Institute For The Future

New Models for Getting Things Done

IFTF Creates Cutting Edge Guide to Building a Resilient 21st Century Company

Institute for the Future released a guide, for Google Cloud, that will help companies of all sizes move their organizations into the digital age by taking a holistic and systematic view of the impact of emerging technologies on the future of work, organizations and IT leadership.

The guide, in the form of a map called “Beyond Organizations: New Models for Getting Things Done,” is part of a research series exploring how new ways of working will change the pace of business and innovation, empowering organizations to be more diverse, dynamic and distributed.

“The way we organize to get things done and to create value is not fixed, it is shaped by available technologies, social norms, and regulatory systems of the times. Connective technologies, sensors, and vast amounts of data are rapidly changing how we do this and what is possible. They are reshaping patterns of work and organizational structures we’ve built up in the last century,” said Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future. “Not only are the structures and flows of organizations being transformed, their functions and purposes are, too. This map provides leaders with the tools needed to seamlessly transition and thrive in distributed and fluid organizational environments.”

The map outlines:

• The three major emerging technologies enabling new ways of organizing
• The seven powerful transformations in organizational processes
• The five skills individuals will need to thrive in the future

 

The map is also a tool for matching new opportunities to the challenges an organization faces, for developing strategies that will lead to a thriving and sustainable operating environment, and for building future skills that will enable an organization to make the best use of these new technologies.

“These transformations are new ways to organize and achieve outcomes,” Gorbis said. “What they’ll look like depends on how they’re applied. No matter who uses this map, whether it is a Fortune 500 company or a start-up, it will stimulate leaders’ imaginations about the kind of future organization they have the potential to build.”

We'd like to thank all the experts who made this work possible. 

View the full map of this research here.  

 

For more of IFTF's research on the future of Work, Learning and organizations, visit our
Work+Learn Futures Lab and Workable Futures Lab.