There has been much written about how the Internet might redefine organizations in the future, including our definition of "work." This "revolution" is radically changing where, when, and how we work.

In May of 2000, I participated in an AEC conference in San Francisco, during which I had the opportunity to visit with a variety of industry practitioners and dot.com executives. One could unmistakably sense the fear throughout the speakers and attendees alike. On the one hand, practitioners worried over their lack of understanding of various Internet-enabled technologies, which would supposedly redefine their businesses, if not eliminate them entirely. On the other, dot.com executives knew that, without achieving sufficient market penetration and scale within short investment horizons – as defined by venture capitalists' expectations – they would be simply a footnote in history.

However, everything changed on April 14, 2001 as tech stocks disintegrated. And while many of the AEC practitioners are still alive, most of the dot.coms serving the AEC industry have failed, burning through, by some estimates, over $1.3 billion in capital. In most cases, their value propositions were insufficient to drive economic efficiency throughout a highly fragmented, low margin industry which still remains highly wasteful in its delivery process. They relied upon business models which exploited new internet technologies to enable faster communication and better organization of information – a much needed contribution to the industry, but not of significant value. The speed of communication, with better organized information, is not the critical issue. Just because the pipeline gets bigger, permitting more uncoordinated information to flow through it faster, does not mean that the value gained within the process has increased significantly, nor are the individual participants necessarily any better off. In fact, by improving the efficiency of communication between the disciplines, designers and engineers are potentially motivated to provide less complete and coordinated information to contractors, knowing that issues can be resolved later using sophisticated communication technology with subcontractors in the field – precisely the point where resolution is the most expensive. Why would designers absorb the cost of fully developing their drawings in advance, only to revise their documents during construction when more precise information becomes available?

There has been much written about how the Internet might redefine organizations in the future, including our definition of "work." However, it is increasingly apparent that the Internet is only the most prominent facet of an "Information Revolution" in which the costs of computing, data storage, and communication are rapidly approaching zero, due largely to both technological innovations and a tremendous investment in fiber capacity during the boom of the 1990's. This "revolution" is radically changing where, when, and how we work.

One might compare the information revolution to the impact of technologies in a prior age when rail, steam, and, ultimately, electricity redefined manufacturing and reshaped the "organization." As transportation costs declined, manufacturers increasingly located their plants near the best available labor sources. Electricity afforded manufacturers the opportunity to optimize the location of equipment rather than having to centralize around a waterwheel. The same kind of redefinition of where, when, and how we work is occurring today, as talent chooses where it wants to live (regardless of "the place of employment"), when it wants to work (24/7), and how it chooses to do so, (utilizing sophisticated computing, data storage, and communications networks). This phenomenon is driving the growth of "ex-urbia" in America where talent can live, work, and play without wasting time commuting. The rise of the knowledge-based economy has caused significant transformations, but we still struggle with the question: "What will the AEC organization of the future look like?"

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