Management as science and art, blended to combine the best of both worlds, where it is not developed in linear-basis like rocket science, it is multi-linear, multi-faceted, multi-threaded, somewhat exponential, and overly crowded. It is wild as it is grey, no rights and no wrongs, the theories successfully justified by practices. How they managed to be implemented, successfully executed and deliver direct connection to the bottom-line is the true measure of management theories are victorious among others.
As far as I can remember back 5 years ago, Information Management had been an extensive list of hot topic and discussion among scholars and practitioners on how to apply it in business life. Not so long ago Knowledge Management is a standardized tool for companies to retain its knowledge capital. Recently we have Innovation Management hailed as company’s competitive edge to win the market. Last week I was reading a book about Idea Management to overcome the tip-of-the-iceberg phenomenon that previous brain extractor tools never covered. And last night I was even more surprised to find how Intuition Management have become a trending topic in Business Schools’ Working Knowledge and developed to be the instant decision making process in response to business needs. And maybe someday Adaptive Subconscious Management as Malcolm Gladwell mentioned in his latest book blink* will be the next big thing in management science.
The basic premise in Idea Management is quite simple, it is to keep in pace with unprecedented changes in business environment. Porter’s five forces now sounds outdated, rigid and inflexible. Strategic planning hardly keeps the company on-track to its business goals, and decision making process sometimes took longer time than expected and due to this most of the opportunities are passing by. Managing Ideas are a new management challenge that requires further thesis on how it applies to existing structure and culture. Yet true challenges are more to come, how can we systemize the way people think and make decision? Or how can we collaborate our ideas globally? Extensive research is required for sure.
Almost everyone today are able to talk about management in any perspective, from civil engineers to construction workers alike, from seasoned professors to university freshmen, from corporate leaders to newly joined employees, from the very tactical to the very strategic level. Management like its fluidal behavior to other science is basically everywhere. Ideas are one thing most innovative companies care about, how to nourish innovative thinking, and more importantly; how those innovative ideas are shared and developed. The borderless and boundary-less type, corporate leaders may resolving operational problems, and on the other side a foreman may predict company’s future productivity rate by calculating machinery age. The purpose of Idea Management to bridge all the ideas and classify them into taxonomy (as in KM taxonomy), and then the system will deliver the generated ideas to the designated recipients (e.g. operational ideas delivered to operators, business forecast delivered to finance managers, etc.) where the recipients will develop the assumptions into practical improvement tools.
Keep dreaming and keep sharing, cause Idea Management is waiting (now that rhymes)
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