The paper introduces flash organizations, a novel crowdsourcing paradigm that structures a transient, on‑demand crowd as a computationally‑represented organization with roles, teams, and hierarchies. Traditional micro‑task workflows pre‑define all actions and thus cannot handle open‑ended, complex goals. Flash organizations address two core challenges: (1) lack of asset specificity among crowd workers, solved by encoding work as de‑individualized role hierarchies (inspired by movie crews and disaster response teams); and (2) the need for continuous reconfiguration, solved by a version‑control‑style branching and pull‑request workflow that lets any member propose structural changes which are reviewed up the hierarchy. The authors built a web platform, Foundry, that supports role creation, automated on‑demand hiring from marketplaces like Upwork, onboarding, timeline visualizations, Slack integration, and the branching/merging mechanism. A field deployment with three leaders (EMS Trauma Report, True Story card game, Enterprise Workshop Planning Portal) demonstrated that flash organizations can complete complex, open‑ended projects within six weeks, hiring workers in ~14 minutes on average, completing 639 tasks (3,261 person‑hours) and producing functional software, a card game, and an enterprise portal. Metrics show 566 pull‑request adaptations (top‑down and bottom‑up), rapid hiring, and successful quality assessments by expert reviewers. The discussion situates flash organizations at the intersection of crowdsourcing and organizational theory, highlighting their potential to enable fluid, large‑scale coordination while noting trade‑offs (cultural, time‑zone, reputation noise, lack of long‑term familiarity). Limitations include suitability for goals requiring deep asset specificity and the need for better reputation signals. The paper concludes that computationally structuring crowds as organizations opens a new design space for complex crowd work, offering methods for role‑based coordination, adaptive structures, and a prototype system that validates feasibility.
Topics
Flash Organizations: Conceptual Shift from Micro‑tasks to Organizational Structures
Defines flash organizations as crowds that are computationally modeled as hierarchies of roles, teams, and leaders, enabling open‑ended, complex work beyond pre‑specified micro‑tasks.