Organizational Shifting

As an engineer, I'm familiar with the fascination the IT world has with emerging decentralizing technologies like SOA and cloud computing.

And, I know how foreign the world of organizational theory, structures, and behavior is to most IT folks...but IT leaders are going to have to become literate in this area if they're going to be effective in matching the new IT to business needs.

The basic reason is that all network technologies trigger massive non-technological shifts. This was true for railroads, telecommunications, and electricity.

John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison recently began a blog entitled "The Big Shift" to discuss how IT is triggering a fundamental shift in organizations from push-oriented to pull-oriented. They've written about the topic before (e.g., "From Push to Pull" in 2005), but the blog entries are perhaps more accessible.

Is push-pull a more catalyzing contrast than exploit-explore? than complex-complicated?

That's probably the wrong question...more relevant for systems engineers and architects is do you understand how these concepts highlight key aspects of this shift?