least broad strokes.

Alternatively, too much old information can be an unhealthy thing. In particular, in today's litigious times, where old information is often interpreted in a current context, it will become increasingly necessary to reduce the information available if it no longer can be placed within its contextual framework.

Knowledge erasers also will play a greater role in accommodating growing concerns about privacy. Society worries increasingly about data stored in information banks.

* Knowledge bundlers: These professionals will concentrate on using existing information and combining it in such ways that its adds new value.

Such bundling will make life easier but may also influence choices. For example, the New York Times has bundled its book review section. Internet readers of the best seller list are offered a direct link to Barnes & Noble book sellers for order placement.

This way, obtaining a book becomes much easier and an entirely new distribution channel is offered to the cu


Topic(s): 
Canadian Economy & Politics
Information Source: 
Canadian News Channel
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