BSO started out as a one-man organization (Eckart Wintzen) and
grew to be a multinational of 6000 people, and yet it never felt like a large
bureaucratic organization. The reason for this was the fact that the whole
organization was based on units of a maximum of 50 people (called cells). The
organization grew by dividing a cell in two and letting each half grow to 50
people again.
In BSO, most authority was delegated to these cells with very
little management from above but with a strict framework of accountability
and personal responsibilities. Adherence to this framework was monitored on a
peer-to-peer basis. A former director at BSO, Martijn Kriens, describes the
way BSO created a structure to work as a big organization while still
allowing great personal freedom. He concludes his presentation with a
discussion of the vulnerabilities of such an organization.
