Camrass, R. and Farncombe, M., Atomic: Reforming the Business Landscape into the New Structures of Tomorrow, Capstone Publishing Limited, UK, 2004

Atomic attempts to identify the future business construct based upon trends identified today. Camrass and Farncombe take the analogy of an "atom" that can become part of larger molecules to form value adding business structures. These are more agile and focused organisations than the monolithic businesses today. To their credit, they try to identify those "atoms" rather than just generalise:

• Smart Companies. Smart Companies "serve a broad industrial base, and are knowledge-based businesses capitalizing on skills in innovation" [p. 63].
• Webspinners. Webspinners source the suppliers from which the customer wishes to buy. "They own the relationships between suppliers and customers by improving the matching process across the value chain" [p. 64].
• Customer Managers. "The customer portal must capture, confirm, refine and constantly use the customer's views and experiences .... in suggesting offers" [p. 66].
• Asset Platforms. Asset Platforms are the atoms that actually "make" the goods that are offered by the above atoms.
• Service Platforms. "Service platforms will take responsibility for organizing common ‘processes' or all other atoms" [p. 68], such as pay, accounting, administration, etc.
• Portfolio Managers. "The principal competency of these atoms is risk taking. Portfolio owners will manage their atoms as a set of investments that are expected to produce returns, maintaining a mix of types of atoms that produces the right profile of risk and reward".

They move further than articulating their observations though, and even provide the characteristics that will make a winning "atom" in the future.

They are a bit "light on" in terms of statistics to back up their observations, but this doesn't detract from their message, which I must agree from my limited reading and observations, remains a very real trend.

I learnt that my company, HolisTech®, is a "Smart Company", a knowledge based business that relies on innovative ideas, methods and techniques to make our way in this ever competitive world.

I also feel that the "atomic" business world fits into a broader view of the world - that of complexity (also see the Santa Fe Institute), or perhaps more specifically - social complexity. "Atomisation" would seem to be a construct that is likely to do well in this complex world of self organising entities. Much like a flock of birds in flight that continually changes direction and shape (a complex self organising system), the "atoms" of the future business world will be able to change direction and rearrange themselves again and again to meet the changing tastes and demands of the consumers and customers around them.

More importantly, it has validated my approach that puts "knowledge" up at the front of any business strategy. The future for business perhaps rests to a large degree on how well it can manage its existing knowledge asset, how it can efficiently produce more knowledge suited to its changing context and how it can best leverage that knowledge for competitive advantage in the case of a commercial enterprise or for better service delivery in the case of a public enterprise.