Of three elements of IdeaSpaces Structure is easily the most difficult to implement. You can have all of the innovative Spaces in the world. You can give people the Time to reflect, create, and change. If you have an organization that resists change, all of the other elements will be stunted or rendered moot. The emerging economy is infinitely changeable and organizations that are unable to pivot with it will quickly find themselves out of step with reality. This happened during the industrial era but it happened far more slowly. The half life of dying industries was measured in decades, now it’s measured in years or even months. In this environment organizations need to be designed to absorb ideas, innovations, and change on a continuous basis and not just during an annual or biennial strategic planning process. With the right organizational design, ideas hatched in Spaces by creative participants that have the Time to reflect can be supercharged into progress that benefits the bottom line, employees, learners, and society in general. With the wrong organizational design, those very same ideas will fizzle before they achieve any sort of critical mass.
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