Will Technology Turn Your Organization into a Startup?

Technology alone won’t change an organization, but people might.

Last week Forbes featured our upcoming course on Social Intrapreneurship in a post on 2014’s Most Valuable Employee: The Social Intrapreneur. While we’ve posted in the past on how businesses are already being redefined to enact change (TechChange is a registered B-Corp), it is increasingly it is individual intrapreneurs that are innovating within organizations to implement start-up practices and catalyze innovation. The timing is fortunate, as the old model of how to fit employees into an established organizational model is undergoing a fundamental redesign.

A recent Economist special report on tech startups stated: “[T]he world of startups today offers a preview of how large swathes of the economy will be organised tomorrow.” Organizations that thrive will not be the ones with passive employees, but rather those with team members able to adapt organizational processes around the possibilities of ever-improving technology. However, as we’ve covered in our World Bank animation (Why Is It So Hard to Try Something New in ICT4D?), these increasingly rapid technological disruptions of “sexy gadgets” still require individuals to manage organizational change.

Fortunately, you won’t have to figure it out alone. Since our last update, we have two additional speakers that can share their experiences. Ken Banks (@kiwanja), founder of FrontlineSMS and author of a new book on The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator, or even FCC CIO David Bray (@fcc_cio), a prodigy of government IT who started his first federal gig at 15.

Class starts Feb. 24. We hope you’ll join us. Apply now!