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There’s a blog today at Fast Company called The Half Life of Ideas, that refers to an essay by Phred Dvorak at today’s Wall Street Journal. The essay concerns why management trends tend to fade away. (Alas - since I don’t subscribe to the WSJ I can’t read the article.)

Four possible reasons:

• Consultants offer services in which they lack expertise
• New ideas come and go faster and faster
• People try to apply the same idea to too many dissimilar problems
• New practices and processes don’t work for every organization

Hmm… it seems like every one of the above reasons would apply to differing degrees. (Remember the Reengineering fiasco?) But how do you distinguish between a fad and the real Next Big Thing?

Take blogging, for instance. It’s literally everywhere! There are marketing blogs, personal blogs, technical blogs, blogs on blogging, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I have to admit, there are certainly great uses for blogs out there. In fact, I plan to start one or two at my workplace.

So is blogging the Next Big Thing? Is it here to stay? Why or why not? What do you think?

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