U+ZINE #2 - Do Corporations have a future? - Plurality University

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DO CORPORATIONS
HAVE A FUTURE?

U+ZINE
Calls for “new narratives” are everywhere, but what
exactly do they mean? Certainly more than just changing
a few habits or finding new “solutions”. In a constantly
changing world, we need to be able to question everything
(starting with the “problems”), to dare anything. We need
to do it together, and appeal to the senses and emotions
as much, if not more, than reason.
To this end, we are launching U+ZINE: a cycle of short
thematic explorations for alternative futures and change,
through the lens of arts and fiction. Each month, one
theme, one call for contributions, one meeting (in France)
and one publication (International). Open to all!
How does it work? Every month, we will send out a
thematic call. Start thinking about the questions; send us
an exemple of your work; use the theme as an opportunity
to create a short text, picture etc.; share references to
artists, designers, thinkers or utopians that you believe
present an original or transformative perspective on the
subject…
Selected contributions will feature in a short,
open-access publication.

IMAGES YOU SEE IN HERE ARE THE ONES WE
RECEIVED FROM THE ARTIST’S TO REPRESENT
THEIR PROJECT. THEY ARE NOT FREE OF USE.
THEY MIGHT BE, BUT YOU NEED TO ASK IF YOU CAN
USE THEM.
IF YOU WANT TO BE REDIRECTED TO THE ARTIST’S
WEBPAGE OR ORIGINAL WORK AND FIND OUT
MORE ABOUT THEIR PROJECTS «CLICK» ON THE
STAR ✷ ON EACH PAGE

In science fiction, corporations are mostly
vilains
/ More and more corporation resort to science
fiction to think about their future.
DO
CORPORATIONS
HAVE
A FUTURE?
This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.
Entrepreneurs want to “change the world”
/ The narratives of “collapse” often begin with
that
of markets and corporations.
Corporations create wealth
/ Corporations extract and hoard wealth.
The Anthropocene
/ The Capitalocene.
Corporations are changing
/ We’ve heard that before.
…
… Is there a role for corporations in a truly sustainable
future? If so, what kinds of corporations,
governed how, producing what, how, with and for
whom?
And what is a corporation, really? Even today, what
do a large multinational company, a freelancer’s
cooperative, a startup looking for a buyer, a web
platform, the managers of a local Commons, a “distributed
autonomous corporation” (DAO), a Bcorp
(B for « Benefit"), have in common? What if we invented
new words in order to invent new realities,
new productive organizations?
For the 2nd edition of U+ZINE, the Plurality University
Network invited artistic, fictional, speculative and
utopian works looking at the future of corporations,
corporations of the future, or completely revisiting
our idea of “the corporation”.
In this Zine, you will find a selection of the content
that we gathered and received. You will find it all online
here: https://corpora.latelier-des-chercheurs.
fr/uzine-do-corporations-have-a-future
Also, since we felt that we needed new words to
describe how things currently known as corporations
might change and diversify in the future, we
created a little game to do just that. If you play it, let
us know what you came up with!

« DO CORPORATIONS HAVE A FUTURE? »
- THE QUESTION BEARS ASKING…
10
CORPORATE DYSTOPIAS (FUTURE/PRESENT)
14
JULIEN PRÉVIEUX’S COUNTER-PRODUCTIVITY
18
ALT CORPS
23
ARTIFYING CORPORATIONS
27
INVENTING NEW NAMES FOR NEW KINDS OF
CORPORATIONS
34

