In the new world of work, one thing is clear: the war for talent is over--and talent won.

As the pandemic waned, we returned to sparsely populated offices and empty conference rooms. Our working life had been transformed, seemingly overnight. But the truth is that the ever-growing digital wave has long been breaking down organizational boundaries and increasing open innovation, including the use of crowdsourcing platforms as a talent solution. Now the imperative is clear: adapt to and leverage this new, digitally enabled world of "open talent"--or get left behind.

In this eye-opening, essential guidebook for the new world of work, John Winsor and Jin Paik, leaders at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, show how the massive reset of the pandemic allowed talented workers everywhere to exit their jobs without leaving the workforce. Now some are freelancing for multiple companies or starting small businesses, leaving hiring managers scratching their heads over a workforce gone AWOL. What's more, talent has more power than ever using platforms such as Freelancer.com, Fiverr, and Upwork, setting their own terms for work: what, where, when, and at what price.

How can companies adapt? The key, the authors argue, is shifting to a more "distributed" idea of the organization that revolves around talent (people) and projects, not divisions and offices. In this new model, which the authors call a networked organization, talent is culled from both inside and outside the organization, dispensing with siloed approaches to talent acquisition and instead viewing talent through a single lens: as a global ecosystem that can be tapped as needed.

With rich stories, keen insights, and an abundance of practical advice, Winsor and Paik provide a new framework and operating model for transforming your organization into a talent-orchestrating, problem-solving machine.

John Winsor is the founder and chair of Open Assembly, the world's leading authority on the open talent economy. He is an executive in residence at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard and the author or coauthor of multiple books, including Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves and Spark: Be More Innovative Through Co-Creation. He shares his new thinking through his popular blog at johnwinsor.com.

Dr. Jin H. Paik is a cofounder and managing partner at Altruistic, an AI consultancy, and a principal visiting research scientist at HBS. Previously he was the Head of Labs at the Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard and the founding general manager at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard, and NYU.