Steven Sinofsky

[Commentary] The problem is that, even in the most developed areas of Africa, the deployment of strong and fast 3G and 4G coverage is lagging, and the capital that is available will flow to build out areas where there are paying customers.

That means that the outlying areas, where a lot of people live, will continue to be underserved for quite some time. Alan Knott-Craig, an experienced South African entrepreneur who is setting out to bring connectivity via Wi-Fi across his homeland, knows that Internet access is transformative.

[Commentary] Smartphones and tablets, along with apps connected to new cloud-computing platforms, are revolutionizing the workplace. We’re still early in this workplace transformation, and the tools so familiar to us will be around for quite sometime.

The leaders, managers, and organizations that are using new tools sooner will quickly see how tools can drive cultural changes -- developing products faster, with less bureaucracy and more focus on what’s important to the business. If you’re trying to change how work is done, changing the tools and processes can be an eye-opening first step.

Tools have a critical yet subtle impact on how work gets done. Tools can come to define the work, as much as just making work more efficient. Early in the use of new tools there’s a combination of a huge spike in benefit, along with a temporary dip in productivity. Even with all the improvements, all tools over time can become a drag on productivity as the tools become the end, rather than the means to an end. This is just a natural evolution of systems and processes in organizations, and productivity tools are no exception.

It is something to watch for as a team. The spike comes from the new ways information is acquired, shared, created, analyzed and more. There’s a temporary dip in productivity as new individual and organizational muscles are formed and old tools and processes are replaced across the whole team. Everyone individually -- and the team has a whole -- feels a bit disrupted during this time, i.e. disruption in the tools of the workplace lend the impression that “you’re doing it wrong.” But eventually, things rapidly return to a “new normal,” and with well-chosen tools and thoughtfully-designed processes, this is an improvement.

[Sinofsky is Board Partner, Andreessen Horowitz]