Management
Issue No. 9 - February/March 2003
Just-in-Time World
by Sally McLean
In the book Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, published in 1982, John Naisbitt, who calls himself a futurist, spoke of the collapse of the Information Float — the time from when an incident occurs to the time when everyone knows about it.
Naisbitt put forward 10 major predictions, many of which came to pass within 10 years. One of the most notable was the collapse of the Soviet oligopoly (Number 8) of which he said: ‘We are moving from hierarchies to networking; the computer is smashing the pyramid.’
He argued that this collapse would occur because the power structure could no longer control the flow of information. Before the technology revolution, information had been controlled by bureaucrats in a structure that kept the populace ignorant. The Information Float was a matter of days at the centre of power, but often years in the provinces. Twenty years on, we are experiencing the death of distance and the folding of time itself.
Naisbitt’s premise was that, through computing, the immediate and uncontrolled availability of information to a network of peers would precipitate the collapse of the Soviet empire. Events in late 1980s confirmed his predictions with stunning accuracy.
In later years the term 'Just in Time' — which describes the practice of having goods and information available on demand — exemplifies the further collapse of the information float, just as Naisbitt predicted.
A common example of this collapse can be seen in the local banking industry. Before IT, a delay of three to five working days was common from when a cheque was deposited at a branch to when the drawer’s account was debited in another branch or bank. Bags of cheques were physically transported between branches. Today’s technology has fuelled a ‘time war’ as the major banks compete to achieve overnight or immediate transaction settlements.
The business world is...
