The collaborative web: Building a divergent organizational model for research and development, based on 21st century notions of employee engagement

We describe the results of a 7-year management experiment in a small, high technology, research-services enterprise where the company moved from a traditional hierarchical management structure to a novel, researcher-centric, client-focused organization. We challenged traditional organizational assumptions: : Management is sometimes denigrated by technical leadership. So what is the meaning of "manager?” Is that concept still useful? What structure might take its place? : Technical staff members are often not trusted to understand business. What if we explicitly engaged engineers in business planning and decisions? : The technical skills of managers often decay, reducing their effectiveness in the long run. What if we share and rotate leadership in engineering? : The value of technical staff is directly correlated to how well they stay current, which sometimes is at odds with longevity of staffing. What if we paid people based on the value of future results? This paper will answer the questions of why did this, from whom did we draw insights, what we learned, and finally, whether we were successful in improving the value to the client and the engagement of our research staff.