Business In The 21St Century Essay Research

Business In The 21St Century Essay, Research Paper

1. Introduction

So where do you want to go tomorrow. This is the question business people are asking each other these days. Well, they are right, because not a whole lot of time left before the end of the millennium and the anxiety surrounding this big event is affecting everyone including the business people of today.

While I was doing my research on this topic, on the question of where we want to be tomorrow in the new millennium, I have come across with many books, many websites, many articles dedicated to this question. With the way technology has changed our lives drastically in the last fifty years, we are anxious and may be even a little worried about what is going to happen in the future to our businesses as well as our lives. It was not long ago that books on the future of business warned of worldwide recessions. Now the news is the wealth of opportunity to be found as emerging nations embrace capitalism and as technology brings the world closer.

Bill Gates, in his new book: Business @ Speed of Thought, which I will often be referring to throughout this paper, suggests that, Business is going to change more in the next ten years than it has in the last fifty. (Bill Gates, p.13) This is quite a strong but nevertheless a true statement, thus he probably named his new book; Business at the Speed of Thought. However, because it is the future we are trying to analyze, we have no data and all the talk and argument is hypothetical. But for the time being, we have to accept the fact that technology is improving in every aspect and in every field on a daily basis at an incredible speed; at the speed of thought.

Since the topic of my paper is about business in the 21st century and how to create the ideal organization of the 21st century, I will explain what I mean by that. Imagine the organization of the future: picture the Firm, a large American enterprise in the year 2050 Sounds like a scene from a futuristic movie, doesn t it. Well, it is 1999 and it is only 51 years ahead of us, the year 2050. Every morning entire families go to the Firm – the children to the school; the parents, to work, and at lunch they all get together at one of the many cafeterias of the Firm. Probably the CEO of the Firm is a woman and there is no single dominating majority group in the Firm unlike the domination of the white male in today s business world, these are people from all over the world taking a part in the success of the Firm. Too imaginary. We will see about that

This scenario is not a utopian dream; it is actually quite a realistic prediction based upon the situation today. So, in this paper, I will try to examine the different aspects and implications of trends that are shaping the way organizations may evolve in the long-term future. During this evolving, many aspects will have to be taken into consideration such as technological, economic, social, and global. The change will not only occur in North America, but all around the world as it has already gained speed. The societies around the globe will face with new versions of old problems, such as population growth, environmental pollution, social distress and so forth. Also, with the economies around the world already having started to widely accept the capitalist movement, in the very near future, there will not be one single country that is run on a different economic system than Capitalism. And of course, this will cause problems such as the gap between rich and poor getting larger and larger. So, this is just an overall picture of what things may be like in the future, and we have to know this in order to examine how the business structure will change in the 21st Century. However, in this paper I will focus on some organizational and technological specifics of this change in the business arena. While doing this, I will use Bill Gates new book along with other sources as reference points.

2. Why is it important to understand the change in business in the 21st Century.

If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity. (Bill Gates, p.13) suggests Bill Gates. Organizations must change in order to be effective in the future. This time though, compared to the change in the nature of business in the second half of the 20th Century, the change will be very rapid and in greater volumes. How information access will alter the lifestyles of consumers and their expectations of business are going to be the issues of 21st Century living. The quality improvements and business process improvements will occur far faster. Velocity along with viscosity as we have discussed in chapter 5 of the book Working Knowledge is a very important pair that will play a large role in tomorrow s company. Naturally, when the increase in velocity of business is great enough, the very nature of business changes. (Bill Gates, p.13) However, in order to compete in the business arena, the richness (viscosity) of the information that is being transferred also has to be high in the 21st Century Company, because what enhances velocity may thin the viscosity.

It is a true fact that, the Internet is the fastest growing, explosive market in the world. Bill Gates has stated, “There will be two types of businesses by the year 2000

those that are on the Internet, and those that are out of b