Blog

Kaihan Krippendorff shares a post that draws attention to current societal shifts and the role that today’s technological innovations play in this post-modern world.

In two of our previous trend pieces, The Future of Work and Future Organizational Models, we reviewed how traditional systems of hierarchy are being dismantled in the workplace. But this trend extends far outside the office. It’s touching all aspects of how we form communities within society and how and why we gather in groups.

Stay-at-home policies enforced by COVID-19 have made us exponentially more digital and connected than ever before. Platforms that gather communities and foster connections, in-person or virtually and increasingly without an official “leader”, are uprooting outdated traditions and creating necessary cultural reform.

REVISITING GAMESTOP: THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE 

This week, GameStop released its fourth-quarter earnings report that was, compared with all the hype surrounding the company this year, quite anti-climactic. However, in spite of lackluster results, what happened in January 2021 continues to shake Wall Street to its core. A slew of day traders, left hanging out at home in their slippers, fueled by new trading platforms with low barriers to entry, were able to unite via Reddit to “stick it to the man”, rocking the establishment and upsetting hedge funds’ best-laid plans.

My earlier examination of why the GameStop situation occurred explores what can happen when communities, connected by technology, band together to take on unjust systems. The Atlantic sums up the series of events in a sentence: “The GameStop saga is a ludicrous stock mania born of pandemic boredom and FOMO, piggybacking off of a clever Reddit revenge plot, which targeted hedge funds, who made a reckless bet on a struggling retailer — and it’s going to end with lots of people losing incredible amounts of money.”

But was it only boredom that fueled the uprising? Investor and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci called GME a “French Revolution of finance” challenging the established order and rattling the bars of tradition.

Across categories, we are seeing companies harness this power of technology to “coordinate the uncoordinated”. Like Turo allows car rentals between individuals and Airbnb enables the same for home rentals, consumers, tired of getting the short end of the stick, are losing faith in the “middle men” and restructuring industries to counter disenfranchisement and take back their power.”

Key points include:

• Mass mistrust: insurrection at the capitol
• Looking ahead: gen z’s affinity for gathering
• Lemonade: how companies can leverage community coordination 

Read the full article, Community Coordination: How Digital Connectivity Will Power Revolutions Of The Future, on Kaihan.net.