Essay: The Business Singularity, by Jay Cross

The structure of business, the role of workers, and the architecture of software are changing beneath our very eyes. Business is morphing into flexible, self-organizing components that operate in real time. Software is becoming interoperable, open, ubiquitous, and transparent. Workers are learning in small chunks delivered to individualized screens presented at the time of need. Learning is being transformed into a core business process measured by Key Performance Indicators. Taken together, these changes create a new kind of business environment, a Business Singularity.

Business organizations are evolving into networks. What happens inside the corporate walls is nowhere near as important as the overall flow of value from raw material to customer. Internal boundaries are obstacles to be overcome. Networks shared among suppliers, partners, and customers integrate the business into a commercial ecosystem that is, no surprise, a larger network.

Software is evolving into networks. The network really is the computer. The internet is the new model for organization. Open networks that can talk with one another are far more valuable than yesterday’s proprietary fortresses. As on the net, enterprise software evolves with changing conditions, routes around damage, and reaches out to form new connections.

People are networks enmeshed in networks with one another. Our bodies are networks. Our minds are neural networks with built-in firewalls and filters. We network with one another. Outboard memory in the form of PDAs and personal data stores supplement human wetware. The biggest factor in individual success is the quality our social networks.

In any thriving network, tentacles reach out to snare new members like ivy climbing a wall, because the more active members, the greater the value of the network. Growth begets growth until a tipping point is reached. Then expansion becomes explosive. The rewards of membership become so high that everyone must join. In 1924, your business could live without a telephone; in 2004, it can not.

We are about to witness a spectacular convergence of networks of people and businesses. Workers and their work are becoming synchronous and inseparable. Colleagues and customers collaborate seamlessly. Transparent software eliminates the business/IT divide. Organizations focus on what they do best, outsourcing everything else to the greater commercial ecosystem, sort of an eBay for business activities. Network efficiencies eradicate the largest drag on corporate performance: slack. The pace of business trends toward instantaneity.

The way people improve their performance in this Business Singularity is called Workflow Learning. It is what corporate learning can become three to five years hence. It takes place in a virtual workplace where workers interact, learn, and control the process of creating value in real time.

The Business Singularity
Changes in Business	Changes in Software	Changes in Learning
§ Network model § Total integration § Real time § Sense & respond § Flexible, adaptive § Modular § Continuous improvement § Process management § Unbounded § Bottom-out	§ Network model § Transparent § Fully integrated § User-driven § Ubiquitous § Autonomic § Interoperable § Services § Grid § Loosely coupled	§ Network model § Demand driven § Performance-centered design § Individualized § Level 4/business process § Collaborative § Capability § Small chunks § Rich client

Networks are defined by the quality of their connections. The measure of network success is its rate of error-free throughput. The successful business has high bandwidth and connections so good that value flows without friction. The successful software environment is one that connects so well with business, workers and other computers that no one notices it's there. The successful worker is one so synchronized with the challenges of work that he enters a psychological state of flow while optimizing the flow of work under changing conditions.

Happily for us, when connections are working properly, we don’t need to see them. Take, for example, the Internet cloud. As far as the user is concerned, she has a direct connection to the site on her screen. In reality, the image she sees is probably the result of information being bounced through a variety of pipes both near and far.

Workflow Learning is an aspect of a work cloud. As far as the worker is concerned, he is looking at the flow of work, making mid-course corrections, taking care of exceptions, communicating with colleagues, and learning how to improve performance. He doesn’t take courses so much as drink from a stream of learning experiences flowing by.

Does this newcomer crowd out other forms of learning? No. Workflow Learning is not a cure-all. It will supplement current forms of learning such as pencils. cheat sheets, and F2F workshops rather than replace them.

“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus (536–470 BCE)

Look at things over a long enough period of time, and you’ll see that nothing is permanent. What appeared fixed is actually fluid. When your time horizon is measured in eons, mountains, climate, and the position of the North Star all change. Everything flows.

The pace of time is accelerating. What once took months can often be accomplished in less than a day. Federal Express delivers a letter to the other side of the world in less time than it took the Pony Express to cross a state. Before the Industrial Revolution, few people needed a watch. In World War II, pilots synchronized their watches to the second. The computer on which I’m writing is running 3,000 times faster than my IBM-PC in the early 80s.

As time goes by more quickly, it becomes easier to see the flow of everyday things. MIT Professor Tom Malone notes the evolution from rigid kingdoms to flexible democracies as first language and later printing slashed the cost of communication. He charts a similar developmental path from stores to chains to networked business ecosystems.

The same progression appears in computing, where isolated, hardwired mainframes gave way to top-down client/server which is yielding to adaptive web services network architectures. Corporate learning will soon follow. Individualized bursts of learning will replace fixed classes. Learning will more resemble the performance support systems of Gloria Gery than the classroom exercises of the old-time schoolmarm.

	State Changes
	Isolated ®	Fixed ®	Fluid
Structure	Small Group	Hierarchy	Decentralized
Human Society	Bands	Kingdoms	Democracy
Business	Proprietorships	Corporations	Markets
Computing	Mainframes	Client/server	Web/Network
Boundaries	City, cottage, cave	Corporation	Ecosystem (none)
Learning	Apprentice	Schooling	Embedded

Ironically, in today’s terms embedded learning is neither workflow nor learning in their strictest sense. Some circles have usurped the term workflow to mean the flow of documents; what I’m talking about is the flow of products or services through a firm’s value chain. Most definitions of learning predate the PDAs, laptops, and net access that supplement what’s in our heads with knowledge and know-how from outside. Knowing where to find something is as valuable as knowing it. I have little vested interest in what we call this new learning phenomenon so long as we recognize that it is not business as usual.

Many training professionals won’t “get” workflow learning arena, even though it’s what they’ve long asked for – to be taken seriously as contributors to the bottom line. Learning will become a true business process. Level 4 will be the only level worth looking at. The training department may disappear into the cloud as just another component of performance improvement.

The future of corporate learning is all business.

Jay Cross, founder of Internet Time Group, coined the terms "eLearning" and "Workflow Learning." Find him at www.internettime.com.