I discovered the term “techno-populist” while reading this businessweek article. This expression, originally due to Forrester, designates people who flout their company’s IT policies in order to use in their professional lives the tools they use in their private life.

Wendy wakes joined Unilever when she was 27. Within the marketing department she quickly experienced the consequences of a very strict IT policy. And the young recruits she works with finds it even harder. As Business week writes, for people born after 1985, the discovering of the corporate world is a real technological shock. Unlike what our generation experienced when the enterprise was a kind of eldorado where we could use state of the art tools and computers we could not have even dreamt of, we have to recognize that the corporate world looks rather like Jurassic Park compared to what I can use in my private life (globally speaking, because I’m very happy with what my company provides me).

The you woman didn’t give up and wrote to her CIO, explaining to which extent people may be more efficient with general public, less prehistoric, and free tools. Six months later she was offered a new job : spreading the use of these tools within unilever.

Unilever now wishes to give its employees more “digital freedom”, allow connection from outside the firewall, use their own PCs provided some security rules are respected. With an identified goal : an increase in productivity and lower costs. Even when they’re not free, the tools in question have pricing models that have nothing to do with what companies have used to know till now.

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