Cycle Time
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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, WHAT REMAINS THE SAME? Updating the old French proverb about change gives us the opportunity to examine an important facet of digital assets: how do digital assets affect the productivity of individuals that reuse and reexpress preexisting digital media and other types of digital files? In this column, I intend to develop a comprehensive (and hopefully cogent) view of digital asset management (DAM) as a core organizational resource, or as economists will one day call it, an economic utility of the postinformation age. With the editorial contributions of thought leaders and visionaries in this and future issues of the Journal of Digital Asset Management, we will continue to advance the idea that digital assets have real and lasting economic value. In the future, companies will not only quantify the value of their digital assets, most of these companies will place the value of digital assets on their balance sheets; digital assets will become a tangible asset of a company, just like equipment and money in the bank. This will, of course, take years of hard work and a lot of persuasion. Nonetheless, we have begun.
WHERE TO START?
Michael Moon GISTICS Inc., 4171 Piedmont Avenue, Suite 210, Oakland CA 94611, USA Tel: +1 510 450 9999 Email: [email protected]
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I propose that we start in the ‘‘middle of it’’ and at a fundamental level: ‘‘as a knowledge worker, what’s it in for me?’’ This will entail examining the nature of knowledge work and the productivity of knowledge workers. More than 30 years ago, Peter Drucker, noted management theorist and guru, coined the term ‘‘knowledge worker’’ to describe a new labor class. According to Drucker, a knowledge worker does not produce a physical good, nor
JOURNAL OF DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT Vol. 1, 1 6–7
does he or she render a service as traditionally defined in economic theory (repairing a shoe). A knowledge worker produces information that other knowledge workers use in the performance of their jobs. In 1999, Drucker offered a theoretical model for measuring the productivity of knowledge workers. Figure 1 visually models and extends Drucker’s theory, depicting the two underlying, virtual questions that frame the performance of a knowledge worker’s job. Every knowledge worker, including you and me, asks: . .
Who owes me what types of interactions, information, and/or experiences, fulfilled how? I owe to whom, what types of interactions, information, and/or experiences, fulfilled how?
Drucker asserts that we can measure the productivity of knowledge workers by tracking how quickly we complete two processes.1 First, productivity represents how quickly a knowledge worker can frame a request for information (interactions or experiences) and get an acceptable response. Getting acceptable responses highlights the role of search, metadata, and relevancy rankings within global DAM systems such as Google or Yahoo! as well as within our own DAM systems. Slow or inefficient search engines and the lack of consistent metadata remain the dirty little secret of the inter
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