Lou Noto, Chairman and CEO of Mobil, is one of Arthur D. Little's key clients. After undertaking a substantial reorganisation to make his company more fluid and less hierarchical, he recently described the ensuing organisation as resembling "an irregular electron cloud." He went on to express a need for more focus and structure than are generally provided by electron clouds and for ways to connect the various parts of the organisation more firmly. But he also recognized that large companies cannot achieve this combination of fluidity, focus, and connection by using traditional ways of organising a business. Another client, also the CEO of a Fortune 50 global company, has been leading his organisation through a rapid process of learning. He has to discover how to manage in a new world in which, within the past five years, the company has deployed more than half its assets in strategic joint ventures, some in partnership with its principal competitors! The firm is rapidly becoming a networked organisation, and it must learn to manage the compete-or-collaborate dilemma as it connects across former boundaries.