Agile enterprise

Agile Enterprise is a fast moving, flexible and robust firm capable of rapid and cost efficient response to unexpected challenges, events, and opportunities. Built on policies and processes that facilitate speed and change, it aims to achieve continuous competitive advantage in serving its customers. Agile enterprises use diffused authority and flat organizational structure to speed up information flows among different departments, and develop close, trust-based relationships with their customers and suppliers

Theoretical underpinnings

The traditional bureaucratic model is exemplified by Scientific Management, which was developed during the Industrial Era for use in conditions that were easily measured, controlled, and replicated. It is characterized by routine, streamlined work and close supervision of workers who have clearly defined responsibilities. Mass production, which is characterized by centralized hierarchy, standardized product designs, and specialization of labor, is typical of a bureaucratic organization.During the Information era, however, rapid technological changes, extensive globalization, and intensive competition have created significant pressures on organizations. The Agile Enterprise is an appropriate alternative to the bureaucratic model under these conditions. The Agile Enterprise uses concepts from complexity science, which is based on the assumption that relationships between actors are autonomous and continuous. The result is self-organizing emergence, or the spontaneous formation of constantly evolving work teams, that produces novel products, services, or solutions through iterative and incremental development. The Agile Enterprise relies on the ability of its participants to rapidly evaluate feedback and new information, to continuously learn, and to morph and evolve as needed, often spontaneously. [1] [2] [3]

Marketplace agility

For an agile enterprise, competitiveness is a constantly moving target. This type of organization strives to maximize its responsiveness to changes in the competitive environment while minimizing internal trauma resulting from change. This means products and services as well as the organization must be able to continuously evolve, while maintaining a high level of performance, which drives organizational sustainability. Outward agility requires rapid innovation by exploring new opportunities; exploiting the marketplace by delivering new products, services, or solutions; adapting to changing market conditions by incorporating feedback; and exiting markets when appropriate (see diagram). [4] Agile organizations tend to be the disruptive innovators in an industry, deploying technologically superior and novel products into the market, often unnoticed by competitors.

Organizational agility

For an organization to achieve marketplace agility, it must be organized in a way that supports continuous change. External adaptability derives primarily from a self-organizing workforce. A Self-organizing workforce requires employees to assume multiple roles, improvise, spontaneously collaborate, and rapidly redeploy from one work team to another and another, while simultaneously learning from and teaching their peers. [5] [6] [7] [8] For this type of organization to succeed, its employees must be open to new ideas and be able to collaborate with others to accomplish shared goals. Workforce scalability facilitates this process. Workforce scalability consists of two components: workforce alignments (WAs) and workforce fluidity (WF). WAs exist when Human Resources reconfigure in ways that bring them and their activities in synch with changing marketplace demands. WF reflects the ease, speed, and cost effectiveness with which these constant reconfigurations are achieved. In brief, marketplace agility is achieved through organizational agility which, in turn, is facilitated by workforce scalability.

Characteristics of an agile enterprise

In their book "The Starfish And the Spider" [Brafman, O. & Beckstrom, R.A. (2006). The Starfish And The Spider. London: Penguin Books.] by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom describe several characteristics of a starfish organization, a term they use as a metaphor for an Agile Enterprise because of the starfish’s ability to adapt to trauma by rapidly regenerating lost limbs. Separated limbs are capable of returning to health and surviving on their own, much like autonomous work teams in an Agile Enterprise. (These authors use the term spider as a metaphor for bureaucracy because a spider’s body is controlled by a central nervous system and cannot survive severe trauma, much like a bureaucracy that is dependent on top level management to make all major decisions.) Brafman and Beckstrom offer several characteristics of a starfish organization that are consistent with views of the Agile Enterprise. Some of these can be summarized as follows:
#Projects are generated everywhere in the organization, and many times even from outside affiliates.
#No one is in control; thump it on the head and it still survives.
#If you take out a unit, the overall organization quickly recovers.
#Participants function autonomously, which facilitates workforce scalability.
#Roles are amorphous and ever-changing; tasks are performed on an “as needed” basis.
#Knowledge and power are distributed; intelligence is spread throughout the organization.
#Working groups communicate directly, not hierarchically.
#Key decisions are made collaboratively, on the spot and on the fly.

Interviews

* cite web
last = Reinhard
first = Ulrike Reinhard
year = 2007
url = http://blog.whoiswho.de/stories/22598/
title = Intrinsic Motivation Will Play a Major Role (Ulrike Reinhard spoke with John Seely Brown (JSP)
publisher = blog.whoiswho.de
* cite web
last = Seely Brown
first = John
year = 2005
url = http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail610.html
title = Supernova 2005: John Seely Brown on business agility (using the example of Toyota's relationship with suppliers as a starting point)
publisher = http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org
* cite web
last = Malone
first = Thomas
year = 2005
url = http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail731.html
title = The Future of work
publisher = http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org

ee also

* Agile software development
* Business model
* Semantic Web
* Semantic Grid
* Web 3.0 / Web 2.0
* Ontology (computer science)
* Semantic wiki
* Wikinomics
* Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0)
* Enterprise social software

Additional Reading

Agile Project Management (Highsmith)Incremental and Iterative Development for Managers (Larman)The Success of Open Source (Weber)The Wisdom of Crowds (Suroweicki)The World is Flat (Friedman)Wikinomics (Tapscott)

References

#Cooksey, R.W. (2001). "What Is Complexity Science? A Contextually Grounded Tapestry of Systemic Dynamism, Paradigm Diversity, Theoretical Eclecticism and Organizational Learning". Emergence 3 (1): 77-103. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
#Anderson, P. (1999). "Complexity theory and organization science". Organization Science 10 (3): 216-232. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
#Holbrook, M.B. (2003). "Adventures in Complexity: An Essay on Dynamic Open Complex Adaptive Systems, Butterfly Effects, Self-Organizing Order, Coevolution, the Ecological Perspective, Fitness Landscapes, Market Spaces, Emergent Beauty at the Edge of Chaos, and All That Jazz". Academy of Marketing Science Review 6. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
#Crossan, M.M.; Lane, H.W.; White, R.E.; Klus, L. (1996). "The improvising organization: Where planning meets opportunity". Organizational Dynamics 24 (4): 20-35. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
#Breu. K. (2002). “Workforce Agility: The New Employee Strategy for the Knowledge Economy”. Journal of Information Technology, 17, 21 (accessed through ProQuest).
#Coleman, H. Jr. (1999). “What Enables Self-organizing Behavior in Business?” Emergence, 1: 33-48.
#Wanberg, C. & Banas, J. (2000). “Predictors and Outcomes of Openness to Changes in a Reorganizing Workplace. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 1: 132-142.
#Dyer, L. & Ericksen, J. (2007). "Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace Agility Through Workforce Scalability. in J. Storey (ed). Human Resource Management: A Critical Text. (2nd ed.) London: Thompson Learning.
#Brafman, O. & Beckstrom, R.A. (2006). The Starfish And The Spider. London: Penguin Books.