In the seventh chapter of our book we make a very subtle and important point: "Firms need to treat their employees as N=1 to gain a consumer focus of N=1." The enterprise employee is a consumer, and both need N=1 attention.

It's interesting to note that the number of downloads of the consumer-oriented Facebook application on corporate Blackberries crossed the one million mark within a few months. In fact, this is one of the fastest growing third-party applications on corporate blackberries.

Corporate users aren't just connecting with their friends, as teenagers do. A number of corporate users also form communities of their colleagues, and these can be either on a project basis or based on their common interests. It's a new enabler of collaboration, a more full characterization of employees based on their interests and skills.

We should expect these applications to be tied up soon with corporate HR systems -- the systems that still keep archaic, static records on individuals. For this new age of business-model innovation, we need a new approach to talent management with an N=1 focus on employees.

This approach will demand new HR systems that connect the traditional HR information on employees with their corporate social networking sites, their performance, and their skills. Hence, when a manager needs a new team to deliver the N=1 experience for a customer, he/she should be able to search dynamically through such a system for the right talent and skills.

A good example of the initial stages of this transformation is seen at IBM. IBM labs and manufacturing facilities traditionally worked on one product for one geographical market. But in the last three years, they have adopted the manufacturing approach to tracking parts and inventory to track human talent globally. They have built a global HR system to track the skills and up-to-the-minute availability of their engineers and consultants. Based on the specific needs of a specific customer, dynamic teams are configured from multiple global centers to match the best skills at the best price.

Naturally, this demands innovation in how we manage projects and people -- innovation along the lines of N=1.