Joi Ito: Using World of Warcraft to Prototype New Organizational Forms

Diego Rodriguez has been telling me for about a year now that, as an organizational researcher, I needed to learn more about this amazing guy Joi Ito. I need to listen to Diego more closely. I just read an article about Joi in Strategy+Business called The Ambassador for the Next Economy.  I was generally intrigued by both Joi's life and how he lives it, but that part I am fascinated by is the work he is doing to use his World of Warcraft guild as a way of prototyping a better from of innovative organization. 

I too have been struck by how inadequate the modern organizational form -- which seems to stem partly from arbitrary traditions and the natural tendency for just about creatures to form steep hierarchies where those on top have all or nearly all the power. I've proposed solutions over the years that are pretty mundane when I see what Joi is doing.  Here is what the article says in one place:

Long frustrated by the fairly conventional hierarchies in even the most innovative technology companies, Mr. Ito says he sees in his Warcraft guild a new way to organize, manage, and motivate people. With his guild doubling in size every month, he does a lot of learning on the fly. “Every week or so, I have to add a new rank, build a whole bunch of new rules, and throw in kind of ad hoc structures,” Mr. Ito says. “I’m playing with all the different kinds of management ideas I’ve had for companies with a bunch of people who are actually very dedicated. They will set their alarm clocks for 3 a.m. to run a raid of 40 people. They are committed to each other like people in a normal company wouldn’t be committed to each other. So as a test bed for these ideas, this is actually pretty amazing.”

On Friday, a group of us at the d.school were having a conversation about how you create a world where people can do rapid prototyping of a real organization, to learn quickly about variations of organizational form and its effects on performance and emotional engagement.  There are some in-person simulation games that are pretty useful for learning such lessons. Starpower comes to mind. It is an instructive game that can be used to create a hierarchical world -- in a matter of minutes -- where the top dogs often become incredibly abusive of those at the bottom. But the way that Joi is doing it strikes me as far more powerful, and in fact,  the structure of an online game is, increasingly, not just an analogy for how companies are organized, since more organizations are now spread throughout the world -- and even when people work in the same building -- people increasingly do everything over the web and phone.

So modern organizational life is increasingly an online game, but the modern organizational form hasn't caught up yet. I know that Joi isn't the only one using games and online communities as a place to prototype different organizational forms, and I would be curious to hear about others.

Finally, the other hint that I got that the web makes possible alternative forms that traditional theorists and consultants wouldn't have imagined came when I gave a little talk at Mozilla earlier in the Summer. I've known John Lilly for years (he just moved to COO), and have had some conversations and listened to CEO Mitchell Baker and open source marketing maven Asa Dotzler now and then over the past year. But the difference didn't really strike me until I gave a talk to the whole company. There was just 60 or so people in one room, and I realized that those few people were key nodes in a huge network that got many things done and yielded an enormous amount of power. Sure, they have some organizational problems at time.  But my comment to Mitchell Baker was that I wasn't surprised that they sometimes has management challenges (so do General Motors and Apple), but what surprised me as a career organizational researcher was that the organization not only exists, it continues to thrive by multiple effectiveness criteria --- see Mitchell's post positive reinforcement for creativity.

In short, following that old line in the Jimmy Buffett song, I tend to divide what I see into the world into two rough categories: Those things that are still a mystery to me, and those things that are much to clear.  The question of how to identify and implement a better organizational form for innovation remains a mystery to me (although I think there are some good hints out there about the paths to travel down). In contrast, as you've heard me say, it is far too clear to me that too many organizations let too many assholes in the door, let them continue to abuse others, and even reward these creeps for their dirty deeds.

Comments

[affliction warlock leveling build]

hey nice blog! you can check out mine at Arms Warrior Leveling Build if you want to. Cheers!

[WoW Fan]

World of Warcraft is also being used by the army to study social interactions in virtual worlds. Wonder what that could lead to?

[World of Warcraft Guides]

I personally run a company that makes me 6 figure a year income and my work is hectic. But hey, I play World of Warcraft with my children together.

So does that make me a loser in life?

[Wow Warlock]

Anyone who thinks people who play wow are losers needs to seriously grow up. There are a lot of us who have our priorities in check. I don't personally raid, but I do know plenty of people who do that still have a life.

[WOW Gold]

I love to play WOW. And I'm looking for a Guild that is constantly at war. I have 600.000 gold to donate for the guild that pick me.

[Chalkdust]

You should check out www.lookingforguild.net if you are recruiting or looking for a guild. We are the fastest growing guild recruitment website for WOW. Its 100% free.

[Joana's Horde]

Actually, I think palying World of Warcraft has actually help me relive stress and I have found my ideal partner through WoW. So are World of Warcraft players still losers??

[World of Warcraft cheats World of Warcraft hacks and wow gold guides]

i dont even know what the big deal about this joi ito guy is..

[Beau]

There are 9 million folks playing World of Warcraft. It'd be a mistake to lump us all into one or two piles, loser or otherwise.

While I don't have an MBA, I've run a guild in both WoW and EverQuest, and I've long been interested in the dynamics of group leadership and how game organizations might translate into real life.

While I've done the raiding guild thing, my primary goal was to create a healthy environment that encouraged people to achieve without wanting to throttle one another. Sort of what your new boob is about ...

[World of Warcraft Cheats]

i play wow and im not a loser :P

[World of Warcraft Hacks]

i dont think all wow players are losers

[Wes]

People who play warcraft are usually losers in real life, organizing a buch of losers into a guild to go on raids is like asking a bunch of crack addicts to stand in line for free crack. This is pure management bullshit!

[Gameintolife]

praiseworthy