An Emergently Wicked Large-Scale Crowd-Based Collaborative "Startup" for a Mega-Scale Industrial Project

An on-going field study set within Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc (HTT), one of the major developers of the futuristic hyperloop transportation system, suggests a new organizational form: a emergently wicked... [ view full abstract ]

An on-going field study set within Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc (HTT), one of the major developers of the futuristic hyperloop transportation system, suggests a new organizational form: a emergently wicked organizational collaboration rather than one managed by a top management teams. This crowd is not a free for all, but rather works through HTT’s unique fluidity that enables members of the crowd to contribute to management by moving into the decision making levels of the hierarchy.

We begin by extending Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig’s (2014) analysis of “new” forms of organizing to two-sided crowds and innovation tournaments / user innovation communities. We then add emergently wicked organizational collaboration (as exemplified by HTT) as a sixth “new” form. We go beyond the four organizing goals offered in Puranam, et al. to offer additional design details for understanding the future of work and organizations.

In our embedded analysis of HTT, we find that crowdsourced, open innovation can flourish even where intellectual property must be guarded and safety and regulatory guidelines are strict. The key is evolving combinations of new and traditional organizational structures, supported by flexible technology platforms and practices, in the context of interesting and important problems. Responses to a set of seven generative dilemmas offer the binding energy to maintain the organization’s structure, even as the organization is built of evolving, open, components.