Editorial

Citation

Stankosky, M. (2006), "Editorial", VINE, Vol. 36 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/vine.2006.28736daa.001

Editorial

Another academic year has started. It reminds me that perhaps this new beginning, what we call a convocation in academia, could be a call to management practitioners of the world to come together, and put some serious thought as to how we can better function in this new global economy. I continue to read in the daily papers of the issues with running large companies; the inability of organisations to connect the right dots in sharing and leveraging their data, information, and knowledge; the security and privacy issues that just will not go away; and technologies that create more problems than solutions. It is clearly a complex world, and one that begs for simplicity as the new competitive advantage.

Our contributors for this edition provide us with some insights into that quest. Arthur Murray and Kent Greenes continue with their exceptional insights on new leadership strategies for the enterprise of the future. New leadership approaches are vital if the new global economy is to thrive. Alex Bennet teams up with her husband, David, to discuss how the human brain can help us to better learn, think, and act in a global setting. Cynthia Gayton treats the major privacy issue, and how its protection enhances the welfare of the global economy. The other portfolio editors have taken a break, and will be back in the next edition.

For our executive interview, we have David Cheseborough, President of the Association for Enterprise Integration. David’s mission is one of connecting the dots that we mentioned above.

Our major articles include: Milton Correia de Sousa on sustainable innovation – a must if our global economy is to grow organically and prosper. Fefie Dotsika and Keith Patrick give us a treatment on the next generation web, and its impact on our world. I was present at the birth of the semantic web, and was impressed with the continued vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. How few people know of his singular achievement. Next we have an article by Philippe Van Berten and Jean-Louis Ermine, describing a set of well-tried knowledge management tools, allowing practitioners to share and leverage knowledge across boundaries – again, helping to connect the dots. Finally, we have our colleagues from Greece: Panagiotis-Petros Georgolios, Konstantinos Kafentzis, and Kostas Metaxiotis, who propose an approach for describing and discovering knowledge resources in distributed environments.

I truly hope these articles and interview will serve as a sort of convocation for your minds to both think of these issues and lead to new paths for discovery. Please let us know what is on your mind.

Michael Stankosky