Article at a glance:

The 21st-century organization

• Professional employees, who create value through intangible assets such as brands and networks, now constitute up to 25 percent or more of the workforce in financial services, health care, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media and entertainment.
• Making professionals productive enables big corporations to be competitive, yet most of them do little to improve the productivity of these employees.
• Corporate organizational structures—designed vertically, with matrix and ad hoc overlays—make professional work more complex and inefficient.
• Companies must change their organizational structures dramatically to unleash the power of their professionals and to capture the opportunities of today's economy.