For Thomas Malone, organization is something that sits on top of what we normally think of as the technology stack. Organizations are changing and this change mimics how human social groups have changed from bands through kingdoms and into democracies. These organizational changes will see a great deal of innovation in the future.
In this presentation Malone shows how new organizational structures can be invented. He provides examples in current companies, both large and small. Malone explains how new materials have always provided opportunities for new inventions. He illustrates how the availability of cheap communication as a material can give rise to new organizational approaches that will transform how we work in the future.
By relating the change in organizational structure to the change in human society, Malone makes a compelling case for the availability of lower cost communications as the catalyst for this change in both our societies and our organizations. He demonstrates how this single factor can allow groups to work together in ways that could not have happened before the rise of the Internet, e-mail, and other communication technologies.
Malone finishes by challenging listeners to think about using our values to create the types of organizations we want to see in the future, and the future world we will live in.
