At first glance, the organization chart for the maker of True Story, a card game and mobile app in which players trade stories from their daily lives, resembled that of any company. There was a content division to churn out copy for game cards; graphic designers to devise the logo and the packaging; developers to build the mobile app and the website. There was even a play-testing division to catch potential hiccups.Upon closer inspection, the producer of True Story wasn’t really a firm: The workers were all freelancers who typically had never met and, perhaps more striking, the entire organization existed solely to create the game and then disbanded.True Story was a case study in what two Stanford professors call “flash organizations” — ephemeral setups to execute a single, complex project in ways traditionally associated with corporations, nonprofit groups or governments.More from New York Times: Platform companies are becoming more powerful — but what exactly do they want?Trump is offering populism, minus the free candyAmazon’s move signals end of line for many cashiersThe professors, Melissa Valentine and Michael Bernstein, contend that information technology has made the flash organization a suddenly viable form across a number of industries.And, in fact, intermediaries are already springing up across industries like software and pharmaceuticals to assemble such organizations. They rely heavily on data and algorithms to determine which workers are best suited to one another, and also on decidedly lower-tech innovations, like middle management.But to the extent that temporary organizations replace permanent ones, they have the potential to add to the economic uncertainty that workers must increasingly contend with.Temporary organizations capable of taking on complicated projects have existed for decades, of course, perhaps nowhere more prominently than in Hollywood, where producers assemble teams of directors, writers, actors, costume and set designers and a variety of other craftsmen and technicians to execute projects with budgets in the tens if not hundreds of millions.In principle, many companies would find it more cost-effective to increase staff members as needed than to maintain a permanent presence. The reason they do not, economists have long argued, is that the mechanics of hiring, training and monitoring workers separately for each project can be prohibitively expensive.But Ms. Valentine, who studies management science, and Mr. Bernstein, a computer scientist, note that technology is sharply lowering these costs. “Computation, we think, has an opportunity to dramatically shift several costs in a way that traditional organizations haven’t realized,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It’s way easier to search for people, bargain and contract with them.”There is some evidence that the corporate world, which has spent decades outsourcing work to contractors and consulting firms, is embracing temporary organizations. In 2007, Jody Miller, a former media executive and venture capitalist, was a co-founder of the Business Talent Group, which sets up temporary teams of freelancers for corporations.”We’re the producers,” Ms. Miller said. “We understand how to evaluate talent, pick the team.”Some of Ms. Miller’s biggest clients are in the pharmaceutical industry, whose economics are not unlike Hollywood’s in that…