Here are my trends of 2006 and predictions for 2007!

1. Consumerization, the adoption of consumer applications (on the web) within the organization, partly due to a new generation of ‘digital natives’ entering the workforce.

2. Finding information within the organization has become critical due to reorganizations and restructuring. Enterprise portals are starting to become mainstream.  

3. Software as a service is becoming interesting enough for business. Translating processes in terms of services when it comes to software, becomes a natural behaviour.

4. Blogging and wiki become natural way to communicate within organizations.  

5. Mash up, i.e. breaking up structures (all kinds, information, techniques, organizations) in little pieces and joining them in new meaningful ways, will remain the most dramatic and creative effect of this information age.

6. The world as a whole and the world of business becomes more and more ‘real time’; steering the company will be more complex but more direct.

7. Knowledge management becomes a focus point of management (instead of something academic). The way to organize it will be in terms of ‘ownership’, bottom up or horizontal, definitely not top-down.

8. Strategy has to be formulated in terms of stories that are credible, understandable and inspiring. Vision will become even more important than it already is.

9. Management of the social environment will start to become an important competence.

10. Work will be done more and more in virtual environments.

11. Virtual worlds and games are becoming ways to communicate in business.

12. Strategic issue will be how to organize ’structured chaos’ in the company.  

Reactions welcome.