Meanwhile, in the Gmail account I use for work, I have 1,249 unread messages. My personal Gmail account has 5,162 unread messages. The Yahoo account I use strictly to play fantasy sports? I have 28,815 unread messages. Oh, the shame. And I know I’m not alone.

We’re living in an age of information overload. But the problem isn’t just that we’re hamstrung by the sheer volume of the information we’re bombarded with. It’s also the quality of the information we’re consuming. The scurrilous and salacious sells, and we’re gorging ourselves on it. Experts have a name for this. It’s called junk information, and like junk food, it can be delicious – and dangerous.

I’m just as guilty as anybody. And we all know how easy it is to fall down the Internet rabbit hole. An article on Kim Kardashian’s latest selfie leads to an op-ed savaging Kanye West’s recent circus of a wedding proposal, which prompts daily “Kanye is self-destructing” updates on TMZ, so you check out a list of the top 20 craziest things ever said by musicians, and since you’re checking out lists, you click over to a list of the top 27 cutest baby animals… and then, four hours have passed and you’re no closer to getting your work done.

Junk information can be a productivity killer. Clay Johnson, author of the book “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption,” is on a crusade to get us on a more positive track. He offers a host of tools that can help you cut back on junk information:

Everything in moderation: Since information is something we decide to consume, Johnson says we must be mindful of what we take in. For every lowest-common-denominator rant we read in the comments section after a news article, we should make an effort to read something of high quality, such as the Sunday editorial section of The New York Times or taking an hour to watch the PBS News Hour. The goal is moderation and tempering vitriol, trivial information and wild conjecture – or low quality information – with thoughtful reasoning and cold, hard facts.

Fitness is your friend: Johnson advises to try something called “information fitness,” which is another way of saying put strict limits on your consumption in order to preserve your ability to focus. Tabbed browsing and endless e-mail windows are often the productive office worker’s worst enemy. Try an app like Mailbox or some of the tab management tools available for Chrome and Firefox.

Take a time-out: Set a timer. For every hour your spend working, you can take ten minutes for an unbridled junk information bacchanal, or just to walk around and get some fresh air. Reset. Repeat. The best part? The experts say that these short breaks actually reduce information overload and boost productivity.

Go vegan: Or as Johnson calls it, an infovegan. An infovegan is “someone who makes a deliberate decision to remove a vast amount of news and information sources from one’s diet, sticking to a well-constrained, allowable set of consumption inputs for their own health’s sake.” While this may be extreme for many, it may be the best – and only – option for some of the most diehard junk information junkies out there who are looking to boost their productivity.

According to a recent CNN report, Millennials are expected to account for half of all business flights by 2020. By that time, the long-held stereotype of the business traveler – sporting a rumpled suit and dragging a wheeled briefcase/carry-on mashup—will be left in the dust.

It’s hard to say what our smartphones and tablets will be capable of in six years, but one thing is certain: today’s new-age business travelers, raised on technology, expect to be connected at all times. They prize the ability to be spontaneous and strive to be known among their peer groups as curators of the best information.

When it comes to managing these “new world of work” travelers, it’s important for company leaders to understand what motivates them. By ensuring the right tools, flexibility and access to information are in place, businesses leaders increase the opportunity for their travelers to achieve higher levels of productivity and success. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

ON-DEMAND

Travel is one aspect of a business that has increasingly benefitted from the proliferation of mobile apps. From managing itineraries to receiving flight notifications, mobile tools allow travelers to access the trip information they need from anywhere, when they want it, and in real time. Mobile technology has also become relied upon for services like Uber and Zipcar, which turns ground transportation into an on-demand service, or websites like Air BnB, which allow travelers to rent homeowner spaces for what often amounts to be a fraction of the price of a hotel. This on-demand mindset has already begun to turn the current methods of travel on its head by mobilizing the informationtravelers require.

