I was at a customer meeting a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me of an interaction I had with a friend of mine some time back. This friend is Andrew Mahon, the head of product marketing at Groove and he shared with me a story of an interaction he had with an industry analyst whereby the analyst was tubing on intellectual property and the need for IT managers to have a tight grasp on all data. It turned into a heated discussion with the analyst finding fault with computers in general. The gist: computers shouldn't be put in the hands of irresponsible business people.

Andrew and I worked together at Lotus in the Knowledge Management (KM) days. I'll let Andrew offer up his own conclusions, but I suspect that he would agree with me that highly structured (read: centrally controlled) technology frameworks add little or no value when a company is trying to drive things like knowledge management, innovation, and time to market. These areas of thought are diametrically opposed to structure and control because they demand easy "people connectivity". People connectivity mandates support for the asymmetry of human interaction. And when I speak of interaction, it isn't the type whereby I logon to a portal, consume data, and conquer. It's technology that allows me to share my ideas and insights as easily as it is to do so around the "water cooler."

A line of business (LOB) within an international biotech had become smitten with the product my company makes and the highly non-deterministic interactions it supports. If you have followed the biotech industry, you know that Wall Street expectations are driving these folks to push new product development to new heights in order to keep up with revenue growth that keep investors placated. This translates to two or more new products each and every year. This LOB needed their central IT folks to weigh in and that is where this story begins.

We were meeting with the IT folks and things were going really well until we got to the use case and the types of things the highly strategic LOB in this biotech wanted to do. "You mean that one of my supply chain people could share our schedule data with a supplier?" he asked. "Sure, but they could do that with email, or the phone too. Heck, they could do a screen shot of their SAP GUI and fax the thing too couldn't they?" I offered.

"Are you telling me they could also have persisted discussion around it? Work together on 3D molecular modeling tools in your product?" the lead IT guy continued. "Uh, yes. That is the technology and human design goal. To make people effectively collaborative, by offering secure ad-hoc group creation, contextualization, and different-time/different-place capabilities," I replied.

The IT guy concluded that, "You guys are making it way too easy to share with others." And then he dropped the bomb: "Listen, our business users are stupid, we have to help protect them from themselves." Yea, and if you allow them to share and work securely with others this company JUST might keep up with the demands of the street, because human interaction is the rocket fuel that propels innovation.

Many years ago, IBM's Lou Gerstner briefed a group of us on the things he worries about most. At the top of the list was the "10 guys in a garage in Cleveland." With the advent of the internet, they had equal access to the world markets, and they could innovate faster than he could. Why? Because there were no barriers between these people and their ideas or their value chains. Sharing things isn't the problem and yes, intellectual property needs to be secured, but most enterprise-class technology frameworks have ways to facilitate this. At least those that want to stay in business.

Thank God most of the IT folks I meet are incredibly smart, visionary, and understand the value derived when collaborative technology is fused with business practices and processes. Asymmetry of interaction and technology frameworks that support the adaptivity of business practice, both upstream and downstream will drive enterprises to new heights of product innovation. Beware line-of-business executives: the glass house mentality is back in many IT shops and it is stifling your ability to innovate.