Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin didn’t have social networking or Enterprise 2.0 technologies at their disposal. But they had a global, visionary way of thinking. Imagine how the power of their ideas would have been shared and spread if they did have such tools. That’s what’s happening these days.

With the multi-disciplinary talents they possessed, visionaries such as da Vinci, Franklin, and others shook the world. Now, the world demands new versatility. Today’s managers and professionals are in a prime position to capture that spirit and carry it forward, thanks to technology innovations, says Vinnie Mirchandani in his new book, The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations.

Today’s organizations are looking for new ways of competing in today’s crazy global economy — digitally, virtually, and analytically. Vinnie’s book points out how technology innovations are expanding beyond the bounds of managing operating and storage systems. (Polymath is a Greek word for one who excels in many disciplines.) Technology — thanks to the network effect — is driving many of the important changes now reshaping business and society.

For example, Vinnie takes a look at GE’s approach to corporate IT — not as a cost center, but as a profit center — which makes the business even more innovative. The company “is innovating based on savvy understanding of global technology economics and the astute leveraging of licensing and intellectual property rights.” For example, GE maintains a “professional networking platform” called SupportCentral that “has more than 50,000 communities with over 10,000 experts across almost 20,000 business process flows.” With 25 million hits a day in 20 languages from GE employees around the globe, SupportCentral, as Vinnie describes it, is “the biggest business-focused social network you have never heard of.”

The IT culture GE supports helps it to maintain its lead as one of the most innovative companies in the world. As Vinnie describes it, “in a world focused on light innovation around social networks and mobile devices, GE is making industrial innovation fashionable again…. Its internal IT innovates on its own and coaches its business unit on intellectual property and technology contracting issues as the businesses increasingly embed technology into their products.”

Vinnie also discusses the growing role of analytics in helping guide corporate decisions, but cautions that it takes knowledgeable humans to make the most of the capabilities the technology unleashes. “A wide range of analytical tools and technologies is available to enterprises today. Particularly encouraging is the progress around unstructured analytics, predictive analytics, and data visualization. Of course, recent misses in economic forecasting have reemphasized the need for ‘human intelligence.’ For that reason, it is nice to see a new generation of analytical ‘artists’ like Paul Kredrosky [author of the 'Infectious Greed' blog] emerge and the move to a decision-, not data-centric, analytical framework.”

Taking a cue from the Renaissance nature of the today’s technology, Vinnie distills much of his thinking into a RENAISSANCE Framework, which encompasses the following:

• Residence: “Homes better technologically equipped than the office.” As Vinnie describes it: “Enterprises are gradually waking up to the fact there is no law precluding them from using products aimed at consumers themselves, sometimes at startling savings.”
• Exotics: “Innovation from left field.”
• Networks: “Bluetooth to broadband.”  Vinnie describes the revolution reshaping communications on all levels — limitless telco opportunities; mobile apps, entire countries joining the computer network, function-rich devices, and citizen journalism.
• “Arsonists” and other disruptors. Vinnie observes that “most rebels tend to be start-ups, but often larger, established vendors will go after one another, especially when they are trailing in a market or introducing a new product.” Vinnie quotes Seth Ravin: industries need to go through conversions, to go against what some would call today’s “evil empires.”
• Interfaces: “For all our services.” Beyond the iPad, Vinnie discusses technology-driven transportation, and even technology you can wear.
• Sustainability: “Delivering to both the ‘green’ and ‘gold’ agendas.” Social responsibility is not just a PR strategy; it’s baked into the business model of many organizations.
• Singularity: “The human-machine convergence.”
• Analytics: “Spreadsheets, search, and semantics.” Vinnie cites examples such as Best Buy, which “has 15-plus terabytes of data on over 75 million customers… its sophisticated analytics has allowed it to identify that a sliver—just seven percent of its customers—drive 43 percent of the company’s overall sales volume.”
• Networks: “Communities, crowds, contracts, and collaboration.” Vinnie quotes Paul Greenberg, who talks about the “Social CRM” phenomenon: “The customer is increasingly controlling the conversation…  Classic” CRM was operational…  Social CRM is not operational—it’s collaborative more often than not. It is based on the company and customer’s interplay. It’s no longer how do you manage a customer but how you engage that customer.”
• Clouds: “Technology-as-a-service.”
• Ethics: Essential in “an age of cyberwar and cloning.” Vinnie quotes Batya Friedman: “Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is a way of looking at systems that brings in human values — so informed consent, human dignity, physical and psychological well – being among others; designers can use VSD alongside their favorite design practices, doing their best technical and usability work.”

Image: Diagram of a random network containing components that all have approximately the same number of connectivity. Image courtesy of Panos Oikonomou and Philippe Cluzel, University of Chicago.