WI-FI

Hotels, airports, and other travel entities continue to evolve to the demands of today’s technology-savvy travelers. Perhaps one of the most important, yet frustrating, advancements is the ubiquity of Wi-Fi. While travelers have come to expect internet availability at almost every turn, it’s not always without scrutiny. Many so-called luxury properties either charge too much to access Wi-Fi, or have an annoyingly fickle connection that is maddening to use. This is no longer acceptable for those who rely on mobile internet for work. Businesses should ensure their preferred hotel partners provide a quality and affordable internet connection. If that’s not an option, then equipping travelers with one of the many mobile internet dongles or Wi-Fi hotspot options is just as important.

SOCIALIZING THE EXPERIENCE

Communal experiences, or the desire to socialize trips, including business trips, have also become a popular “necessity” among today’s younger travelers. Whether it’s locating and meeting colleagues for dinner or keeping their teams back home informed on their whereabouts, travel has proven to be a more socialized experience than ever before. Some experts have even predicted an increase in GPS dating apps like Tinder and Grindr. In fact, it’s likely new apps will pop up that take the GPS meet-and-greet out of the romantic realm and into a platonic one that allows travelers to meet up with each other to network or even check out local attractions. The bottom line is that today’s “new world of work” travelers want to be able to connect with others while on the go, so providing them the tools and technology to do so can go a long way in boosting their satisfaction and productivity.

I mean, it even has the word mobility in the title. Mobility, mobile – it makes sense.

And yes, information mobility includes the world of mobile technologies. But it’s so much more than that.

What is information mobility? It’s being able to digitize decades worth of records, so you can find what you were looking for on your tablet.

It’s going to bed each night comfortable knowing that your IT infrastructure has the latest protections from hackers, viruses and trojans.

It’s waking up at 5 a.m. in a hotel room half a world away and being able to access your company’s shared drive.

It’s having the know-how to manage a team that includes a 23-year-old college grad and a 30-year company veteran so that both can succeed and be productive.

It’s being able to transform your paper and digital documents into any format you need, and then back again whether on the go or at the office.

It’s using big data systems to index, archive, organize, and understand your historical data to glean insights that could inform future decisions.

It’s about having the technology you need, understanding the new world of work, and knowing how to cut through the noise to have anywhere, anytime access to your critical business information.

That’s information mobility. And in today’s changing world, it’s what your business needs to succeed.

A LONG TIME COMING

Back some 25 years ago, the concept of mobility was very different. Collaboration, efficiency and productivity were just as important then as now, and to their credit, businesses made use of the day’s technologies as best they could. You could jump on a redeye flight cross-country to meet a client in person. Or you could send a document via fax machine when mail was just too slow. Workstyle innovations that helped to revolutionize the way we work, yes. But these businesses didn’t have anything close to true information mobility.

After all, companies were still storing their records on paper. Printers were slow and costly. Fax machines were even slower. And the phone was the only way to collaborate in real time with a colleague, whether they were a room away or in another country.

Today, we finally have the technology for businesses to enjoy full information mobility. Such as video conferencing that lets you talk to someone face-to-face in real time. Or digital records management that’s revolutionizing the way doctors treat patients, giving them immediate access to a patient’s medical history and helping to save lives. Or multifunction devices that can print tens of thousands of documents in the blink of an eye. And of course, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

We are still in the mobile industry’s infancy, and yet, we have already seen just how they have changed the way we work. Business apps have given us the ability to automate processes that used to take hours, giving workers more time to concentrate on projects that directly affect a business’ bottom line. Tablets have become de rigueur for everything from email to notetaking. And people now have anytime, anywhere access to their work.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

But information mobility is more than just using technology to accomplish business goals. It’s also understanding the impact that these tools are having on workers. Maintaining work-life balance has become a significant challenge. Many are struggling in an increasingly technical world that they feel has passed them by. And a changing workforce is driving trends that have created some rifts between generations, as so-called millennials enter the job market and become the colleagues of older, established workers. The results have been tumultuous, to say the least. One needs only to look at the much-parodied Time magazine cover profiling millennials to see that.

