For most of the 20th century, the modern corporation organized and reorganized its employees along formal lines of structure and hierarchy to achieve maximum efficiency and growth. Now, in the 21st century, it's probably the organization itself that is the biggest obstacle to its own goals. No wonder the enterprise is being rethought, redesigned and rebuilt.
In fact, what we think of as an "enterprise" is changing very quickly, and may not look the same in just a few short years. In discussions IBM held recently with a group of provocateurs and pragmatists from organizations around the world, several foresaw that, increasingly, people will work together less for particular enterprises-as in business organizations-than for collective enterprises-as in joint endeavours or undertakings.
These discussions were part of an exercise organized by IBM involving 248 thought leaders from nearly three dozen countries and regions, representing 178 organizations. To share their thinking with IBM and the wider world, they recently gathered on four continents in 15 sessions to discuss the outlook for the future of the enterprise-as well as developments affecting transportation and the environment.
Andrew Zolli, a participant in the discussions and the founder of Z+Partners, a "foresight" consulting firm, compared emerging trends in enterprise organization to the Hollywood film industry, in which studios assemble and coordinate rotating rosters of affiliated talent for discrete projects. "You create an outside entity," Zolli said, "you subscribe internal and external talent to it, you create stuff, and then you have deployment assets."
His remarks were included in ""Global Innovation Outlook 2.0,"," a report on the findings from these thought leader discussions. It is IBM's second such exploration into some of the trends and developments that will affect business and society in the decades ahead. (In 2004, the first Global Innovation Outlook discussions explored issues around healthcare, government, and the business of work and life.)
Employees' Job Fluidity and Porous Corporate Boundaries
During this latest Global Innovation Outlook study, many participants noted that the changes ahead for enterprises-how they form, work, and then disband or re-form-are being driven, in part, by a new generation of workers much more comfortable with job fluidity. Many of these people identify more with others in their field of work or study-whether as coders, computational biologists, designers or educators-than they do as employees of the organizations hiring them for these roles.
Using the semiconductor industry as an example, Koichiro Nishikawa, a participant in the study and Hitachi's executive officer for business development, said, "For some people, the passion may be more for the chip itself than for a Hitachi, a Samsung or an IBM. But that's okay-it's also an opportunity to motivate and reward people in new ways."
How could such an organization survive? Possibly very well, it seems. As several of the study's participants pointed out, self-aggregating entities can often adapt more readily in the face of opportunities and disruptions. Where business leaders once found their metaphors in the clearly demarcated lines of military divisions and sports teams, the best analogies for configurations in business may soon be such self-organizing units as those found in nature: schools of fish, flocks of birds, and swarms of insects all rely on self-organization to move and work toward a common purpose in a dynamic and efficient manner.
Further insights from this collaborative discussion among global thought leaders is available in the Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 report.
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