« DO CORPORATIONS HAVE A FUTURE? »
- THE QUESTION BEARS ASKING…
« Companies » formed by individuals in pursuit of a common economic goal have
existed for thousands of years, but the Corporation as we know it today (freedom of
establishment, legal personhood, limited liability, tradeable stock, wage labor…) is but
a few centuries old. Its dominance in shaping the economy as well as society is more
recent still, and comes with a nagging question: Are corporations up to the responsibility
that comes with this power, and to the challenges of the near future?
Here are four contemporary excerpts that put the future of corporations in question.
10
“The bond between the corporation and its public
purpose has waxed and waned since corporations were
first established nearly two millennia ago.
This has happened in response to socio-economic and
geopolitical shifts, but the corporation’s foundations
remained embedded in delivering public purposes
alongside commercial functions. It is only over the last
half-century that the sharp intensification of the profit
motive has occurred. [...]
In 1962, Milton Friedman set out a framework for
business in which he described the social responsibility
of businesses as being to increase profits so long as they
stay within the rules of the game. It was a powerful and
influential proposition that established the conventional
framework for business around the world. However, it
has serious deficiencies and is no longer tenable as a
framework for business in the 21st century. It has been
the source of growing disaffection with business, its
environmental, social and political problems, and the
erosion of trust in it.
Those problems will intensify in the future as
technological advances risk exacerbating social
detriments as well as benefits of corporations, and
public policy responses lag increasingly far behind
innovations.”
British Academy, 2018
« Reforming Business for the XXIst Century »
« It is not yet time for the obituary (and that time
may never come), but the sun is certainly setting on
the Golden Age of corporations. It is time to review
the memoirs of the corporation as an idea, and
contemplate a post-corporate future framed by
its gradual withdrawal from the center stage of the
world’s economic affairs. »
✷ Venkatesh Rao, 2011,
«A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100»
The Friedman Doctrine:
« There is one and only one social responsibility of
business — to use its resources and engage in
activities designed to increase its profits so long
as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to
say, engages in open and free competition without
deception or fraud. »
✷ Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom,
University of Chicago Press, 1962

«I was challenged by the editors here at Work: Reimagined to imagine what a
corporation might look like in 2050. (…) I’ll pick several forces that could have
a major impact on the world of business in 2050, and imagine edge cases for
each one: (…) : economic inequality, climate change, and artificials (AI and robots).»
✷ Stowe Boyd, 2015,
«Imagining a Corporation in 2050»
«Instead of a pyramid, Humania’s companies are
heterarchies: They are more like a brain than an
army. In the brain — and in fast-and-loose companies
— different sorts of connections and groupings
of connected elements can form. There is no
single way to organize. People can choose the sort
of relationships that most make sense.»
«We are in the midst of a transition,
which is to say: a very particular stage in
the evolution of a society, when it finds it
more and more difficult to maintain the
economic system on which it is founded,
and begins to haltingly reorganize
around other principles, which will
end up shaping the conditions of our
existence.»
✷ Amandine Brugière & Aurialie Jublin,
« Digiwork: Mutations du travail à l’ère numérique »,
Fing, 2014 [in French], image: Yoan Ollivier
HUMANIA
LIMITS ON AI
MODERATE
CLIMATE CHANGE
COLLAPSELAND
INEQUALITY
RAMPANT
NEO-FEUDALISTAN
«Collapseland businesses are much like businesses
of 2015. Most efforts are directed toward basic requirements
— like desalinating water, relocating people
away from low-lying or drought stricken areas, and
struggling with food production challenges. As a result,
little innovation has taken place. It’s no different
from the company you work for today, except longer
hours, fewer co-workers, less pay, and much more
dust.»
« In Neo-Feudalistan Corporations are able to invest
in ever-more-intelligent AI, driving down the
prices of food, goods, and services across the
board in almost all industries. While this yielded profits
sufficient to maintain the system, it also created
companies with significantly smaller staffs.»

CORPORATE DYSTOPIAS (FUTURE/PRESENT)
Arts and science fiction rarely describe corporations as positive agents in society. Is
any resemblance to real legal persons present or future purely coincidental, or is art
pointing at what may happen in the absence of a major rethinking of what corporations
are about?
EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE
14
«Jennifer Lyn Morone,
Inc has advanced into the
inevitable next stage of
Capitalism by becoming
an incorporated
person. This model
allows you to turn
your health, genetics,
personality, capabilities,
experience, potential,
virtues and vices into
profit. In this system
You are the founder,
CEO, shareholder and
product using your own
resources.»
✷ Jennifer Lyn Morone, 2013-present
AMORAL, POWER-HUNGRY MEGACORPS
Wall-e, Andrew Stanton, Disney/Pixar, 2008
«According to The History of Buy n Large, the corporation
got its start as a maker of frozen yogurt. (…)
Later on, the business eventually acquired Large
Industries, a men’s suit company. The combined
entity became known as an internet marketing
service corporation named Buy n’ Large (…) By the
year 2057, as shown on the Buy n Large website,
the conglomerate became a worldwide leader in
the fields of aerospace, agriculture, construction,
consumer goods, corporate grooming, earth transport,
electronics, energy, engineering, finance,
food services, fusion research, government, hydro-power,
infrastructures, media [etc.]
After BnL took over the government, the BnL logo
was added in the flags of countries around the world.
Buy n Large continued to expand its efforts for
control so much that by the year 2105, Buy n Large
(…) had finally become a world leader in every
conceivable field including world leadership. (…) By
giving the entire population on Earth «the right to
spend», humanity went into a state of mass consumerism
which covered the entire planet in un-recycled
refuse. By the time the movie WALL•E takes
place, Buy n Large had built the Axiom, an executive
starliner (among thousands of others whose
names have not been disclosed), as a temporary
refuge outside Earth while millions of WALL•E
units and smaller number of huge mobile incinerators
attempt to clean up the planet. Originally its
cruise was only to be five years long until the BnL
CEO proclaimed Earth unable to support life due to
extreme toxicity. After Buy n Large officially abandoned
Earth in 2110, Shelby Forthright and all other
humans supervising the cleanup had everything
shut down and left. By the time the story in WALL•E
takes place, Buy n Large (…) no longer truly exists
in a corporate sense. All Buy n Large activity on the
Axiom is the same as it was 700 years before. It still
has the same advertisements, but the corporation
is just run on a defunct, continuing cycle by robots.
Babies are taught how Buy n Large is their «very
best friend», there are BnL logos on everything,
and there are still automated announcements
about Buy n Large (…)»
[from ✷ PixarWiki]