It’s not just generational differences, either. Even among workers in the same age group, differences in workstyle can create significant challenges. From the tech-savvy to the technophile, from the person who prefers to write everything down to the person who takes their iPad wherever they go, these differences abound in the workplace. Knowing how to understand them – and make them coexist together in a way that’s mutually beneficial? That’s a challenge.

Because the mistake that far too many companies make is that they don’t consider the human element of their work. They talk of enterprise mobility and technology driving innovation, but they forget that, in the midst of all the corporate jargon and paying lip service to the trends driving their industry, people are still at the heart of every business. And before you can take advantage of all the shiny new gizmos, you need a workforce that can communicate and work together. A workforce that is content in the challenge and reward their job provides. A workforce that approaches projects with efficiency and speed. A workforce that, well, works.

Because without the people you need, you can’t have information mobility.

IT CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING

Having the technology you need? Good. Understanding that actual human beings drive your business? Wonderful. Now, how do you make information work for you?

Because when you think about it, information is at the heart of everything we do. Every business, no matter how big or small, is driven by information and how we access, use and share it in this new information economy. It’s the basis of every project we attempt, every business venture, every innovation. Information is at the root of it all. But not just data. Information. Useful data. Wading through the hayfield to find that one needle that could change everything for your business.

Effectively managing your information – finding what’s important and being able to quickly act on that information – is what separates successful businesses from failing ones. And having information mobility is always being one step ahead.

THE MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION

So, how does my business get information mobility? The answer is as unique as your business.

Because one size doesn’t necessarily fit all. An enterprise-level company isn’t going to have the same needs as your typical small business. Every business is unique, but all share the same need – to make information work for them.

In general though, your business needs three things:

• Technology that lets you stay connected, and gives you the ability to access, use and share information in the format you need it in – whether that’s paper or digital, video or text.
• An engaged workforce whose needs, workstyles and idiosyncrasies are understood, to better create processes that give them the best chance to be successful.
• Information that is securely and safely managed throughout your entire company.

For what goal? To make things easy. To help your business grow.

To make information work for you.

That’s information mobility.

Do you have it?

One of the last Disneyland attractions to be finished was Tomorrowland, Disney’s vision of the world of tomorrow – in their case, 1986. Some of their predictions – such as the TWA Moonliner – never quite panned out. But others, such as the still-existing Autopia, depicted an accurate vision of the future; in particular, the yet-to-be-built interstate highway system.

The point? It’s hard to predict the future. Especially the future of business. No matter how much we might want to try. But we can make some educated guesses about where things are headed. And in business, you’ll need to make the right educated guesses if you want to grow and survive.

For example, did you know that data storage is doubling every 18 months? Or that there are now 1.5 billion smartphone users – and more than 5 billion mobile users – worldwide? Or that the average U.S. adult now spends nearly 2 ½ hours a day using a mobile device?

We’re already in a world of information mobility. In many ways, the future of business is now. And this will have serious ramifications for your business in the coming years.

Because the successful business of the future will be one that takes full advantage of these trends. Providing remote employees with anytime, anywhere access to critical files. Using mobile to improve communication and collaboration with easy-to-use, high-quality video conferencing. Even customer service will be different, because why should you have employees at one of your locations sitting on their thumbs while another location is slammed with customers? New technologies are enabling workers to provide customer service remotely, while being face-to-face and one-on-one, so your employees are always there when they’re needed.

And with this mobile trend, borders will become even less important than they are now. Your office no longer stops at your walls, so why should country borders be any different? Of the 50-fold increase in smartphone data traffic expected by 2016, China alone is expected to account for 10 percent of that growth, matching the growth rate of the Chinese economy over the past 30 years. Any successful business strategy will need to accommodate a changing world economy, and have the means in place to be successful no matter where you are.

