Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work

A dramatic new future of work in which managers assemble exactly the expertise they need—within minutes.

A USA Today Bestseller
Thinkers50 Talent Award Shortlist
The Next Big Idea Club: “October 2025 Must-Read Books”
2026 PROSE Award Winner: Business, Finance, and Management
2026 Axiom Business Book Awards: Gold Medal, Business Disruption/Reinvention
Shortlisted for the 2026 getAbstract International Book Award, Business Impact category

"If you’ve ever wished you could assemble your version of The Avengers at work, this book will help you make it happen.”
—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Think Again and host of the podcast Re:Thinking

Gone are the days of static organizational charts and staffing based on the manager’s rolodex and intuition. Now you can recruit any expertise you need from a global online network within minutes: an on-demand, on-the-spot expert at the exact moment that you need their help. You can right-size their involvement, too; some of those experts give a second opinion or a moment of brainstorming, whereas others join as full-fledged team members for a sustained collaborative effort.

This is the future promised by flash teams, a model that The New York Times has already praised for its “revolutionary potential”: a world where experts are available anytime and everywhere, where remote work has become a norm, and where AI is in the loop to guide team decisions. In Flash Teams, award-winning management scholar Melissa Valentine and computer scientist Michael Bernstein chart the opportunities of flash teams and navigate the challenges that teams and managers will face. They distill lessons from their own work assembling and managing flash teams on demand that every manager can learn from so they can successfully use flash teams in their own organizations.

Drawing on original research and industry examples, this book will help readers to:

• Recognize and source needed expertise within minutes
• Anticipate and plan team designs with AI
• Redesign team structures on the fly as projects evolve

Industries are already being transformed by this new approach to teaming. Flash Teams arms leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs with the tools they need to accomplish their goals with confidence, speed, and agility.

Melissa Valentine is Associate Professor of Management Science at Stanford University, where she codirects the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. She has been awarded an NSF CAREER award, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and Financial Times.

Michael Bernstein is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he is a Bass University Fellow. His research has been reported in venues such as The New York Times, Wired, Science, and Nature, and he has been recognized with an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, UIST Lasting Impact Award, and the Computer History Museum’s Patrick J. McGovern Tech for Humanity Prize.