Ecosystemic Organizations and the Future of Work — with Stowe Boyd

Podcast Notes

Stowe describes his calling as “the ecology of work and the anthropology of the future”. He’s founder of Work Futures, where he explores critical themes of the future of work, and top writer in Economics, Leadership and Futures on Medium. He also writes extensively about work technologies and serves as a Gigaom editor.

In our conversation, we talk about how platforms contribute to changing the relationship between consumers and producers and how this — in turn — leads to re-shaping organizations, as firms optimize for a low transaction cost economy. We also talk about fairness and the importance of distributed governance to be transparent and reliable, allowing the players in an ecosystem to operate without constantly “covering their backs”.

How to find Stowe Boyd and his work:

• Medium: https://medium.com/@stoweboyd
• Work Futures: https://workfutures.org/

Mentions and references:

• Rent the Runway: https://www.renttherunway.com/
• Amoeba Management | Management Philosophy | KYOCERA, https://global.kyocera.com/philosophy/amoeba.html
• Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell, Tantum Collins, David Silverman (2015): Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529127-team-of-teams
• Carlota Perez social and economic impact of technical change (including S curves): http://www.carlotaperez.org/
• The work of Ben Evans and Ben Thompson: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter; https://stratechery.com/
• “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” — Carl Jung, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_jung_157280
• Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Cindy Gallop in HBR on female leadership https://hbr.org/2020/04/7-leadership-lessons-men-can-learn-from-women
• Participatory City: http://www.participatorycity.org/about

Key insights

1. The evolution from the industrial to the post-industrial will generate changes in the shape not only of the keystone organizations — such as the organizing platforms — but also of the micro-organizations that adapt themselves to work in systems that work according to new rules;

2. Distributed governance comes down to questions of commons and fairness. Transparent governance protocols means that the players in an ecosystem don’t need to constantly worry about covering their backs, but can trust that the system is fair. This also helps “outsiders” to trust the ecosystem enabling organization and to play by their rules.

3. Capitalism and enterprising are not synonymous: enterprising can be done from different intentions and it is our obligation as observers and students of the shift we’re witnessing to push things in the right direction. Urban regeneration projects are examples that demonstrate entrepreneurs with shared visions working with the territory — the landscape — as a shared platform to generate benefits to a wider set of people than those in the business ecosystem.

? Boundaryless Conversations Podcast is about exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous.