This talk will suggest that we are in the early stages of a profound increase in
human freedom in business that may, in the long run, be as important a change
for businesses as the change to democracies was for governments. This change is
enabled by information technology (which lets many more people have enough
information to make decisions for themselves), but it is driven by human
desires: For the first time in human history, we can now have both the economic
efficiencies of large organizations and the human benefits of small ones:
freedom, motivation, creativity, and flexibility.
The talk will summarize the speaker's recent book, The Future of Work, with
special emphasis on: (1) a detailed analogy between how human societies have
evolved through history and how businesses are evolving now, (2) the economic
conditions for more decentralized decision-making, and (3) three structures for
decentralized decision-making (loose hierarchies, democracies, and markets).
Further information is available as follows:
(1) a 3 page summary of the book:
http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/Briefs/4Malone_Work_Brief_Final.pdf
(2) the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1591391253/qid=1068401087/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-2000088-0040937?v=glance&s=books
(3) the book website:
http://ccs.mit.edu/futureofwork
(4) a paper summarizing the mathematics behind the key
economic argument in the book:
http://ccs.mit.edu/icis1996.pdf