Redesigning Social Organization for Accelerated Innovation in the New Digital Economy: A Design Thinking Perspective

We now appear to be in the full grip of the media transformation from paper-based media to a digital-based media. This evolution in mobility of information (experiences) has occurred alongside the mobility of matter and labor (goods and services, mass and heat), all of which have come about as a result of evolution in technologies of encryption, computation, communication, representation, sensing, and transportation. All these changes have contributed to a market environment that is more open, connected, complex, and dynamic, and to corporate and civic organizational configurations that are overwhelmed and slow to adapt to these changes. In the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research program, we have been observing these changes, and developing solutions to accelerate the rate of innovation in the new digital economy. Our work has led us to focus on the design team, the design coach, and the instrumented design space as the new unit of knowledge work, as opposed to the individual employees and line manager. This new unit is larger than the individual and so can take in more information. It is smaller than the typical organizational group or department, so it is faster to act and more agile. And the data rich and computational nature of the instrumented space, means that the technology can be considered a bona fide member of the design team. The variety of organizational structures now possible as well as the way these structures need to change in very short time frames has made it necessary to develop a biological metaphor of the organization as an organism that can fold, unfold, and refold as it adapts rapidly to a fast-changing environment. This radical shift from the hierarchical, clockwork, command and control organizations of the industrial age, will be explored with a view to showing alternative redesign of social organizations and the means to accomplish the requisite sociological, psychological, and technological transformations effectively.