These changes will not be easy. While younger workers are generally comfortable with new technologies, they only make up 35 percent of today’s workforce. And because this rate is expected to grow significantly over the coming years, it will create challenges for your workforce. Any business wishing for success – and information mobility – in the coming years will need to find ways to give all types of workers the very best chance to be successful and productive, no matter how they work.

Because this shift to a more mobile world is coming. And businesses that don’t want to be left behind need their information to be mobile as well, so they have the agility to be successful in the fast-paced business world of tomorrow.

They need information mobility. You need information mobility.

Because the future of business is coming. And while the Moonliner might still be a ways off, the world of information mobility is already here.

Recently, we asked Are We At the End of Email? After all, it can be a woefully unproductive tool for businesses. Not only is it a security nightmare, it’s also filled with spam and impossible to organize. It’s no wonder that email use peaked in 2008 and has been falling steadily ever since. But despite overwhelming fatigue and frustration from all corners, no clear alternative has emerged.

Until now.

A CHALLENGER APPEARS

A growing number of companies are becoming just as fed up with email as you probably are. Security is a major concern, as is the productivity lost by dealing with a crush of unwanted emails. These have long been considered acceptable losses; because after all, what choice do you have?

However, recent workforce trends have turned what was once a minor nuisance into a full-blown liability. The rapid moves toward using distributed workforces and replacing full-time employees with freelancers have made email just as slow and ineffective as those old manila “Interoffice Mail” envelopes, tied with red string and covered with a list of crossed-out recipients.

As a result, social intranets are increasingly becoming the primary communication and workflow management solution of choice for many companies. For the uninitiated, social intranets are internal cloud-based collaboration platforms that marry the rapid communication and information sharing capabilities of social media with enterprise-level workflow management tools.

The social intranet solutions already on the market represent a substantial leap forward in business communication, building on the lessons learned from the social media boom, as well as the shortcomings of email in a rapidly evolving business world. However, there still remain significant adoption challenges, as workers slowly transition away from other forms of interoffice communication.

MEET THE CONTENDERS

While still very much in their technological infancy, enterprise-focused social intranets are gaining popularity among start-ups and established heavyweights alike.

Enterprise software giant Salesforce has had a toe in the social intranet waters for a while with its Chatter platform. Chatter is a robust communication tool, complete with Facebook-like walls, document sharing, meeting creation, lead management, and issue resolution capabilities.

Yammer, another industry leader, provides the much of same functionality, though it eschews lead management and issue resolution in favor of other features, like a repository for institutionalized knowledge. Yammer and has already been adopted by companies like Ford, eBay, and DHL.

Likewise, companies such as T-Mobile and Thomson Reuters have turned to Jive. Jive focuses on fast and easy collaboration, giving users the ability to share rich media content, as well as a LinkedIn-like function for locating colleagues with specific skills.

These three contenders dominate the social intranet space for now, but the field is becoming increasingly crowded. As more and more businesses discover the benefits of social intranets, new providers are eager to elbow their way in to the marketplace. Among these are Collaboration Spaces and Hall, which reported having 10,000 enterprise customers in early 2013.

A LONG ROAD AHEAD

Social intranets may be the heir apparent to email, but they’ve still got a long way to go before they completely replace email in enterprise settings. Certainly, social intranets will present difficulties for a number of workers, especially if they are implemented in such a way that the intranet acts as little more than a digital bulletin board that you’d normally find in a breakroom. Forbes’ Rawn Shah also has some excellent point-by-point analysis of the hurdles that social intranet platforms will have to overcome before they officially become the Next Big Thing.

Chief among these is urgency, or more specifically, a lack thereof. Many companies have yet to see the benefits of migrating away from email. And since email still works as well as it ever has, there doesn’t appear to be a rush to find a better solution.

