One of the great things about helping people manage information for living is the constant exposure one gets to all kinds of different-yet-related disciplines, and the opportunity for innovation those connections provide.
The trigger point for this thought was a notice I saw recently about a company called MakerBot Industries, which makes open source 3D printers that can turn even casual product designers into manufacturers for not a whole lot more than the cost of a decent laptop computer. Besides the fact that this is a capability I tracked years ago, the piece caught my eye because using printer technology to create objects out of plastic rather than to put ink on paper represents just the kind of creative thinking that sets my world to rocking.
The underlying lesson here is that it is absolutely critical to look at your business problems in terms of the outcomes you are trying to achieve (e.g., object production) and not in the context of the technologies you are accustomed to (e.g., printers). This opens the door to making important non-obvious connections, and is what enabled someone to realize that the electronics and mechanics required to control a print head moving in two dimensions could be adapted to control a blade or an extruder moving in three.
In information management terms, ECM and BPM may be our most obvious examples. To my mind, these occupy opposite sides of a single coin since the highest quality content in the world is meaningless without an intelligent, efficient way to put it in the right people’s hands at the right time, and the best business processes in the world are valueless without high-quality content to deliver.
The problem is that if you define your business problem in terms of managing content, you may well miss some of the more creative solutions in the world of managing process – and vice versa! Co what you want to do is define your objectives according to how you want things to be when you’re finished, and then work backwards into the technology from there.
Put another way, the question you want to ask is, “What technologies are out there that I can use to solve my problem?” and not “How can content (or business process) management address my needs?” You may find that you already have a lot of the pieces in place and need only to get them to interoperate – or you may find that you really do need something new from one or both of those worlds. The point is asking the right question leaves room to develop the best answers, and not merely the best packaged ones.
Want a little outside perspective on the connections you’re trying to make? Let us know at askus@hollygroup.com!