For more than a quarter-century we have been observing, chronicling, and theorizing about the unfolding evolution from hierarchy-bureaucracy to networked organizations.

The underpinnings of our first generation of models, methods, and tools was general systems theory. We recognized that upon close inspection all systems were at heart networks, which was the ideal language for describing the sorts of changes happening in organizations and teams as the information technology revolution gathered steam.

This thinking appeared in our books on networks as organizations, including Networking, The Teamnet Factor, The Age of the Network, and Virtual Teams. Over this period, our network model compacted to a simple set of four principles: People (nodes), Purpose, Links, and Time.

The technologies that drove the first generation of organizational change spawned the Web, which, in just a decade, has come to dominate the culture and context of both social and organizational networks, locally and globally. At the same time, a new network science arose, one that found general properties across physical, biological, and social networks. Networks are the new systems science, and also the primary framework for modeling complexity of all kinds.

Networks offer a general way to represent the real world. The trick is to select the right nodes and relationships. And get the directions, the purposes, right.