The shift from email to social intranets is sure be to a gradual one, but it’s picking up steam. As companies continue to discover that mobile-friendly, clutter-free collaboration can impact their bottom line, expect to spend less time in your inbox and more time actually getting things done.

What do you think? If workflow processes were baked into upcoming iterations of email programs, would that breathe new life into email?

Let’s be frank. You clicked here because of that headline, didn’t you?

After all, $7,210 per employee is not a small chunk of change. At a time when many businesses are looking for any way to slash costs and get on the right side of the balance sheet, it’s the sort of difference than can turn a bad year into a great one.  And it’s the sort of difference that comes from information mobility.

(Don’t know what information mobility is? Here’s a quick primer.)

Of course, $7,210 is oddly specific. How do you get to that number? Simple: you ask the top performers in business about the results they’ve seen from pursuing information mobility initiatives. In an IDC study conducted on behalf of Ricoh Americas, the sponsor of WorkIntelligent.ly, researchers found that companies with real information mobility earn, on average, $7,210 in revenue annually per employee and realize $16,027 per employee annually in increased productivity — a 42 percent jump.

So how can you increase revenue and make this work for your organization?

DON’T OVERLOOK SEARCH

Be honest. How much time do you spend looking for things at work?

Every second spent looking for a file or document is money wasted — so it would seem that having the ability to quickly find the information you’re looking for at any time should be a priority for every company. But it’s not always that easy, of course. Between investment costs, institutional barriers and other roadblocks, there are a lot of reasons that search isn’t prioritized in many company budgets.

Meanwhile, the companies that have invested in search boosted employee productivity by 9 percent, revenue went up 18 percent, operational costs fell by $30 million, and it cut the time spent on business processes by more than half. When you give workers the ability to access information quickly and efficiently, the results compound on themselves, as these top performers found out.

The lesson, of course,  is that it might be time to rethink priorities.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY

It’s not just enough to go mobile and improve your access to information, though. You also need to communicate effectively to make the best possible business decisions with the information you have.

Collaboration technologies like local intranets, and portal technologies that act as gateways for workers to access the network, and for customers to easily access information, products and services, have proven to be strong revenue boosters. Between the two, collaboration technology enabled a 10 percent employee productivity boost within organizations, and dramatically drives down operational costs, as customers and workers are better  able to get the answers and information they need.

Information mobility needs to be a commitment from the whole organization — both internally and externally.

GO MOBILE

This one should be a no-brainer. We’ve talked BYOD and mobility solutions already, but it’s worth reiterating — the benefits of mobility are many. The survey found that enabling tablets and smartphones in these companies boosted productivity by 13 percent per employee, and increased revenue by 12 percent. But more than that, enabling smartphones and tablets in an organization also managed to reduce operational costs by a whopping annual average of $1.7 million — three distinct benefits to your bottom line.

For more about how your company can go mobile, check out Greg Walters’ take on how to unleash the power of your workforce. And it never hurts to check out some productivity-boosting mobile apps.

TIE IT ALL TOGETHER

When it comes to adopting an information mobility strategy, it pays to take a holistic approach. Information mobility is something that permeates throughout your entire organization, so that your workers and customers have access to the information they need, whenever they need it. And while it may prove challenging at times, the example of these companies surveyed proves that the benefits of information mobility are well worth the time and effort.

When the American colonists rejected the rule of monarchy, much of the world considered the rebellion doomed to fail. After all, the colonies were young, possessed a small army, and lived under an experimental governing structure. The disobedient rabble—the grassroots—would fall into line once the British military might came to bear. Right?

Well, we all know how it ended, don’t we? And it all started with those considered to be “at the bottom.”

Fast forward 250 years, and while the discussions of today’s new world of work revolve around information mobilityrather than taxation without representation, this idea of grassroots movements driving change is still embedded in our culture. Today, individuals feel comfortable reaching out directly to C-suite executives of major companies, or organizing and managing global conversations and events via social media platforms. In today’s transformative digital world, people have the same access to the same information as everyone else around them – anywhere, anytime. It’s an even playing field of knowledge and accessibility that did not exist at any prior point in our history.

