Excerpt from book: Mashup Corporations: The End of Business as Usual: “Understand that you have capabilities outside your IT department, and use them! Shadow IT is not new and exists in every company. It’s been there, lurking just out of sight of your support teams, not necessarily hidden, but implemented by workers who need new tools, procedures, and workarounds that are not yet acknowledged by IT policies. They use their innovations every day to get their jobs and personal tasks done. With every class of graduating students, a more tech-literate labor force emerges. This labor force is creatively innovating both on and off the offi cial clock. They bring with them new methodologies and models for working that line up directly with service orientation…. Failure to embrace and support Shadow IT in the long run means wasted resources, an inability to maximize the value of your company’s collective candlepower, and lost opportunities.”