In his latest HBR blog post, Letting Gen Y Lead a Management Makeover , MIX Maverick (and CEO of HCL) Vineet Nayar celebrates the bold creativity displayed by the entrants in the HCL MBA M-Prize challenge . As Vineet says, ideas like these can be unsettling to senior executives, and he knows why:

“... keep in mind how alien most organizational environments must seem to [Gen Y workers]. Used to the web's meritocracy, they face rigid hierarchies. Comfortable with the transparency of social networking sites, they bump up against information silos and knowledge hoarding.”

The entries so far submitted to the M-Prize challenge certainly display that desire to substitute openness and transparency for hierarchy and boundaries. Vineet calls out some of the themes he has found most interesting so far:

Increasing democratic influence on the appointment of leaders. (" The Organization Structure as Free Market") . Giving people the chance to shape their work and organizations (" Ideas.com "; " The Management Tree "; " Internal bidding for task assignment "). Creating ways to bypass the filters that impede direct communications ("Can your organization handle the truth?" ;...