Sunday, April 20, 2003

THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION: This phrase has been rattling around my sub-conscious for a couple of weeks now. Ray Ozzie and I spoke at a government event a couple of weeks ago where I met JC Herz. JC was talking about the power of weblogs in organizations. She spoke of the power of weblogs to deliver organization-wide edge awareness, and more importantly, provide weak signal amplification of thoughts and ideas that would be lost without the medium. At several points in the presentation, she referenced the notion of the "physics of information" which caught my attention. JC is on to something here. The Physics of Information could be defined similarly to how we look at the physics of nature: Information is made up of matter, and when consumed by people, creates energy. The "matter" of information is data, and when information contains multiple data points, it delivers meaning. It's also clear that information yields energy. Larry Prusak convinced me several years ago that information is cool, but it's the energy that's created when it is consumed and shared by people that transforms organizational thinking and decision process. It's the collision of people and information that creates the energy which drives decision superiority and/or innovation, and it is borne from highly stochastic, collaborative interactions. But the real operational challenge is understanding the affect of information matter, and understanding what causes the resultant energy. While process improvement is quite interesting, understanding the physics of the information can make enterprise processes scream, thereby ensuring the maximum extraction of value because it can be directed at specific workgroups. Raw meta identification based solely on information matter is only half the job. Tagging the information with constituencies that will turn the information into energy is the missing link in many organizations. 10:47:06 PM