This is a post in honor of Charlene Li, who is a researcher at analyst firm Forrester and is leaving the company this month.

Forrester has bent over backwards to be accommodating and flexible, but in the end, I have decided that I need to have greater control over how I allocate my time between work and family. As any working parent knows, there’s no such thing as balance – only a series of compromises (…)

The title of this post is the subtitle of the book “Groundswell“, Charlene has been writing with Josh Bernoff. From the short introduction at fastcompany.com:

[S]ocial media — blogs, wikis, Facebook — has impacted the way customer’s interact with your brands. These elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat. You can see it as an opportunity. (The Future of Groundswell)

CONTEXT: SOCIAL TECH FITS TO THE HUMAN (SOCIAL) BEING

The interesting fact is, that our world always has been transformed by “social technologies” in a broad sense. And in a very broad sense you can conceive even the human language or the “organisational pattern” family as a social technology. Human history is a history of socializing technology and – the other way round – technification of the social.

RELEVANCE: THE NEW TOOLBOX FOR BUSINESS SHOULD CONTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF SOCIAL DYNAMICS

In the future there is no way of doing business based on the old school of an isolated “homo oeconomicus”. Most economists have long left behind the chimera of a hyper-rational isolated emotionless egocentric agent. Discover the realm of communities and micro communities! Dare to think allocentric!

(2008-07-03: this post has been edited due to adding an image – ok, I am a beginner)