NOTHING PERSONAL, IT’S JUST BUSINESS
PRECARIAT FOR ALL
«The damnfool human species has finally succeeded
in making itself obsolete. The proximate cause
of its displacement from the pinnacle of creation
(or the pinnacle of teleological self-congratulation,
depending on your stance on evolutionary
biology) is an attack of self-aware corporations.
The phrase «smart money» has taken on a whole
new meaning, for the collision between international
business law and neurocomputing technology
has given rise to a whole new family of species -
fast-moving corporate carnivores in the Net. (…)
Basically, sufficiently complex resource-allocation
algorithms reallocate scarce resources ... and
if you don’t jump to get out of their way, they’ll reallocate
you.»
✷ Charles Stross,
Accelerando,
2005
A LIST OF
«EVIL CORPORATIONS
FROM THE FUTURE»
Tyrell (Blade Runner), the makers of Replicants,
android soldiers and slave workers who end up
escaping their maker’s control. Slogan: « More
Human Than Human ».
Weyland-Yutani(Alien), a technology supplier
willing to put its employees in danger for the sake
of profit and ultimately, to do anything to get its
hand on an Alien in order to create weapons.
Cyberdyne (Terminator), the creators of SKY-
NET, a neural network and general A.I. that
achieves self-awareness and resists the corporation’s
efforts to de-activate it, launching a war
between machines and humans.
Omni Consumer Products (Robocop), a
sprawling megacorporation whose intent is to
fully privatize a dystopian Detroit into «Delta
City», a manufactured municipality governed by
a corporatocracy. ✷
Rekall (Total Recall), a company specializing in
memory implants, complicit in corporate and
political crowd manipulation schemes.
MNU (District 9), the world’s second largest
weapons manufacturer. Put in charge by the government
of South Africa to contain a colony of
stranded aliens, it tries to steal their technology
and use them as slave labor.
RDA (Avatar), a Silicon Valley that became the
oldest and largest of the quasi-governmental
administrative entities (QGAEs). Its relentless
quest to extract the precious minerals Unobtanium
from the Pandora planet results in a war
with the native inhabitants.
Buy’n Large (Wall-E), see above
Umbrella Corporation (Resident Evil), a pharmaceutical
company whose legitimate status is
only a front for their secret research of «bio-organic
weapons» (B.O.W.s), developed through
the use of a unique virus discovered by the company
founders. But the virus leaks…
✷ Winfried Baumann, «Urban Nomads»
Soylent Corporation (Soylent Green), a company
is responsible for feeding most of the world’s
population following an apocalypse, whose
new product Soylent Green is revealed to be
produced out of human meat.

JULIEN PRÉVIEUX’S COUNTER-PRODUCTIVITY
18
« Work, management, economics, politics, control systems, state-of-the‐art
technologies and the culture industry are the many ‘worlds’ that ✷ Julien
Prévieux’s activities involve. (…) His work often appropriates the vocabulary,
mechanisms and modus operandi of the sectors by which it is informed,
the better to highlight their dogmas, excesses and, when all is said and
done, their vacuousness. By shrewdly adopting the stance of an individual
facing whole swathes of society that are, in many respects, dehumanised,
Prévieux develops a strategy of counterproductivity, or what the philosopher
Elie During called, in a recent essay about the artist’s praxis, ‘counteremployment’.
»
«What Shall We Do Next?» - Sequence #3
Christophe Gallois
Where Is My
(Deep) Mind?
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”
says Wiliam Gibson. The gestures to activate a new
device are patented. For example the “slide-to-unlock”
movement has been patented by Apple several years
ago. Julien Prévieux started to collect these specific movements
in 2006. His assumption was that the gestures
patented today are the movements we may all have to
do in the near future: patents as an archive of gestures to
come.

