We Collaborate
Collaboration has always been a place of magic. But it sure starts to look different when it’s accelerated by breakthroughs in technology.
Working together is now de facto, independent of location and time. This technology-enabled collaboration is reimagining the future of the workforce. Take the example of career fairs in the Metaverse, which demonstratehow organizations can source talent for hybrid ways of working. Hybrid now defines the professional workplace, where people collaborate in various ways and with various means, increasingly at the very edges of what used to be the ‘core organization’.
This disparate form of teamwork aims to get the best results from an increasingly scarce workforce, requiring a new level of cross-organization and cross-sector partnering. Here, collaboration moves from an afterthought to being fully ingrained in new business models – by design. Future organization structures will evolve towards a decentralized mode of operation, demanding fewer physical assets, less energy, less travel, less command and control, maybe even fewer leaders. Indeed, a kind of magic.
As the world is emerging from the other side of the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear why moving forward with hybrid ways of working goes a long way to meeting not just business but also sustainability goals. Organizations have shown the tenacity to deliver results while facing what seemed like unsurmountable odds, working from anywhere, with limited means.
Virtual workplaces have necessitated the advent of new productivity tools and techniques, bolstering the team as the default entry into the workday. An always-connected – yet asynchronous – and collaborative style of working is breaking barriers of geography and time zones. It’s redefining what we call “just another day at the office”.
Customer demand for seamless experiences across services has given rise to ‘meshed’, cross-industry business models. It introduces an era of co-opetition, as organizations reach beyond the boundaries of their own industry to develop new value propositions with ecosystem partners, startups, and competitors. It’s also by far the best way to achieve joint targets for sustainability and areas of social good: rethinking the way resources are consumed and produced, with resiliency and sustainability taking the front seat. What becomes paramount is needs-based production, combined with effective business and technology operation models, designed to consume less across the enterprise lifecycle.
The convergence of the physical and virtual worlds leads to a new, distributed online economy, powered by trust. Digitization of assets is spreading, from Financial Services to other sectors as well. Distributed ledger technology now finds use in areas as diverse as art, retail, real estate, and the upcoming Metaverse. This new economy certainly looks decentralized, with autonomy enabled via peer-to-peer transactions.
Future organizational structures will take the best of decentralized organizations and traditional ones. While traditional institutions might be hesitant at the prospect of decentralization, forward-looking firms will look at decentralized use cases through a centralized lens to enable the transformation journey. This blended approach will allow organizations to focus on the business at hand, while leveraging the best technologies - a true marriage of business and technology.
Sudhir Pai
Expert in Residence