I recently came across this blog post from Harvard Business Review, IT in the Age of the Empowered Employee. The author, Ted Schadler, who recently co-authored a book entitled, Empowered, seems to have coined the term, “highly empowered and resourceful operatives (HEROes).” These people represent 20% of the employees in an organization who aggressively seek out information technology solutions on their own without the IT department’s support.

Schadler recommends managers and IT support HEROes’ efforts:

What caught my eye of course is, “Provide tools to manage risk.” Yes, enable the use of Web 2.0 applications and social networking by mitigating the risks they create. Next Generation Firewalls come to mind.