But this access to information, technology and people isn’t just confined to the office. In fact, the technology driving some of the biggest changes in the way we work today are often first adopted outside of the office walls. From VOIP or shared cloud spaces, to tablets or mobile applications focused on productivity – this technology is enabling change from the bottom up faster than at any point in our history; which means your business needs to adapt. Here are a few examples of this principle in action:

SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ENTERPRISE

Ten years ago, social media barely existed. Five years ago, Facebook and Twitter weren’t considered serious extensions to a business and blogging was considered a personal hobby. Today, blogs are not only a corporate standard to provide a point of view, but also a critical sales tool to connect with potential prospects. Facebook (among others) is at the core of many a marketing team’s ecommerce strategy to drive user acquisition and bottom-line dollars. Even how we communicate and receive our news was radically altered with the sudden appearance of Twitter as a real-time communication tool.

It wasn’t always like this. It took years for professionals to realize that these tools had a business function outside of their initial intended uses. The steady drum beat of innovation building up to today’s new world of work made it inevitable that a grassroots movement would figure out how to adapt these technologies to power businesses – and in response, many a new business has been created because of it. It’s turned business models on their head, as “social influencers” become recognized voices of authority even before well-established journalists, forcing the c-suite to take notice and shift marketing budgets.

THE CLOUD

Online gaming is not usually associated with the corporate world (though The Office may tend to disagree). However, services like Steam have been connecting players around the globe since March of 2002, and businesses have been scrambling to duplicate this concept ever since. Although it wasn’t initially called “the cloud”, the Steam platform familiarized millions of gamers with the concept of connecting to a global network of like-minded people, gaming and sharing experiences from the comfort of their living room or basement. Few understood the technical intricacies involved, and fewer cared. But how many times did an employee sit at his or her desk and wonder why their company couldn’t figure out how to connect their employees, like millions of gamers were doing every day?

From these humble gaming roots, the concept of the cloud has morphed into entire industries powering businesses. From shared cloud spaces, data storage solutions, social enterprise networks, software and infrastructure as a service, to unified communication platforms, the cloud has come a long way from simple beginnings.

THE HOME AS AN INCUBATOR

As touched on previously, the new world of work means that many technologies are developed and adopted in homes before becoming an indispensable part of how business is conducted in the office.

The mundane and ubiquitous email systems first exploded in living rooms all over the country well before being embraced by CEO’s. Tablets were a plaything and neat gadget until they had the time to mature and evolve into a worthy tool for the business professional. Video conferencing was used to connect families across oceans before it was used to connect teams across offices. The internet itself was merely used to support “electronically exchanged information” like purchase orders before consumer demand helped craft the internet as we know it today.

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?

The time from niche to trend to business adoption is condensing as the pace of technological change continues to increase. And hierarchal structures must respond faster than ever in order to remain competitive. So what’s really happening in today’s new world of work? It may be nearly impossible to predict, but here are a few indicators of the current revolution that might be driving change at your business:

PERSONAL CHAT NETWORKS

We’ve all seen it – kids texting each other in the backseat of the car. Yes, they may be more than a foot apart, but they’re not talking – they’re texting. And this trend toward a wider embrace of instant messaging is being reflected in businesses, as companies of all sizes incorporate internal chat/collaboration via internally hosted systems or public chat platforms like Skype, AIM, Jive, Yammer and MSN. This type of collaborative communication may also drive the creation of ad-hoc, “personal Internets” or wireless mesh networks that allow for a more personal, instantaneous connection with friends and colleagues.

