cognitive work

In a recent blog post I began to explore some ideas concerning the nature and economics of cognitive work in the modern corporation. I made a distinction between Business to Consumer (B2C) work and Business to Business (B2B) work. In B2B work, leaders have to create a way for their organizations to coordinate and collaborate to create solutions for their customers. Think about how complicated it is to get a large commercial insurance policy underwritten, or a new airplane built to specification, or a new company’s IPO launched successfully. 

I have been long fascinated by the economics of cognitive work and I plan to explore this topic across a number of blog entries. I use the term cognitive work, not knowledge work, because knowledge work is a slippery slope. As soon as you know something, it stops being knowledge and soon becomes a fact. For example, when a person is scored for a credit card, that process of credit scoring used to be knowledge work, but because we have an algorithm for it, we don’t think of it as being “knowledgeable” anymore.