Technological and organizational innovation: the enterprise in the era of the network of networks

ABSTRACT Purpose. The revolution of Information Communication Technology (ICT), in particular the Internet, and all the wake of economic and social changes that follow, is an irreversible process, and to which we must adapt. The decentralization of intelligence in the global communication networks and the centrality of ideas and knowledge are leading to the affirmation of a new paradigm: the economics of networking and collaboration mainly based on the open innovation. The mainframe’s era of the 40s and 60s characterized by control and centralized management of information without the possibility of user access, it has gone to the era of stand-alone in the late 60s where every personal computer was equipped with its own information processing capacity, to reach today’s era of network where each computer has the ability to connect with the rest of the world. We are in the midst of a technological, economic and organizational transformation enabling us to renegotiate the conditions of freedom and productivity, and from which are emerging new social and economic practices. A development without the Internet would be like industrialization without electricity in the industrial era. This transformation provides opportunities and imposes challenges. Internet, as a new platform of communication, in its continuous evolution has given rise to new patterns of social interaction leading to the birth of a true digital culture. To link together two nodes of the network means to relate them. Therefore, since the beginning the information network has been immediately characterized for its “social aspect”. Today, billions of interconnected individuals are able to participate in innovation, wealth creation and social development in ways that once could only imagine. The interconnection logic, that makes all the nodes individuals of a single network, requires a rethinking of the role of ICT within the company: technology is no longer just a tool with which to effectively manage internal business processes and govern the internal complexity, it becomes a real strategic tool through which companies rethink radically the way they manage their business and pursue their own goals, rereading their value chain. Actually, the development and survival of organizations depends on the access to new technologies of the Internet. Access, however, is not just the acquisition of the technology itself. Access means above all developing managerial skills, management techniques, a structure and an organizational culture for their effective use. The aim of this paper is to retrace the main stages of this process and to understand the real benefits of the introduction of new technologies, as well as the transformations, in organizational, cultural, and business terms, which necessarily have to be implemented by organizations in order to build and maintain competitive advantage. The reflection that comes out, in a historical period characterized by widespread de-structuring of organizations, is that it is better to cooperate than compete. In this context, in order to understand better the relations, interactions, and the relationship networks, this study relies on a systems thinking perspective, by defining the openness degree of the systems and the governance of communication flows that derive as a consequence. Methodology. The methodological approach adopted, albeit of heuristic type, refers to the positive method in that, starting from the analysis of the historical descriptive literature and nonfiction, it is reached to formulate very precise research questions. The systemic interpretation, in the light of the constructivist paradigm allows us to subvert the traditional explanatory report “object-information-observer”, placing the observation function at the base of the explanatory chain: “observer-information-object”. The prospect’s change is relevant because every phenomenon in the eyes of the observer is a constructed reality or an invented one. The new paradigm offers us the opportunity of a window, a visionary window, from which recognize that the observer plays an important role in shaping the reality; so the views can be reconciled with science. Findings. The work sheds light on the birth of a new production mode based on collaborative and decentralized models, referred to as “weapons of mass collaboration”. Based on these changes develops the Enterprise 2.0. The user-consumer, takes on a new look, acquires an active, fluid, and a growing power. This reveals that innovation can come, indeed is coming from below, from the same skilled users who increasingly thin the line between professionals and amateurs. Then the focus goes towards the future talking about the Web 3.0 or Semantic Web. This is nothing more than the further transformation of the WWW in an environment where the published documents are associated with information and data (metadata) that specify the semantic context in a format suitable for the question, the interpretation and, more generally, automatic processing. Research limits. This is essentially a theoretical work. While providing a description of the experience of Procter & Gamble and the InnoCentive platform (a virtual intermediary that allows the exchange of information and technology), the current study does not provide an analysis of empirical data to support conceptualized ideas. Practical implications. The organizations can reap significant benefits of the new economic paradigm, leveraging the partnership to cut costs and accelerate the pace of innovation. Another influential implication on macro and micro-organizational structures is the transition from an economy of scale to one of flexibility and breadth. Finally, it is noted that the operating economic unit is no longer the company, but the economic project around which the network is formed between businesses and segments of companies and their subcontractors. Originality of the study. The real novelty lies in recognizing that it makes little sense to study the framework of relations that mutually interconnect actions and reactions of the suprasystems and the enterprise system through causation relationships. It is not significant to search the reasons and responsibilities of a progressive decline of the systemic equilibrium in the action of the single component. The systemic approach makes it clear that the “chain” of causations is circulated. The illusion of having identified a principle or a cause, to which other causes must be associated linearly, must be considered only an epistemological “trick”. Breaking the circularity of the interaction has a value only in terms of static representations of the phenomena. As saying that in the confusion on what came first, the “chicken or the egg”, you decide, assuming to be the hens, to start from the hen. For years, adopting this epistemological premise, the macroeconomists have attributed the reasons of the evolutionary change to the socio-economic systems, as micro-economists to the behaviour of markets, as industrial economists to the dynamic sectors, and as business economists to the dynamics of business organizations. The viable systems vision eliminates any distinction; reading the context as “the” system of systems exceeds any reductionist prospective and leads to the unity of the behaviour of each single component/entity. In this perspective, the context can be thought of as a body of water, a lake or sea, in which interact water, fish, seaweed, sand, and thousands of other micro-components, and where any occurrence is not a matter of only one organism but a concern of the whole. Only a systems view makes it understandable that every possible behaviour of every possible component of the environment cannot and must not be listed as “good” or “bad” in absolute terms, but must be assessed in relation to the levels of consonance that manifest with the context. It is considered “good” if it increases or at least does not decrease levels of consonance, it should instead be considered “bad” if it reduces the consonance, tends to upset the “equilibrium” of the system, and introduces elements of complexity.