From a fast company article, click to read the rest.

There’s a saying in Silicon Valley: “The geeks shall inherit the earth.”

That’s a sign, if you needed one, that we have permanently entered a new economy. Once a term of derision, the label “geek” has become a badge of honor, a mark of distinction. Anyone in any business in any industry with any hope of thriving knows that he or she is utterly dependent on geeks — those technical wizards who create great software and the powerful hardware that runs it. The geeks know it too — a fact that is reflected in the rich salaries and hefty stock options that they now command.

But how do you manage these geek gods? Perhaps no one knows better than Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell Inc. Schmidt, 44, is a card-carrying geek himself: His resume boasts a computer-science PhD and a stint at Sun Microsystems, where he was the chief technology officer and a key developer of the Java software language. And, as if his technical skills weren’t enough to prove the point, Schmidt even looks the part, with his boy-genius face, his wire-rim spectacles, and his coder’s pallid complexion.

You’ve got to have your own geeks

Today innovation drives any business. And since you don’t want to outsource your innovation, you need to have your own geeks. Look at trends in e-commerce: Who would have thought that all of these “old” companies would have to face huge new distribution-channel issues, all of which are driven by technology? The truth is, you need to have a stable of technologists around — not just to run your systems but also to help you figure out which strategies to pursue, which innovations to invest in, and which partnerships to form.

The geeks control the limits of your business. It’s a fact of life: If the technologists in your company invent something ahead of everybody else, then all of a sudden your business will get bigger. Otherwise, it will get smaller. You simply have to recognize and accept the critical role that technologists play. All new-economy businesses share that property.
 
Get to know your geek community

According to the traditional stereotype, geeks are people who are primarily fascinated by technology and its uses. The negative part of that stereotype is the assumption that they have poor social skills. Like most stereotypes, it’s true in general — but false at the level of specifics. By society’s definition, they are antisocial. But within their own community, they are actually quite social. You’ll find that they break themselves into tribes: mainframe-era graybeards, Unix people who started out 20 years ago, the new PC-plus-Web generation. They’re tribal in the way that they subdivide their own community, but the tribes don’t fight each other. In fact, those tribes get along very well — because all of them fight management.

Perhaps the least-becoming aspect of the geek community is its institutional arrogance. Remember, just because geeks have underdeveloped social skills doesn’t mean that they don’t have egos. Tech people are uppity by definition: A lot of them would like to have been astronauts. They enjoy the limelight.

In a power relationship with management, they have more in common with pro basketball players than they do with average workers.

Think of your techies as free agents in a highly specialized sports draft. And the more specialized they are, the more you need to be concerned about what each of them needs as an individual.

Tags: business, geeks, technology