Many Facets of Leadership, The

Chapter 30. Organizing for Strategic Flexibility

Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans

The key challenge facing organizational architects is to design structural configurations that are truly flexible—that have the capacity to expand and contract at short notice, to rapidly change course, and to be quickly repositioned as new realities unfold. This may be an unattainable goal. However, there are examples of dynamic ecosystems in which enterprises do exhibit some of the building blocks and the recipes of this emerging organizational order.

The ebb and flow of success in the Silicon Valley has prompted many entrepreneurs to structure their enterprises for real flexibility. The name of the game is constant change—focusing at one time on innovation, changing ...