Chris Hart

In an essay from newly published The Collaborative Organization, Chris Hart of Random House talks about how companies can translate social technologies into value for their organizations. On Monday, we published an excerpt from Jacob Morgan's book, The Collaborative Organization, on the organizational challenges of social--or "emergent"-- collaboration. At the end of each chapter, Morgan includes an essay from one of the social business practitioners he spoke with while researching the book. This essay is by Chris Hart, VP of IT at Random House Publishing. The value of Enterprise 2.0 tools seems clear from a technical or business analyst

Much of the change we are living through in publishing is plain as day to see. The shift from print to digital, like the shift from stores to online purchasing, is evident to all of us, inside the industry and out.

But there’s another aspect of the change that is not nearly as visible and that’s around systems and workflows. Publishing, even in the pre-digital age, was a systems-driven business.