Just how alien is the business side of an organization to the IT workers running things, and vice versa? Traditionally we think of IT guys as geeks who are focused on their own narrow little world. Still, any worker could help watch to see that little things which might have slipped by someone on the business side are caught before they create a problem. But is it reasonable to expect those same  IT workers, who are often heavily involved in tasks strategic to running the business, and who may need to focus fully on the IT tasks at hand, to also keep an eye on customers, competitors, and the business environment, as if they were the guys wearing the business suits?

If optimum utilization of every IT worker is important for peek efficiency, who funds his/her time learning the other non-IT side of the business? Is there any special viewpoint an IT worker’s eye might catch that might otherwise go unnoticed? What about the true geeks who can’t or don’t want to pay attention to non-IT? Since the IT work has to get done, how much time is it fair to expect an IT worker to spend in cultivating 360 degrees of business smarts?