Back in 2005, I gave a presentation called Any Given Tuesday which describes two entirely different scenarios for the same day. In the first scenario, I wake up at 6:45 am, spend 10 minutes trying to find my watch, leave the house at 7:15 am, drive like a madman to the station, spend 30 minutes waiting for a train due to cancellation, get to London bridge at 9:15 am, get soaked because it is raining, rush to work missing my coffee, arrive at work 9:35 am, discover my CFO has been trying to call but I've left my phone at home, realize I have football today but no boots as I threw them away last week, my partner calls to remind me it's Mother’s Day and my sister's birthday tomorrow – both of which I've done nothing about.

Explosions of industrial creativity rarely follow the invention or discovery of a technology, but instead its commoditization – that is, it wasn't the discovery of electricity, but Edison's introduction of utility services for electricity that produced the creative boom that led to recorded music, modern movies, consumer electronics and even Silicon Valley. However, utility provision of electricity did more than just create a new world – it disrupted existing industries (both directly and through reduced barriers of entry). It also allowed for new practices and methods of working to emerge, and even resulted in new economic forms – such as Henry Ford's Fordism.

A common characteristic of Next generation organizations (as opposed to traditional), is their focus on provision of utility IT services through an online API and development of an ecosystem to consume those APIs.

The consumption of these API services may represent general use (solving an existing problem, such as providing infrastructure for a corporate web site), or even the genesis of novel and more creative activities.  Examples of the latter include early provision of big data Hadoop systems on AWS.  Since the genesis of any activity is uncertain (being chaotic) and likely to fail, then the use of utility services helps reduce the cost of failure for those pursuing more creative ventures.  The larger the ecosystem, the more likely that creative models of consumption and the genesis of new activity will be occurring.

One of the main themes I've been tackling at the LEF has been evolution, in particular how and why business activities evolve. Whilst there exists a common process of evolution, it is not exclusive to activities, but also impacts practices, strategies and even organizations. I discussed these concepts at a recent Strata Conference in NYC - watch the video here.