The Platform Organization: Recombining Strategies, Structures, and Surprises

Abstract

The global technology strategy of Olivetti, a leading European computer firm, is analyzed over the last decade in order to illustrate how high-tech firms undergo transformations which not only tend to destroy their best core competencies, but also affect their very business identity. Task uncertainty is so pronounced that conventional ways of looking at the organizational structures and processes, such as the transaction costs approach or the strategy-structure link, need to be amended in favor of a more dynamic perspective. Such a perspective looks at organizations as platforms, or contexts, out of which specific structures are extracted, tried out and discarded in a pragmatic manner. A platform is a metaorganization, a formative context that molds structures, and routines shaping them into well-known forms, such as the hierarchy, the matrix and even the network, but on a highly volatile basis. Hence, the platform organization may appear to be confused and inefficient but its value lies in its readiness to sport whatever organizational form is required under the circumstances. Platforms are characterized by surprises, and organization members, no matter how they see themselves after the fact, are busy improvising and tinkering. Drawing on similar studies carried out in Silicon Valley, one can draw the conclusion that high-tech firms can survive if they are smart at doing what ‘savages do daily’, i.e. bricolage In searching out the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it. (Heraclitus) Men and women confronting change are never fully prepared for the demands of the moment, but they are strengthened to meet uncertainty if they can claim a history of improvisation and a habit of reflection … Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making shift and making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with pattern, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity. (Mary C. Bateson)When the artists and sculptors I know work, there’s a sort of free play idea. You try things; you experiment. It’s kind of naive and childish, it’s like kids in a playpen. Scientists work that way too — for example genetic scientists that I have been involved with seem to work similarly. It’s kind of like throwing things out and then following the ideas, rather than predicting where you’re going to go. (Frank O, Gehry)