Let’s Spotify the World!

This week I talked with Joakim Sundén about his employer Spotify, in Stockholm, Sweden. I’ve been to the Spotify headquarters once, last year. With their colorful offices, meeting rooms named “ABBA” and “Ace of Base”, and food and drinks for everyone, I could easily see that this company is a great place to work.

Joakim confirmed this, when he said that Spotify has roughly tripled in size in a year or so. Not only because, apparently, the company is offering great value to its customers. (Despite the fact that they keep deleting my favorite songs from my carefully crafted playlists…) But also because the smartest software professionals from all over the world flock to Stockholm to join the company, where they work in squads, not in teams. And for the development of skills they have guilds, instead of communities of practice. Now, because of Spotify’s spectacular growth, they want to experiment with a networked structure instead of a traditional hierarchy.

Wouldn’t it be great if all organizations were like this?

Are there ways to accelerate the spotification of the whole world?

Tomorrow I will announce a new event for change agents, where we can discuss this some more. It will be a self-organized and open event, as a follow-up to the Stoos Gathering, but this time open to the whole Stoos Network and beyond.

Stay tuned (to both me and Spotify).