Bain on 2007 management tools

The successful consultants blog points to Bain's review of the top 25 management tools for 2007.

You can download the pdf here.

I'm very excited to see the following tools (I really don't like the word "tools", a "management approach" sounds so much better, no?) listed in the 25:

• Consumer Ethnography - Is this the final realisation that traditional market research is often useless? Sometimes the biggest insight that people can get about our needs is not by asking us, but by observing us. That holds true for us HR and OD professionals and consultants as well !
• Collaborative Innovation - JSB and Hagel have been talking about it. Innovation in the new millennium is not about enterprises doing internal innovation, but working with partners in the value chain to create a new larger way to innovate.
• Corporate Blogs - Well, what can I say, except for "thank you Bain!" for building the buzz around blogs at the corporate leadership level. I hope I get some more blog consulting business because of this ;-) . However, there is a blooper that Bain has committed on page 25 on its selected references for Corporate Blogs. It lists only Robert Scoble as the Naked Conversation's author and does not mention Shel Israel, the co-author.

• Knowledge Management - Is KM back? Did it ever go away? I see a mindset shift happening in how organizations are thinking about KM. In the turn of the century it was mostly "extractive" and driven by IT tools, now I hope it's more about collaboration between the enterprise and employee and between employees, and the focus is not IT per se, but enabling people processes to help in KM and indeed, innovation.