Preslav Rachev

One of the requirements in our Organizational  Theory and Behavior course is to deliver a research paper that discusses  management-related topics. Not surprisingly, a minute after the paper was introduced, I was ready with the topic. A firm believer that the bounded box called business mentality should finally be open to a radically new way of thinking, I decided to put down on paper my thoughts, with proof of course, about practices in management that I dare say, will change the way management is functioning in the next few years.

I’ve been fascinated for months by the methodologies, or even simpler, beliefs that companies such as 37Signals,  have utilized. Much has been written in bold red about agile management, lean management, Enterprise 2.0, how management should stop planning and abstracting, and focus on the real work, how employees should be given authonomy so that they can feel free to express their creativity, etc. What is probably missing out there is the vision of a young business and computer science senior student, who is about to get out in the real life in less than half a year, and follow his dreams through those principles.

In a series of posts, I will try to summarize my development as I post notes going through my head, as well as discuss resources i’ve found. I will keep adding my personal understanding of the subject matter, since this is what’s going to matter when I graduate and start my own  business one day. Despite what many  fellows at the university are aiming for, it’s not grades that make me happy, but the feeling of continuous development, regardless of how minute it could be. This is something that grades will never be able to estimate. I hope that this series of posts will give enough proof that the journey is as equally , if not even more, important than the destination.

If you have ever taken a single management or social science class, you are most probably sick of hearing Abraham Maslow’s name. Maslow was an American psychologist who formulated one of the most widely credited management-related theories : “The Hierarchy of Needs”. In a couple of words, the Hiereachy explains that human needs form a stack of layers (a pyramid, or a staircase if you like),starting from the most basic needs ( food, air, water, sex, security, etc), going through the sense of belonging and the need to socialize and share, and ending with the highest-level needs such as fulfillment of the self-potential and mastering the powers of the inner self. At the highest level, the individual is capable of devoting the genius that’s hiding in every one of us to a high and virtuous goal such as spreading peace, figthing AIDS and poverty, etc.The thing is, in order for an individual to get to a higher level of the hierarchy, his/her current needs must be satisfied. In other words, it is hard to think about changing the world if you are hungry and barefoot.

The application of The Hierarchy to discpiplines such as marketing or organizational management is quite simple: study the level of needs of the individual who you are trying to satisfy/motivate and satisfy those needs first, before going forward.For quite some time, I’ve been thinking about the evolution of the web user, how businesses have responded to his/her needs, and what the potential future might be. As it seems, the relation to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is quite visible. Just follow my logic.

Web 1.0 – The so-called “Dot Com” era. At the time, everything was quite new and confusing. Only a handful of visionary intellectuals could imagine its hidden potential. The masses were inexperinced, so the only way to really grab their attention was to satisfy their needs at the bottom level. What better way to do that than selling them everything from chewing gum to real estate at cheaper prices, without making them go out. Web 1.0 was all about creating one’s virtual company space, and appealing to the material needs of the customer. It was the time when Amazon, Craigslist, and Ebay were founded and rapidly turned into multi-million-dollar businesses.

Web 2.0 – As time went by, the web user, already quite satisfied with the opportunities for cheap and easy deals over the internet, gradually moved one step up the hierarchy. Again, creative brains around the world realized that the user is still a human being, and as every human being, the user is a social animal. Given the right medium, he/she would be rather happy to socialize with people around the world, share personal experiences and knowledge, and participate in online community activities, without explicitly being rewarded for that. The mere existince of the medium would be a reward, huge enough to satisfy their social needs. It is not a surprise that social networking, professional networking, blogging, tweeting, photo sharing, contributing to knowledge-spreading projects such as Wikipedia, or even torrent sharing have become essential activities of everyday life. The user has just outgrown his/her basic needs and has begun to establish his/her position as a part of the web society. Apart from that, businesses such as Facebook, managed to change the exisitng business models and make money without directly making the end user to pay.

Web 3.0 – Now that is still a bit of a blury topic. Applying the same logic, I assume that once having established his/her unique place in the web society, the individual will ultimately seek to reach the point of ultimate peace with the world by helping tackle the global challenges of the day (there are enough of them for everyone to contribute). To achieve this ultimate “enlightenment”, the individual will need to ask questions complex enough that are still hard to answer nowadays.The web right now is an enormous information source, probably providing reasonable solutions to many global challenges. However, analyzing this information, and simplifying it to a simple, unambiguous answer is the major prerequisite for entering the era of Web 3.0 . It is hard for a human being to this alone without the help of machines. However, machines cannot extract meaning out of textual information. This is the main assumption behind the idea of the Semantic web, or gradually transforming the textual nature of the webpage to bits of logically connected data, in order to make information understandable by machines.How the business model is going to change in the era of Web 3.0 is a subject of my personal interest. I will make sure to keep the blog updated on the this topic