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March 20, 2007
Is the end of the hierarchical organization in sight?
(Posted by francois to: Strategy | human resources )The latest issue of FAST company has an interesting article on how the traditional business organization is meeting democracy and how that could radically transform the way we think of enterprises in the future.
It's not a new notion - the idea of the "externalized" project-based organization and talk about the impact of the disappearance of friction in communication, cooperation and collaboration on traditional corporate business models and the power that goes with it have been around for a long time. It has become an agreed upon fact that in this interconnected world, size and scale of an organization no longer ensure viability. The notion that only large companies have enough resources to market their products to mass markets of consumers, and to fund serious scientific research, has been shattered for a long time. According to the article, recent scientific breakthroughs in the area of nanotechnology may now break one of last remaining reasons for large companies to exist - namely that they are the only ones having enough capital to build and run manufacturing plants. Heck, even Caterpillar now thinks of itself as an "intellectual property company!"
So are we moving towards a world of a billion single-person enterprises? Probably not soon enough...
[Tags: future of work organization 2.0]
Posted by francois at March 20, 2007 9:20 AM | Bookmark This
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Comments
Francois, Thanks for alerting me to the Fast Company article. I hope to write about it in the next day on my blog about how the changing workplace affects what skills college students need to develop. www.doesyourmajormatter.com
Looking forward to reading more.
~Katie
Posted by: Katie Konrath at March 21, 2007 5:31 AM
Katie - thanks for commenting on my blog. Jim Ware also picked it up (http://www.thefutureofwork.net/blog/archives/000590.html).
Posted by: francois gossieaux at March 22, 2007 12:48 PM