Where Is My
(Deep) Mind?
In the video Where Is My (Deep) Mind? four performers
embody different Machine Learning experiences. As experimenters
and subject of experience, the actors show
a range of automatic learning processes spanning from
the recognition of sporting movements to negotiation
techniques for buying and selling. Codified gestures and
words, transferred to machines unaware of the cultural
context, produce many unexpected bugs or mistakes,
behavioural counterfeits with comic accents. (…) These
programs may change the world in a less enchanting way
than the Silicon Valley enthusiasts want to say. What will
the large-scale deployment of these systems do to the
body and reason?
Patterns of Life
Patterns of Life presents a history of movement
analysis. From Georges Demenÿ’s chrono-photography
of faulty gait in the late 19th century to the
“activity-based intelligence” generated by the US
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the film
traces the genealogy of the quantification and visualisation
of bodily movement and the various ways of
making sense of it. The characters played by dancers
from the Opéra de Paris recreate key experiments in
the measurement and analysis of movement, giving
choreographic expression to protocols and results.

ALT CORPS
The corporate form can also be used for purposes and in ways that differ significantly,
even sometimes radically, from dominant practices in the business world. Are these
«alt corporations» a taste of times to come?
How to make the difference between real alternatives and window-dressing?
REPAIR
22
TAKE ON A MISSION
L’AG du futur (the Shareholders Meeting of the Future)
A public simulation of the General Meeting of a fictitious company, Mirliton, wishing to transform itself into
a mission-led company. We gathered 700 people who slipped into the shoes of Mirliton shareholders.
✷ Prophil, 2019
The fictive company «Universal Cleansing Plan» was founded in 2019. Angelica Boehm and Nicole Loeser (…)
founded a fictive globally acting NGO based on sociocracy. It is officially located on an island that has been built up
from parts of the Pacific Garbage Patch. It acts worldwidely, intercontinentally and decentrally. (…) The company
«Universal Cleansing Plan» is built as a platform and open source. Their goals are oriented towards the common
good and focus on circular economy and regeneration design. To be more productive, effective and impactful, the
network works in an interdisciplinary manner in various areas. The company has branches of research institutions
and production facilities where e.g. mealworm for plastic decomposition are planted as well as pure bio-plastic
manufacturers operated by world leading material experts and material engineers. »
✷ Angelica Boehm and Nicole Loeser, 2020,
« Universal Cleansing Plan »
GIVE BACK
Exit to Community (E2C) is an effort to develop
alternatives to the standard model of the startup
«exit.» Rather than simply aiming for an acquisition
by a more established company or a public
stock offering, could startups aim to mature into
ownership by their community of stakeholders?
✷ Media Enterprise Design Lab, University of Colorado
Boulder

Extracts (6)
COOPERATE REDIRECT « Renounce already obsolete futures », such
is the motto of the closing World Initiative
by Origens Media Lab, an interdisciplinary
research lab on the Anthropocene. In order
to address the challenges of our era, the
challenge is not just to “transition”, but to “redirect”
the whole economy. And this begins with
renouncing useless and negative projects
(defuturation, de-innovation) and to process
“negative commons” (destauration) such as
industrial wastelands. To the lab’s founders,
this redirection is “an industrial and strategic
challenge” for organizations, that can generate
its own innovations and opportunities,
although in a post-growth paradigm. Created
in 2020 by Clermont Business School and
Strate Design, the MSc. in “Strategy & Design
for the Anthropocene” will teach management
and design students to apply these principles
in real organizations.
«(…) the space diaspora occurred as late capitalism
writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to
destroy Earth’s biosphere or change its rules. Many
argued for the destruction of the biosphere, as being
the lesser of two evils
one of the most influential forms of economic change
had ancient origins in Mondragon, Euskadi, a small
Basque town that ran an economic system of nested
co-ops organized for mutual support. A growing
network of space settlements used Mondragon as a
model for adapting beyond their scientific station origins
to a larger economic system. Cooperating as if in
a diffuse Mondragon, the individual space settlements,
widely scattered, associated for mutual support and
supercomputers and artificial intelligence made it
possible to fully coordinate a non-market economy, in
effect mathematicizing the Mondragon. Needs were
determined year to year in precise demographic detail,
and production then directed to fill the predicted
needs. All economic transactions—from energy creation
and extraction of raw materials, through manufacturing
and distribution, to consumption and waste
recycling—were accounted for in a single computer
program. Once policy questions were answered—
meaning desires articulated in a sharply contested
political struggle—the total annual economy of the solar
system could be called out on a quantum computer
in less than a second. The resulting qube-programmed
Mondragon, sometimes called the Albert-Hahnel
model, or the Spuffordized Soviet cybernetic model,
could be (..)»
✷ Origens Media Lab
✷ Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312 (2012), Orbit Books

