Technology

We’ll see more initiatives organized end-to-end by small groups of smart people, with virtual teams/coalitions forming to bypass “archaic” processes and deliver meaningful results.

What you're describing here has always been the case. The pattern in software is always that a small, actually empowered group does the initial development and r&d, then if the product is a success the maintenance people come in and drain it of any progress via overbearing process and middle management. There's rare exceptions, but I've seen this over and over again.

Small teams build good things, then they get acquired and those things are slowly or quickly destroyed.

We’ll see more initiatives organized end-to-end by small groups of smart people, with virtual teams/coalitions forming to bypass “archaic” processes and deliver meaningful results. We’ll see a lot of sloppy failures along the way too, but the overall trend seems clear.

The thing is: It's great to work in a small group of motivated smart people. But it's really, really hard to hire a small motivated group of smart people and keep it motivated. And it's even harder if you're not located in one of those fancy towns where everyone wants to live or in a business that is really attractive. If your company is in a lesser known part of the country building important, but boring stuff, you will have to deal with not so smart and not so motivated people.