The Quantum Age Of It

As you read this book, you will be able to: Understand how and why your IT function has changed and define its future role Compete in this new age by embracing the five traits that will define the IT organisation of The Quantum Age Remain effective and relevant as you understand and implement fundamental changes to future-proof your IT function Maintain and develop excellent customer relations by better understanding your clients and their requirements Meet the unique needs of all your customers, as you adopt the five key skills that all IT professionals will have to have Learn from the past and look forward to a bright future!

The Quantum Age cuts through the hype to demystify quantum technologies, their development paths, and the policy issues they raise.

The stone age, the iron age, the steam and electrical ages all saw the reach of humankind transformed by new technology. Now we are living in the quantum age, a revolution in everyday life led by our understanding of the very, very small. Quantum physics lies at the heart of every electronic device from smartphones to lasers; quantum superconductors allow levitating trains and MRI scanners, while superfast, ultra-secure quantum computers may soon be a reality. Yet quantum particles such as atoms, electrons and photons remain mysterious, acting totally unlike the objects we experience directly. With his trademark clarity and enthusiasm, acclaimed popular science author Brian Clegg reveals the amazing world of the quantum that lies all around us.

"From the world of Black Hammer"--Cover.

"When Danah Zohar first published the early ideas of her Quantum Management Theory in the late 1990's, she articulated a new paradigm, inspired by quantum physics, and began a major contribution to our search for a new management theory that can replace outdated Taylorism. Now, in ZERO DISTANCE, the most comprehensive account of her project, she outlines how the theory has been implemented through the revolutionary RenDanHeyi business model of China's Haier Group, and subsequently several other large companies. Zohar's suggestion that the Haier model also offers a new social and political model is thought provoking. This book is a significant addition to our continuing conversation about the best way to manage companies and other human social systems. I recommend it highly." - Gary Hamel, London Business School, Author of Humanocracy This open access book offers a new management meta-theory to replace Taylorism. It presents a new paradigm in management thinking and a new, practical organizational model for implementing it in our personal and working lives, in our companies, in our communities and nations, and in a sustainable global order. It will offer an understanding of why and how "thinking-as-usual" is failing both business and political leaders in these new times, and it will advocate new thinking and new management practices that are so radically new that they turn everything we have taken for granted inside out and upside down. This new management model is called "Quantum Management Theory", because it is rooted in the new paradigm bequeathed to us by quantum physics and its younger sibling, complexity science. Danah Zohar is a physicist, philosopher, and management thought leader. She is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management and a Visiting Professor at the China Academy of Art.

A clear account of what has been discovered in recent years about quantum theory, its counter-intuitive features - non-locality, indeterminism, intrinsic uncertainty - and what it tells us about the universe. The book also explains how these ideas have led to a new subject of limitless possibilities - quantum information theory.

Quantum mechanics dates its anniversaries from 1925, the year when its first versions, matrix and wave mechanics, were born. The quan tum itself had by that time reached the age of 25, having first seen the light of day on the eve of the nativity of the 20th century itself. Either shunned or completely unnoticed, the quantum seemed for a long time to be an illegitimate child. Even Max Planck himself, its own father, could not bring himself to accept his monstrous child until he was forced to do so -that is, until it became clear that the problems which were arising in physics could not be solved without the quantum. At first the quantum "like a greasy stain, soaked through all the different branches of physics" and then, like an explosion, came the creation of quantum mechanics. The overwhelming majority of those who first created quantum mechanics were just about of an age with the quantum itself. These were very young people, born as the new century was born, give or take a year or so. Hence the phrase was coined - "the quantum generation". At that time there was quantum everything - towns, steps, park benches, lodging houses and so, natu rally, the quantum generation.

Once upon a time the practice of storytelling was about collecting interesting stories about the past, and converting them into soundbite pitches. Now it is more about foretelling the ways the future is approaching the present, prompting a re-storying of the past. Storytelling has progressed and is about a diversity of voices, not just one teller of one past; it is how a group or organization of people negotiates the telling of history and the telling of what future is arriving in the present. With the changes in storytelling practices and theory there is a growing need to look at new and different methodologies. Within this exciting new book, David M. Boje develops new ways to ask questions in interviews and make observations of practice that are about storytelling the future. This, after all, is where management practice concentrates its storytelling, while much of the theory and method work is all about how the past might recur in the future. Storytelling Organizational Practices takes the reader on a journey: from looking at narratives of past experience through looking at living stories of emergence in the present to looking at how the future is arriving in ways that prompts a re-storying of the past.