As the world changes at a faster pace than ever before, companies must change more rapidly as well. Yet the practices, structures, and behaviors at many large companies are not designed for such responsiveness. A century ago companies implemented such approaches because control, consistency, and predictability were top concerns; core competencies were cherished foundations to build on; and leaders viewed the world from inside the organization looking out.

To thrive today, however, companies must be able to detect external changes from the outside in and have a built-in fluidity so they can continually adapt. They need to focus on individual customers, make their core competencies dynamic, and rely on teams instead of a hierarchy — all by using the power of data and algorithms.

As we look back on a century of Harvard Business Review, we should also take time to look ahead — and recognize what the next iteration of a successful organization looks like.

Where the Organization Has Been

Since its founding, HBR has sought answers to fundamental questions such as these: What’s the best way to organize a business? What is the right structure, and how should day-to-day decisions be made?

About a century ago Henry Ford had a world-changing answer to these questions. He built a business around top-down management and assembly line mass production. By standardizing his automobiles and the steps taken to manufacture them, he lowered the cost per unit across the entire end-to-end value chain. That innovation, combined with his decision to raise workers’ pay to $5 per day, was adopted by other companies. This change drove industrial activity — making it possible for millions more people to own and enjoy everything from cars to Coca-Cola — and raised living standards around the world. Even as Ford’s company grew, though, its structure remained the same: a hierarchy in which business decisions were made in the C-suite and functions reported up to the president and chief executive.

What Makes a Successful Organization, According to HBR Readers

After World War II, large companies became even larger as they extended their sales and production and built networks of suppliers (what we now call “ecosystems”) in countries and even on continents other than their own. Many multinational corporations adopted a P&L organization structure to maintain control of their sprawling businesses.

In the 1950s, as industrial manufacturer General Electric (GE) prepared to adopt a P&L structure, it consulted with leading management thinker Peter Drucker, who pointed out that executives would need training to make the new system work. That led GE to create a 16-week course on how to be a general manager, birthing its now-famous training center in Crotonville, New York. Soon after, Harvard Business School created an Advanced Management Program course (which I taught for 30 years), and consulting firms created product lines around leadership training.

Companies continued to expand in size, breadth, and hierarchical levels, yet they also needed to coordinate across their existing structures. A host of companies — including TRW, Bechtel, Citibank, and Texas Instruments — began to use a matrix arrangement in which reporting relationships and accountability were shared across product, functional, and geographic structures.

In the 1990s, of course, the internet changed everything. Marc Andreessen co-created a browser that made the web useful for commercial purposes, coders began developing software and then algorithms to make decisions more quickly than humans can, and computer processing capacity became increasingly cheaper and more powerful.

Jeff Bezos saw the internet growing at 2,300% per annum, left his job at investment firm DE Shaw, and founded an online bookstore called Amazon, which has since morphed into not just the “everything store” but also the leading provider of web services to a host of other companies.

Where the Organization Is Now

Bezos discovered early what every twenty-first-century leader should now know: We have entered an age of discontinuity in which breaks in the external world are deeper and more frequent, rendering prevailing organizational structures and practices ineffective, if not harmful. Successful organizations exploit those changes, as Amazon has since its inception, and take advantage of what’s new.

Current realities make it imperative that companies shift in several ways.

[Charan examines four and then shares his thoughts about “fhe road ahead.”

Read more on Business history or related topics Digital transformation, Strategy, Teams and Organizational restructuringTweet.