Some people in the world are happy to be led everywhere, given instructions and told to follow them. They don’t mind using software which gives them a list of instructions to follow as well, with the user having little understanding of why they need to do something or what the software is going to do with the information.
There are also many people in the world who don’t think that way – who like to explore things in their own time and their own direction, who want to ask for information rather than have it forced onto them, and like to use the full power of their brains to understand a scenario based on the information available.
You’re probably familiar with the basics of this discussion – school has been designed to get people to follow the rules because that’s what the industrial revolution needed 200 years ago, and it still suits many companies today having employees who do what they are told, and Google developed a much more freewheeling working environment and look where it got them.
But still – we think – enterprise software has some catching up to do. Most enterprise software still takes users through a list of steps, or gives them tasks for follow, as part of their ”workflow”.
This was fine 10 years ago when people wanted software to automate these tasks, and make sure the company’s processes for sending out purchase orders and so on were followed.
But now we’re at a bit of a cross roads with software. Software can do much more powerful stuff with business intelligence and analytics – and it creates the potential to make software tools much more geared to the way free thinking people like to work.
How can software work better for free thinkers?
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