In the Media
THE NEXT BIG IDEA BOOK CLUB
Experts, Assemble!
Two Stanford professors' playbook for building elite, AI-enhanced, on-demand teams of business superheroes
UPWORK
Flash Teams as the Future of Work: A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Valentine and Dr. Michael Bernstein
As AI innovation accelerates and organizations infuse AI tools into everything from product development to customer experience, many traditional work structures– foundational to how companies hire, develop and reward– have proven too slow for today’s rapid pace of change. One of those traditional structures is teams.
HBR IDEACAST
Supercharging Innovation with “Flash Teams”
Across industries, organizations are struggling to move as quickly as they need to on key priorities and new initiatives. The solution for many, says Stanford’s Melissa Valentine, might be “flash teams” — project groups that can be instantly, efficiently, and cost-effectively brought together and organized via online labor markets and AI and other digital tools to solve any problem. She explains why companies and leaders should embrace this new type of collaboration, how flash teams work in practice, and the pitfalls to look out for. Valentine is coauthor along with Michael Bernstein of the book Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work.
HUMAN CLOUD
Melissa Valentine, Associate Professor at Stanford & Author of Flash Teams
Melissa Valentine, Associate Professor at Stanford and author of Flash Teams, joins Matthew Mottola and Tony Buffum to break down how teams form, work, and scale in the human cloud. Melissa explains what Flash Teams are, why they unlock speed and expertise, and how leaders can access talent on demand without losing culture or control.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Seminar Highlights: Melissa Valentine & Michael Bernstein on Flash Organizations
The Digital Seminar series hosted Melissa Valentine and Michael Bernstein from Stanford University for a talk titled “Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work Using Reconfigurable Organizational Structures.”
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Pop-Up Employer: Build a Team, Do the Job, Say Goodbye
At first glance, the organization chart for the maker of True Story, a card game and mobile app in which players trade stories from their daily lives, resembled that of any company. There was a content division to churn out copy for game cards; graphic designers to devise the logo and the packaging; developers to build the mobile app and the website. There was even a play-testing division to catch potential hiccups.
