Summary

Stories like the ones surrounding Mitt Romney’s proposed firing of Big Bird and Dave Carroll’s very public complaints about customer service at United Airlines serve to illustrate the speed with which information can be sent and received among members of a node community. Gone are the days when successful P2P architecture depended on the decisions made by a few at the top of a traditional hierarchy. Nodes, with their dual roles of sending and receiving information, can communicate directly with each other with no need for a centralized, third party intermediary.

While the wrongful smearing and threatening of Ryan Lanza serves as a warning of what can go wrong with P2P architecture, there are numerous benefits and value propositions when the power of the network is harnessed for organizational design. The lack of a central authority figure enables the immediate flow of information between nodes and allows a network to adapt to new landscapes and scenarios more nimbly than organizations with rigid structures and boundaries. The type and number of connections within a node community also allows the skills and knowledge of the entire community to be leveraged and lets real-time feedback and dialogue occur; these are important elements in the overall growth and strengthening of an organization.