Strategy
Strategy
Capture and use data more efficiently with a pen-based portable PC? Sounds great— on (digital) paper.
The tablet computer has been a gleam in the eye of technology champions for decades. The promise of a seamless marriage of flat-panel hardware and flexible software has long been at the forefront of many visionaries image of the ultimate information-consumption machine. Let people mimic the way they capture and read information from a paper pad, the thinking went, and productivity will shoot skyward.
The greatest strategic value for the organization would come, it was hoped, from capturing data that might otherwise be difficult to use, if not lost entirely. If you can get more data in digital format, you have a chance at beginning to whittle down the 80 percent or so of unstructured data held by just about every corporation, much of which may not be on a computer at all. Think of all the paper notepads youve filled in your professional life, and how often you went back and sifted through those notes for a usable thought. Then multiply that by all the conventional notetakers in the organization, and think about the monumental task of trying to search colleagues notes as well. Thats a lot of unusable data—especially when one idea-needle in that yellowing paper haystack might be just the thought your company needs to solve a thorny problem.
For the whole story, check out the CIO Insight article