ARTIFYING CORPORATIONS
Art in corporations tends to be self-congratulatory. But in some cases, when given
autonomy or made participative, it can become an agent of change.
26
THE SOCIAL
SENSIBILITY
DEPARTMENT
Alongside the R&D Departments in the Paris region at
Gonesse and in Beijing, Bernard Control have opened
a special R&D Department placing people at the heart
of the creative process. Based on the concept of Social
Sensibility, this innovative R&D Department has
been created in 2012 thanks to the meeting between
Alessandro Rolandi, an artist whose work is focused
on a discipline recently developed in the contemporary
art world named “social practice”, and Guillaume
Bernard, COO of Bernard Controls.
✷ Social Sensibility Department
RESISTANCE DESIGN
de la O design studio imagines a future in which Group
Carso, a Mexican conglomerate which dominates much
of the countries economy, became « augmented » with
technology. «It is logical to assume that productivity
would be a priority for Augmented Carso. In this world,
the physical office will track employees’ behavior using
accelerometers, face recognition cameras, and other
sensors embedded into office accessories. These interconnected
objects will not only observe the employee,
but will even talk amongst themselves regarding each
employee’s performance.»
The designers imagine « gossiping » things intended to
fool the corporate monitoring systems, such as a face
with moving eyes to put in front of the computer’s camera.
✷ De la O, Gossip of Things

THE ARTIST AS
CHIEF HAPPINESS
OFFICER
In 2018, the artist and performer
✷ Florent Audoye joined CPME, a
federation of small enterprises, for
a residence where he became the
organization’s «Chief Happiness Officer».
Used to deconstructing the codes of the
corporate world, the artist got caught
in his own game. His artistic practice
and proposals did become part of the
organization’s employees’s quality of life
at work.

FICTIONALIZING
FUTURES
In 2019, along with the Plurality
University Network, Leonard, Vinci
Group’s innovation lab, gathered a
diverse group of employees to imagine
what work will look like in 2040, in an
around the company. Using fictional
and artistic content as raw material,
the groups came up with stories
where positive endeavors, such as
reinventing the company’s business
models around car- and ride-sharing,
are mixed with renewed exploitation
of precarious workers. Although some
stories paint the company under a
somewhat dark light, it decided to
publish them (with the help of illustrator
Louise Plantin) without any alteration,
adding: « It is now up to Vinci Group to
build its own desirable future. »
✷ «Les futurs du travail - Des futurs imaginés mais pas forcément
souhaités», Leonard, 2020

INVENTING NEW NAMES FOR NEW KINDS
OF CORPORATIONS
What if we invented new words in order to invent new realities, new productive
organizations? The purpose of this “game” is to help you do just that.
34
TAKE-OFF
Coming after start-ups, take-offs don’t even
pretend to have a market development strategy.
Their only intent is to prototype an idea or
innovation, and sell out to a large competitor.
CORPOSTATES
A gigantic corporation (in terms of capital rather
than people), focused on efficiency, profit and
power, either overpowering governments or
transforming them into corporations.
Sometimes used to describe the penetration
of managerial methods in public organizations,
preferably years after corporations stopped using
them.
Science fiction’s “Evil Corporations” (Terminator’s
Cyberdine, Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corp, etc.) are
generally CorpoStates.
ENTERPOCENE
The purpose of Enterpocenes is to actively
produce degrowth, divestment, de-innovation, and
work to dismantle existing activities that produce
“negative commons” (or externalities). The name
was originally coined by Origens Medialab, who
promotes an ecological “redirection” of the
economy.
One current example is firms who specialize in
dismantling large and obsolete industrial sites
(nuclear plants, chemical factories, snowless
ski resorts…), and might extend their activity to
useless or dysfunctional high-tech infrastructures
(5G, smart cities…)
CORPOR (CORPORATION REDUX)
Part Guild, part Workers’ Union, part Job Agency,
part commercial Firm, CORPoReduxes revive
the old sense of “corporations” by ensuring the
professional development of their members,
who share common sets of skills and interests
(formerly known as “professions”). Other
corporations turn to them when they need
personnel for projects. A the end of the project,
members rejoign the CORPoR to share lessons
learnt, train, and do general interest work until the
next mission. Many skills can’t be hired through
other channels than their respective CORPoR.
Z-CORP
The mission of Z-Corps is to bring whole activities
out of the commercial realm. Wikipedia was
the first Z-Corp, singlehandedly destroying the
market for encyclopedias while increasing access
to encyclopedic content. There are now dozens
of Z-Corps in areas such as caring professions
(replaced by organized local resilience). Their
economic model banishes unitary prices and
favors subscription, fixed revenues or alternative
forms of valorization.

