Is the organizational computer a digital nervous system?

Abstract

Over the past three years I have been challenged in creating three information systems with colleagues in three very different areas. One system supported the curation and personalization of news; another will help hospitals improve care by coordinating healthcare providers and simplifying the delivery and recording of medical information; a third will help make cities more livable with radically improved services around parking. All of these systems enable people to effectively interact with each other. All of them embody or will embody organization learning. None of these systems would have been practical to create a few years ago. This talk is about the questions we are asking ourselves as we design and field these systems, where their power comes from, how they are being created by multidisciplinary technology teams and ethnographers, how we are managing, prioritizing and accelerating the necessary innovations, and what we are learning from them.