CONCEPT
Next Practices
Prahalad's distinction between the codification of what has worked (best practices) and the emergent discovery of what the next paradigm demands (next practices) — a distinction that becomes decisive during paradigm shifts.
Next practices is the distinction Prahalad drew throughout his career to separate organizations that adapt from organizations that optimize themselves into obsolescence. Best practices are the codification of what has worked — valuable when paradigms are stable, dangerous when paradigms are shifting because they encode the assumptions of the old paradigm into organizational behavior. Next practices are the emergent discovery of what the new paradigm demands — practices that have not yet been codified because they are being invented by the organizations experimenting their way into the new environment.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Five specific misapplications of best practice are observable in AI-era organizations. First, organizing AI-augmented teams by functional specialty when the dimensional multiplier dissolves functional boundaries. The next practice organizes teams by strategic vector — small autonomous groups exploring a problem space across all functional domains. Second, measuring productivity by output volume when the bottleneck has ascended to judgment. The next practice measures