{"id":898,"date":"2008-05-28T01:00:33","date_gmt":"2008-05-28T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=898"},"modified":"2008-05-28T01:00:54","modified_gmt":"2008-05-28T09:00:54","slug":"recession-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=898","title":{"rendered":"Recession Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the U.S. and probably global economy slowing down, we\u2019d all expect technology spending to slow down with it.\u00a0 After all, in 2001 when the \u201cbubble burst,\u201d it took a few years (I\u2019d guess 2004) for the IT money to really come back.\u00a0 Smart companies will continue to\u00a0 invest in infrastructure.\u00a0 As Andrew McAfee writes<\/a> in his blog:<\/p>\n

It seems pretty clear that the US economy is in the middle of a slowdown. Its depth, reach, and length are not yet obvious, and some folk still resist using \u2018the R word,\u2019 but leaner times are here, and might last a while.<\/p>\n

During such times companies often throttle back their IT investments and hold off on big technology products. Some business leaders think this is the wrong thing to do\u2014 during the last recession, in 2001, Jack Welch said that “this is the moment to widen the gap” between GE and its competitors. “We are driving the hell out of IT spending\u2026 It\u2019s the lifeblood of the company.” But the fact remains that technology budgets typically get pared when times get tight.<\/p>\n

Which make Enterprise 2.0 technologies and deployments all the more attractive\u2026\u00a0 ((McAfee, Andrew, April 8, 2008.\u00a0 \u201cRecession Tech\u201d\u00a0 Retrieved from http:\/\/blog.hbs.edu\/faculty\/amcafee\/ on May 5, 2008.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Prof. McFee\u2019s post on your own, but I love his third reason for companies to invest in Web 2.0 software.\u00a0 \u201cas business slows down workers often have more slack in their weeks. When this is the case it\u2019s easier for them to find time and energy to participate in Enterprise 2.0.\u201d\u00a0 ((Ibid))<\/p>\n

If there are two thoughts in McFee\u2019s post that I cling to, it\u2019s these:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This is the moment to widen the gap.\u00a0 Some companies won\u2019t continue to invest fearing a larger impact on quarterly results.\u00a0 Saving cash for the short term will certainly be at the expense of the long them.<\/li>\n
  2. If you do have to invest in something, McFee has a decent point.\u00a0 If employees are doing less work, make sure their down time is not on Facebook or Myspace.\u00a0 (or God forbid, eHarmony.com!!)\u00a0 Give them an outlet to make those internal connections, find internal innovation associates, and dig for knowledge.\u00a0 Give them an outlet to blog and create knowledge.\u00a0 In the meantime, you\u2019re also creating knowledge management, and setting yourself up for new innovations for when the economy does improve, which it surely will.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With the U.S. and probably global economy slowing down, we\u2019d all expect technology spending to slow down with it.\u00a0 After all, in 2001 when the \u201cbubble burst,\u201d it took a few years (I\u2019d guess 2004) for the IT money to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,8,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-strategies","category-web-20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}