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New technologies and social media platforms are driving an
unprecedented reorganization of how we produce and cre-
ate value. Amplified by a new level of collective intelligence
and tapping resources embedded in social connections with
multitudes of others, we can now achieve the kind of scale
and reach previously attainable only by very large organiza-
tions. In other words, we can do things outside of traditional
organizational boundaries.
To "superstruct" means to create structures that go beyond
the basic forms and processes with which we are familiar. It
means to collaborate and play at extreme scales, from the
micro to the massive. Learning to use new social tools to
work, to invent, and to govern at these scales is what the
next few decades are all about.
Our tools and technologies shape the kinds of social,
economic, and political organizations we inhabit. Many
organizations we are familiar with today, including educa-
tional and corporate ones, are products of centuries-old
scientific knowledge and technologies. Today we see this
organizational landscape being disrupted. In health, organi-
zations such as Curetogether and PatientsLikeMe are allow-
ing people to aggregate their personal health information to
allow for clinical trials and emergence of expertise outside
of traditional labs and doctors' offices. Science games, from
Foldit to GalaxyZoo, are engaging thousands of people to
solve problems no single organization had the resources to
do before. Open education platforms are increasingly mak-
ing content available to anyone who wants to learn.
A new generation of organizational concepts and work skills
is coming not from traditional management/organizational
theories but from fields such as game design, neurosci-
ence, and happiness psychology. These fields will drive the
creation of new training paradigms and tools.
At its most basic level, globalization is the long-term trend
toward greater exchanges and integration across geographic
borders. In our highly globally connected and interdepen-
dent world, the United States and Europe no longer hold a
mono-poly on job creation, innovation, and political power.
Organizations from resource- and infrastructure-constrained
markets in developing countries like India and China are inno-
vating at a faster pace than those from developed countries
in some areas, such as mobile technologies. In fact, a lack of
legacy infrastructure is combining with rapidly growing mar-
kets to fuel higher rates of growth in developing countries.
For decades, most multinational companies have used their
overseas subsidiaries as sales and technical support chan-
nels for the headquarters. In the last ten years, overseas
companies, particularly IT ones, outsourced everything from
customer services to software development. The model,
however, has stayed the same: innovation and design have
been the prerogative of R&D labs in developed countries.
As markets in China, India, and other developing countries
grow, it is increasingly difficult for the headquarters to de-
velop products that can suit the needs of a whole different
category of consumers.
Presence in areas where new competitors are popping up
is critical to survival, but it is not enough. The key is not just
to employ people in these locales but also to effectively in-
tegrate these local employees and local business processes
into the infrastructure of global organizations in order to
remain competitive.
5
superstructed
organizations
Social technologies
drive new forms of
production and value
creation
6
globally
connected world
Increased global intercon-
nectivity puts diversity and
adaptability at the center
of organizational
operations