stoweboyd and the /messengers

I am still trying to figure out what Jeffrey, Peter and Jevon are trying to sell with "social business design" that is any different than the socio-technical systems design field (a sub-domain of OD, if you will) that was briefly popular or on the radar in the 60'sm, established some credibility in the 70's and early 80's and then withered away as the western world got into business reengineering.

Except that we now have the technological infrastructure and a myriad of platforms and applications that can actually help the workers interact more easily and to greater / better effect.

From wikipedia:

Sociotechnical systems (or STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour.

In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex sociotechnical systems. The term sociotechnical systems was coined in the 1960s by Eric Trist and Fred Emery, who were working as consultants at the Tavistock Institute in London.