Silos Are Out

Silos — along with unhealthy, dysfunctional organizations — will not last long in today’s world of complex products and broad ecosystems.

…25 years ago, many products were still single-company products and most, if not all, of the intellectual property was contained in a single company. Today, however, most products are combinations of knowledge and intellectual property that resides in different organizations. Our world is less and less about the single pieces of intellectual property and more and more about the networks that help connect these pieces. The total stock of information used in these ecosystems exceeds the capacity of single organizations because doubling the size of huge organizations does not double the capacity of that organization to hold knowledge and put it into productive use.

In a world in which implementing the next generation of ideas will increasingly require pulling resources from different organizations, barriers to collaboration will be a crucial constraint limiting the development of firms. Agility, context, and a strong network are becoming the survival traits where assets, control, and power used to rule.

— From The Cognitive Limit of Organizations, MIT Idea Lab

It takes more than a village to run a successful company today. It takes a healthy, cohesive, resonant organization with strong internal networks.