Death to zombie IT systems.

• Author: Gelyk, Irene
• Position: The Learning Layer:. Building the Next Level of Intellect in Your Organization - Book review

The Learning Layer:. Building the Next Level of Intellect in Your Organization

Authors: Steven D. Flinn

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2010

Length: 204 pages

Price: $38.96

ISBN-13:978-0-23010-301-6

Source: www.palgrave.com

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The Learning Layer: Building the Next Level of Intellect in Your Organization by Steven D. Flinn explores, in very compelling language, how to transform an organization's "zombie" IT system into an adaptive and dynamic expertise network. The author describes a means by which businesses can harness the entrepreneurial creativity of individuals and systematize it. Most impressively, the book provides a framework for how to address challenges by integrating learning into the very "fabric of business" in effective and measurable ways.

The first two sections of the book introduce and expand upon the idea of the learning layer--"a merging of people and systems that automatically learns [and] evolves ..."--through analogies with how the human brain functions and learns, and it shows how Flinn's theory can be applied to IT systems. The third part of the book addresses issues within an organization and introduces the idea of a business fabric framework to incorporate strategy, capabilities, and culture. The final section outlines how to weave the learning layer into the fabric of the organization.

The author labels current corporate IT systems as zombie systems. In his own words, "Imagine for a moment that you existed in a society in which absolutely no one responded to you unless you directly commanded someone to do something or asked someone a very specific question. And their responses to you are invariably direct- doing or saying nothing more or less than required, not being able to infer or identify with any of your intentions, desires, preferences, or feelings. You would feel like you are in a bad zombie movie! But this 'Night of the Living Dead' is exactly what we have come to accept with regard to our systems."

Flinn's method to slay these zombie systems is to add the learning layer on top of the organization's existing networks so they can become socially aware through the use and development of "fuzzy networks and fuzzy relationships where nothing is forced into an unnatural hierarchy."

According to Flinn, 'The key is to create an automatically evolving system, like our brains, by applying the preference inferencing capabilities of the socially aware system to generate not just...