Institute For The Future

What if you could coordinate everything more efficiently ...

What could you accomplish if you had an army of collaborators online or in the real world—when and where you needed them? We created a four-step toolkit to help you start using these emerging technologies of coordination today, with 18 profiles of leading-edge early signals and usable tools. Whether you’re managing a business, building grassroots support for a cause, or organizing your family, there are new possibilities to coordinate collective efforts in smarter, more efficient ways.

Project Background

Our Technology Horizons Program has researched the Internet’s impact for over 40 years. We’ve seen the global network transform how we communicate with each other. Then we watched the internet change commerce, how we buy and sell. But we think the next big story is coordination.

Starting now and through the next decade, we’ll see new tools and platforms that can more fluidly bring together resources, people, and ideas, amplifying our strengths to get something done. How we coordinate work, learning, our neighborhoods and communities will change in this new environment. These new technologies of coordination will give us the potential to amplify our strengths and tap into everyone’s skills and expertise. They will give individuals the ability to activate resources in ways that only institutions and organizations could in the past.