The enabling power of teams and information technology

In today’s rapidly evolving global marketplace an organization’s survival is becoming increasingly dependent on its ability to change and re‐engineer itself in a way that keeps it competitive. While there are a number of ways to accomplish this, there are two new developments that can be considered the most prolific in terms of productive results: first, organizations in many cases have an abundance of untapped wealth in their human resources. Old corporate structures that pigeonhole people into their jobs yield only marginal productivity. Thus many organizations are redesigning themselves into teams which often tap underutilized resources and change the way people and companies produce. Second, in today’s complex world where technology is changing at an exponential rate, there is an imperative need to adapt or acquire information technology that enables organizations (teams) to achieve greater productivity. These two developments are changing the organizations which have had wisdom to adopt them and in so doing are changing the way we think of business.