One of the most overused terms I've heard in the past few years as CEO of an IT consulting and staffing firm has to be the word "alignment." Think about it. How many times have you heard phrases like, "IT must learn to align with the business" or that "smart CIOs know that in order to succeed, IT must align with the business"?
A hundred years ago we saw the introduction of a new process for organizing and performing work (now we're looking for another one). That process employed the most powerful technology of that time - industrial technology - to deliver a significant increase in productivity that made possible the rise of the middle class in what we now call the developed world. That new way of working was called the assembly line. Manufacturing companies in the United States (led by Henry Ford) pioneered the introduction of the assembly line in their factories. Soon companies everywhere were using that new workflow process.