Designing for Flexibility

Jeffrey Phillips calls for more adaptive structures ready for business model innovation …

[we need to] create a corporate culture and bureaucracy that enables reorganization rather than inhibits or constricts it […]
if it seems likely that rapid change and tough competition are likely, why not create an organization that is more nimble and can rapidly organize to the needs and demands of the market [and that is] able to organize themselves according to the opportunities as they unfold.
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What’s necessary is organizational flexibility and the ability to create or spot trends long before others in your industry do.

Amen, yet this is so hard to achieve and design for … designing organizational structures for flexibility collides much too often with organizational requirements for efficiency, i.e. process and workflow automation. This is why my boutique consultancy frogpond places much focus on the implementation of freeform social software – it supports and enables adaptivity, connectivity and emergence in knowledge work and acts as infrastructure for flexible, nimble organizations.

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