"emergence" entries
From Industrialism to Post-Industrialism
Leveraging the power of emergence to balance flexibility with coherency.
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Building an Optimized Business
Download a free copy of Building an Optimized Business, a curated collection of chapters from the O’Reilly Web Operations and Performance library. This post is an excerpt by Jeff Sussna from Designing Delivery, one of the selections included in the curated collection.
In 1973, Daniel Bell published a book called “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society”. In it, he posited a seismic shift away from industrialism towards a new socioeconomic structure which he named ‘post-industrialism’. Bell identified four key transformations that he believed would characterize the emergence of post-industrial society:
- Service would replace products as the primary driver of economic activity
- Work would rely on knowledge and creativity rather than bureaucracy or manual labor
- Corporations, which had previously strived for stability and continuity, would discover change and innovation as their underlying purpose
- These three transformations would all depend on the pervasive infusion of computerization into business and daily life
If Bell’s description of the transition from industrialism to post-industrialism sounds eerily familiar, it should. We are just now living through its fruition. Every day we hear proclamations touting the arrival of the service economy. Service sector employment has outstripped product sector employment throughout the developed world. 1
Companies are recognizing the importance of the customer experience. Drinking coffee has become as much about the bar and the barista as about the coffee itself. Owning a car has become as much about having it serviced as about driving it. New disciplines such as service design are emerging that use design techniques to improve customer satisfaction throughout the service experience.