Collaboration in a Post-Institutional World

Clay Shirky claims that the problem of coordination and collaboration need not depend on institutions. New technology actually enables groups and individuals to collaborate without an institutional construct in which to operate. He claims that this is revolutionary and says that a revolution doesn’t take you from point A to point B but, rather, takes you from point A to chaos. The printing press took the West away from the organization that came from church rule into chaos that was not resolved until the treaty of Westphalia defining the nation-state as the newly dominant institution about 200 years later. He suspects that the emergence of social networks and peer to peer technology will do something similar to institutions today, particularly to corporations. But this time he thinks it is less likely to take 200 years and will likely play out in about 50.

I’ve talked for quite some time about the popularization of entrepreneurship and what that means for the corporation. I have basically said that the role of entrepreneur will become more widespread during the next 30 to 50 years, sweeping up an increasing percentage of employees into its net, just as knowledge work became so prevalent in the last century.

Shirky seems to challenge even the notion of what it would mean to be an entrepreneur, shedding light on how entrepreneurship might become so common. If collaboration and cooperation no longer requires an institutional overlay, or construct, entrepreneurship becomes an act of catalyzing behaviors and activities rather than focusing on creating the context or container for such activities.

This suggests that community itself may be the container for the actions and behaviors of individuals, with no need for creating institutions. It does suggest that the very notion of, or need for, institution is set to transform along with the definition of entrepreneur.

Here is Shirky's talk:

Predicting a Massive Wave of Social Obsolescence and Innovation

If I were to tell you that within 50 years, your car, your stereo, and your computer will all be obsolete, you would likely yawn. You expect such technology to radically change. Your reaction to my next prediction might be less obvious. Within 50 years, your schools, your corporation, and your government will all be obsolete. The social technology will radically change.

I can safely predict a few things. One is that the rate of technological change will continue to accelerate. A big factor in the rate of innovation is information. Access to, and quantity of, information are both growing rapidly. The result? Accelerating levels of innovation that change technology.

The impact of technology is never benign. Life expectancy will go up, which seems wonderful. But if this happens while birth rates are dropping, the ratio of working population to retired population is likely to drop precipitously. Technology is disruptive.

Technology changes impact social institutions. The Gutenberg Press made it possible for households to afford a copy of the Bible. (During medieval times, one man sold his house to buy a Bible.) This is fascinating technology but its real impact was social – one could argue that the distribution of Bibles triggered the distribution of power and helped to fuel the Protestant Revolution. This is a clear case of technological innovation triggering social innovation. It is by no means the only such case.

Technological inventions will radically change in the next fifty years. The change of social inventions will be even more remarkable. Corporations, government, and schools will perhaps be changed the most.
Will the corporation as it is now is managed be able to keep pace with technology and market changes? Is the way that employees are now managed likely to increase productivity enough to offset the precipitous drop in the ratio of working population to retired population?

Will the nation-state as it is now governed be able to achieve important like sustaining peace and reducing green house gases? It is hard to imagine that as more countries compete economically with India and China that they’ll make more progress in reducing greenhouse gases. It is hard to imagine that as more countries gain the technology of nuclear weaponry that they will all use it as a war prophylactic rather than an actual weapon.

Do we think that our current education system - geared as it is towards realizing the potential of maybe 5% of the population - is going to survive in a world where careers are being redefined as quickly as products are today?

The rate of technological change will continue, but it will seem almost incidental to a larger work. By 2050, the world's social institutions will have been radically reconfigured and with it the very way we think about society and self. We will look back on the half century leading up to this time as a period of the most significant disruption of social systems ever seen.

We’re going to see a transformation of our very notions of institution, organization, and roles. It will seem as though the time leading up to the 21st century was an ice age, a time when social roles and institutions were basically frozen. And by 2050, what was once frozen will be in flow.