"We in IT have attention deficit disorder, and every few months we come up with another TLA. That's a three-letter acronym," Hugos said.

But he went on to explain that notions of agility will be to the Information Age economy what the assembly line was to the Industrial Age: the thing that so enhances productivity that companies that don't adopt it are doomed to perish.

The hallmark of the agile enterprise is a network organization, Hugos said. Unlike the traditional pyramid-shaped organization with multiple hierarchical layers, the agile enterprise has key managers in coordination roles sitting between multiple business units. The enterprise coordinator says "what" and the business units say "how," he said.

Hugos said centrally controlled hierarchies just move too slowly. To managers in the audience, he suggested, "Micromanagement is a bad habit, one to get out of."

Hugos said there are four main principles to follow in becoming an agile enterprise: