Table of Contents

Foreword by Geoffrey Moore.

Foreword by Thornton May.

Acknowledgments.

Chapter 1: The Prime Theorem
Information Systems Mirror the People that Build Them.

Chapter 2: Interfaces
How They Work and What Happens When They Are Broken.

Chapter 3: Relationship Management
We Can No Longer Manage the Systems as Single Nodes.

Chapter 4: Virtualization
A Natural Stage in the Maturity Cycle of Technologies

Chapter 5: Orchestration
Finding a Sensible Order amid too Many Complications to Count.

Chapter 6: Complexity
Databases, Passwords, Collaboration, Funding, Smashed Atoms, and a Professor.

Chapter 7: Distributed Resources
Two Types of Diffusion—Compute Resources and Human Capital.

Chapter 8: Flash Teams
Analysis of New Organizational Groups from Several Perspectives.

Chapter 9: Network as Narrative Form
Basic Building Blocks Connected to Create Various Structures.

Chapter 10: Identity
Finding the Needle in the Haystack and Giving It a Name.

Chapter 11: Organizational Architecture
How We Organize Ourselves Is as Important as What We Say and Do.

Chapter 12: (Theory of) Resonant Usability
Everything Is Moving to the Presentation Layer, Where Humans Interact.

Chapter 13: Turbulence
Creating Stability in the Face of Chaotic Disruption.

Chapter 14: Libraries
Two Lives, Two Windows, and the Search for Information.

Chapter 15: Abstraction
Lift Yourself above the Conflicting Details and Look for Similarity.

Chapter 16: Insubordination as an Asset
Why You Must Allow Employees to Disagree with Your Decisions.

Chapter 17: The Consortium
The Multisourced IT Organization and a Software Commons—Our Future.

Chapter 18: The Everysphere
An Example of Synchronous Events between “Unrelated” Objects.

Chapter 19: Q Narratives
Understand the Story and You Will Understand the Business Process.

Chapter 20: Leaving Flatland
To Adjust Somehow after Learning That Your World Has Another Dimension.

Chapter 21: We Are the Platform
Some Final Observations about the System and the Mirror.

Index.

About the Author

STUART ROBBINS, a senior management consultant and lecturer, is the founder and Executive Director of The CIO Collective, a not-for-profit association of technology executives providing strategic guidance to emerging institutions and initiatives, including Yahoo!, Macromedia, The World Bank, the Federal CIO Council, and numerous venture capital firms on the west coast. Stuart has served on advisory boards for Encentuate, Netscaler/Citrix, DataArt, Morgan Stanley, and Ziff Davis Media, and held senior IT management positions at Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, Inc., EMC Documentum, and Jamcracker where he served as the company's first CIO. He is a contributing author to CIO Wisdom: Best Practices from Silicon Valley's Leading IT Experts and serves on the editorial board for ISM Journal, a quarterly IT magazine in which he also writes a column entitled "Sustainable Knowledge." He holds a master's degree in fine arts from Warren Wilson College and lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, his son Max, three cats, and a golden retriever.