Industrial organizations structure themselves around the concept of the value chain. This concept, first defined by Michael Porter, extended the ideas of Taylorism to explain how organizations create value through a series of progressive steps.
In an industrial economy, competitive advantage was created by managing this value chain to increase production efficiencies. As these chains became international, we created a global economy.
But we are now rapidly evolving into a new creative economy, one that is powered by digital technologies.
This new creative economy has fundamentally new rules. No longer is **increased efficiency** the prime driver of competitive advantage. Now, it's the **rate of innovation**.
Many companies are reimagining their organizational structures to be more adaptive value networks.
Value networks are complex systems that are inherently organic and evolving – autopoietic by nature. Teams and departments become connected nodes that must all be aligned to a company’s core mission.
When we seek to reimagine education, we are challenged to begin to think of schools as value networks, where the system is organic and adaptive. From the outside, these structures can appear to be messy, but their dynamic nature accelerates the rate of learning for both students and teachers. One that unleashes Creative Genius.
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