Gupta, Sonam and Dhillon, Ishneet, Organizational Restructuring and Collaborative Creativity: The Case of Microsoft and Sony (2015). The IUP Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. XII, No. 1, March 2015, pp. 53-65. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2671723

“The need for innovation and cross-dependencies among the departments is forcing organizations to restructure from divisional to functional organizational structure. This paper presents one such case wherein Microsoft and Sony carried out restructuring efforts to move towards a functional organizational structure when they faced cutthroat competition from other technology majors such as Google and Apple. Both Sony and Microsoft brought in major changes to their organizational design, engineering a greater collaboration among technologies and creating an organizational culture that is deeply embedded in collaboration, creativity, and innovation. The paper uses several financial, organizational, and other matrices to illustrate how organizations embracing creativity outperform their peers and competitors on key business performance indicators, such as revenue growth, market share, and talent acquisition.”