BNet (the business reporting cousin to CNet) reported on an unreleased McKinsey survey that suggested $7.5 trillion worth of business disruption could result from their Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch (free registration required) in December. The trends come packaged in three sound-bite-friendly categories:

• Managing relationships
  • Distributed cocreation
  • Using customers as innovators
  • Tapping into a world of talent
  • Extracting more value from interactions

• Managing capital and assets
  • Expanding the frontiers of automation
  • Unbundling production from delivery

• Leveraging information in new ways
  • Putting more science into management
  • Making businesses from information

Where’s the nuance?

Although I revel in the irony of detached corporate-speak descriptions of open, collaborative concepts, there are some pretty smart people in McKinsey’s trenches. And while I worry that by the time McKinsey has had time to publish such a paper, the opportunity may have passed us by, in this case, it’s a permanent change, not a business trend.

After we cut through my hang-ups with the requisite grain of salt, there are some pretty interesting messages hidden in the code for people who want to see the direction business is headed, and why we have stepped out on the limb during rough economic times to start new endeavors:

1. Relationships matter, and listening to people is the most important thing you can do. Creating and measuring reputation (all feedback is not the same) and incentives will become necessary corollaries, so business can find signal in the noise. Bring on OpenSocial and pull back the curtains on Targeted Currencies.
2. The interpretation and re-purposing of information is the fastest way to create economic value today. A good friend (can’t remember who – was it you?) pointed out the other day that western business leaders are really good at aggregating data, but very few can find deeper meaning, often confusing correlation with cause, missing out on things they can’t see (for a fix, see AWhere) and thinking only of next quarter’s results. Guess that just leaves more room for the rest of us to create value out of informational market inefficiencies (Business Catapult).

What do you think?