THE GAME IN THREE STEPS
THE FIVE «DEFINING TENSIONS»
_ Organize small groups of 4-6 people, and
randomly distribute three sliders corresponding to
3 out of 5 “Defining Tensions” (see below), where
the cursor has been pushed all the way into one or
another direction.
1
Focus on Profit and Growth
These “tensions” are an attempt to map the major defining choices facing
corporations in the future.
There is no uniformly right or wrong choice. In real life, most choices will place
the cursor somewhere between each pole. However, in the game, there are only
extreme options…
Focus on producing
positive ecological and
social impacts
_ Imagine and describe a “corporation” in 2030-40,
whose choices correspond to these extremes:
What does it do, How, With Whom, at What cost?...
2
Integrated, vertical
organizations,with
proprietary offices and
networks
Horizontal, networked
organizations,distributed
and non-exclusive
workplaces
Globalization,
delocalization, focuson
major urban centers
Relocalization,
downscaling,
networking,diversification,
local autonomy
_ Invent a name to describe this type of
“corporation”
3
Technology as tool
Technology as organizing
principle
Focus on the human
collective
Focus on efficiency and
continuity

1
INVENTING NEW NAMES FOR NEW KINDS OF CORPORATIONS (CONT.)
_ Randomly distribute three sliders corresponding to 3 out of 5 “Defining
Tensions” (see below), where the cursor has been pushed all the way into
one or another direction.
Focus on
Profit and Growth
Focus on
producingpositive
ecologicaland social
impacts
Globalization,
delocalization,
focuson major
urban centers
Relocalization,
downscaling,
networking,
diversification, local
autonomy
Integrated, vertical
organi-zations, with
proprietaryoffices and
networks
Horizontal, networked
organi-zations,
distributed andnonexclusive
workplaces
Focus on the
humancollective
Focus on efficiency
and continuity
Globalization,
delocalization,
focuson major
urban centers
Relocalization,
downscaling,
networking,
diversification, local
autonomy
Focus on
Profit and Growth
Focus on
producingpositive
ecologicaland social
impacts
Technology as tool
Technology
asorganizing principle
Technology as tool
Technology
asorganizing principle
Focus on the
humancollective
Focus on efficiency
and continuity
Integrated, vertical
organi-zations, with
proprietaryoffices and
networks
Horizontal, networked
organi-zations,
distributed andnonexclusive
workplaces

_ Imagine and describe a “corporation” in 2030-40, whose choices correspond
to these extremes: What does it do, How, With Whom, at What cost?...
3
_ Invent a name to describe this type of “corporation”: The organization you’ve
just described is a…
What is its name?
Select a cool picture that
represents the corporation
Its mission / slogan /
“reason for being”
A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is essentially defined by…
You can play with the components of existing words…
Describe it in a few lines:Ex. “XXX was created in …, is located …,
and its activities are…Its specific characteristics / originalty /
strength, etc. are…”
BUSINESS
SOCIETY
ENTERPRISE
CORPORATION
Describe 1 or 2 characteristics that sets this organization apart
from all others (or almost all others)
COMPANY
STARTUP
Its business model? Its management? Its people (or absence
thereof)? Its workplaces (or absence thereof)? Its use
of technology? Its relationship with its customers / stakeholders?
Its relationship with its local, natural, human environment?
Its accounting? Its governance?....
… Or choose a word from somewhere
else…
… Or invent something entirely new
(yet easy to grasp by anyone)

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