GAMIFICATION

Shifting tedious and fatiguing tasks into interesting, engaging experiences is nothing new. After all, Tom Sawyer gamified fence painting long ago. Today, the technique of leveraging people’s natural desires for achievement, status and self-expression is being applied to everything from customer service to finance, to organizational advocacy on the part of the employee

MOBILE INTELLIGENCE

Today, every student can access any piece of data or historical reference point from anywhere, and at any time. News feeds are real-time, and for the first time in history, information is truly at the tip of our fingertips. And that’s true of everyone. This democratized flow of information is so dense that it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff on our own. This is why smart searching and intelligent matching of interest applications like Zite are today becoming more prevalent.  A step further, and we can see that the paradigm of searching for information is becoming outdated. In fact, new world of work innovations such as Google Now are flipping the model on its head by having information relevant to a user search them out and be available at a contextually relevant moment. It will only be a matter of time before business professionals seek to educate their leaders on the benefits of having contextual systems with information at the ready.

GRASSROOTS CHANGE – NOT ANARCHY

In the past, the ruling class has decided which devices to buy, what features to expect, and how much we should pay, typically based on their go-to market strategies and production schedules. I call this demand generationwithout representation. And it’s not sustainable. The days of being able to easily shape the technology landscape are waning as end users demand more and faster innovations. Five year manufacturing schedules and three year marketing plans are stodgy, slow and out of touch.

One company who understands this grassroots approach is Valve, the creator of the Steam platform and games like Half-Life and Portal. Valve’s Michael Abrash showed a great understanding of today’s changing business world when he wrote:

“…hierarchical management had been invented for military purposes, where it was perfectly suited to getting 1,000 men to march over a hill to get shot at. When the Industrial Revolution came along, hierarchical management was again a good fit, since the objective was to treat each person as a component, doing exactly the same thing over and over…”

Today, processes performed over and over can be automated and delivered in an app. Military-esque command and control hierarchies are only serving to choke innovation. But just as in the American Revolution, people are finding reasons to look to each other for change, rather than waiting for it to come from above. In today’s new world of work, revolution – and transformation – is constant, and how well your business adapts to this fact will be a key indicator of your future success.

When Chicago’s homicide rate skyrocketed in 2012, an unlikely hero appeared. His name was Brett Goldstein, and he wasn’t a cop or even a lawmaker. He was Chicago’s chief data officer, and his solution for helping the city’s beleaguered police and municipal service departments was nothing more than two words: big data.

Goldstein proposed building an analytics platform that would aggregate data from the city’s 30 agencies and departments, allowing city officials to view maps showing everything from 911 calls to complaints about potholes. This solution, Goldstein hoped, would give decision-makers an unprecedented look at the patterns of crime, complaints, and civic issues that affect Chicago.

That platform would go on to become WindyGrid, one of the United States’ most comprehensive exercises in public data. Goldstein has since left his civic post for a fellowship at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy – a fitting move for a man whose work may have permanently altered the way policy is made.

TOWARD DATA-DRIVEN POLICY

Chicago’s foray into big data may have been one of the most effective to date, but it’s hardly the only one. There are many who have taken the example of Chicago and launched programs. And the promise of big data has caught the attention of a number of federal agencies, including some that carry significant weight with policy makers.

The Defense Department’s Information Volume and Velocity initiative is designed to “extract data from all sources on the web, including tweets and blogs, using pattern recognition to detect trends in a sea of unstructured data.” That’s government-speak for “it trawls the web for a set of conflict-related phrases.” Despite the dense description, this initiative could have very real applications for predicting conflict at home and abroad.

Not to be outdone, the CIA’s Open Source Indicators program is similar to the DOD’s, but takes it a step farther. Its purported purpose is to “anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters” through the same means at its DOD counterpart.

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ Global Pulse program aims to explore “how new, digital data sources and real-time analytics technologies can help policymakers understand human well-being.”

Like Goldstein’s Chicago on a national—or global—scale, the analytical and predictive power of each of these initiatives could soon be driving policy. But, as always, there’s a catch.

