The Internet is changing the way we organize work. It is shifting the requirements for what we call
the “schedule push” and the hierarchical organization that it implies, and therefore it is removing
the type of control that is conventionally used to match resources to tasks, and customer demand
to supplies and services. Organizational hierarchies have become too expensive to sustain, and
in many cases their style of coordination is simply no longer necessary. The cost complexity of
the industrial complex starts to outweigh the benefits, and the Internet is making it redundant. The
question I put forward in this Article, after a short description of how I envision “the change,” is
what new requirements should be met by software in order to meet the requirements of the
networked economy. Business will develop from Business-to-Consumer (B2C) to Consumer-to-
Business (C2B) to People-to-People (P2P), customers more and more taking control over
business activities, overhead being replaced by customer focus. This is also a new reality for the
software world.
