Blogs increase the surface area of organizations

Blogs increase the surface area of organizations

I’m often criticized for using biological metaphors for organizations, but I think they’re very effective sometimes.

Seb’s Open Research

Blogs increase the surface area of organizations

Jon Udell has got a keen eye for biological metaphors for information systems, and here comes up with a nice one for how weblogs change the shape of organizations:

Think of an organization as a single-celled animal. Blogs increase the surface area of the cell, help nutrients flow across its membrane, and promote multicellular cooperation.

I’m on the road with low bandwidth and was spending too much time commenting on my blog to think of something original to blog today. Instead I have quoted one interesting person quoting another interesting person. Sorry if you already saw this today, but it was the most interesting thing I could find through my quick zip through my RSS feeds today.

[via Joi Ito’s Web]

And I’ll just daisy-chain this post on through – like Joi, I’ve been consumed with non-publishable stuff (in this case, working on the conversion from Radio to Movable Type). This is a great metaphor for how blogs can improve knowledge sharing in an organization.