DEALING WITH BIG DATA ITSELF

Big data’s potential for positive change also comes with the potential for abuse. Wade Henderson, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, recently told the Associated Press: “While big data is revolutionizing commerce and government for the better, it is also supercharging the potential for discrimination.”

Henderson’s remark came in response to a White House discussion on employers’ increasing use of big data to screen job applicants. White House advisor John Podesta echoed that sentiment in a recent speech, noting: “it’s easy to imagine how big data technology, if used to cross legal lines we have been careful to set, could end up reinforcing existing inequities in housing, credit, employment, health and education.”

California’s use of PredPol software—short for “predictive policing—is an excellent example. PredPol’s system uses existing crime data to predict the types, locations, and frequencies of certain types of crime. Since adopting PredPol, robberies in California have decreased by a quarter. But despite its effectiveness, this sort of predictive modeling has raised a number of valid concerns. Many of its critics envision a Minority Report-style future in which different groups are punished or discriminated against, simply because they may commit a crime in the future.

Big data’s true potential to affect policy has yet to be seen. The gears of government turn slowly, and new initiatives take time to gain approval, let alone become active. As such, it may be a few years yet before we fully come to appreciate big data’s impact on public policy. Whether we’ll be grateful or regretful is anyone’s guess – but we do know the new world of work is here, if not arriving quickly, and transformation within government agencies and organization is already under way.

Too Mad Men-esque for you? How about the assigned office, or even the cubicle? These too, seem to be going the way of the dinosaur.

The latest trend is for more adaptable and flexible workspaces without walls, offices, or assigned desks, a term referred to as “hoteling.” In some cases, this has been driven by the need for lower cost real estate. In others, the need for flexibility to move team members around has driven the change, allowing small workgroups to form as needed to drive a project forward. Valve Software is a famous example of a company that has embraced this idea. With this new trend, you could be sitting next to the CEO on Tuesday and Bill from Accounting on Wednesday. And Thursday you could be working remotely from a plane or hotel room.

It’s all driven by the need for flexibility. And in this modern office, technology has the keys to the car. Nowhere is this clearer than when it comes to data access and storage.

THE DIGITAL INFORMATION AGE AND THE NEED FOR SPEED

Absent from the new offices are file cabinets and file rooms, with the goal to be flexible, nimble and more cost efficient. For those companies that are transitioning to paperless, flexible workspaces, there are a few steps to take first.

Where Does the Paper Go?

Prior to a major transition such as this, an organization must carefully evaluate what paper files it wishes to retain and those that it wishes to destroy. A careful culling of files must occur and those that remain must be either converted to digital images or sent to offsite storage, which is often less than ideal.

Stop Feeding the Beast

So, how do workers stop feeding the paper beast and learn how to function in a post-paper office? The most effective way is to convert all paper to digital images at their point of entry – the mailroom. The digital mailroom is here to stay and having the ability to scan and route to workers is vital. Another key area to target: converting paper-based forms to digital.

Accessing the Information

So, now that you’ve gone fully digital, how do workers actually access all that information? Digitization alone isn’t the answer. Content must be tagged with meaningful index data for retrieval, and stored in a centralized, easily-accessed electronic repository, so that workers can recall the content with minimal information or work needed. This gives the organization the flexibility of information mobility – being able to have their people work anywhere.

THE BOTTOM LINE: TIME IS MONEY AND BEING GREEN IS GOOD

Due to the growing trend of smaller footprints and more flexible workspaces, hard dollar cost savings are easily recognized. This is for a variety of reasons. When employees have faster access to information, they’re spending less time looking for stuff, leading to improved customer service. And these flexible workspaces have green benefits as well: less paper usage saves money and trees.

The modern office is becoming smarter, highly flexible, adaptable, green, and ultimately, less expensive to operate. With today’s technology driving an ever-evolving office, workers can access the information from any location, whether sitting next to the CEO or working from home during a blizzard.

Where do you think the future of business is headed? We welcome comments below.