(FORTUNE Magazine) – On his very best day as a hotshot computer programmer, Bill Gates would never, ever have been described as the "Frank Gehry of software." So why does Frank Gehry--the boldly creative architect who'd rather doodle his designs on a tablecloth than touch a computer keyboard--slyly joke about becoming the "Bill Gates of architecture"?

No, Gehry doesn't aspire to monopoly power, but he appreciates how technology annihilates traditional industry practices. Arguably the most brilliant architect of the past 50 years, Gehry, through his design process, has fundamentally transformed the economics of how the world's most innovative buildings get built. Bilbao's breathtaking Guggenheim Museum, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Dusseldorf's Neue Zollhof office complex are all monuments to his functional aesthetic, which marries unusual shapes to unusual materials to create spaces and places that work together in unusual ways.

The marriage succeeds only because Gehry and his office collaborative have figured out how to embrace technology without being defined by it. Though trained as a technophobic old-school architect, Gehry is now every bit as dependent on software for his genius as billg@microsoft.com. In fact, he cheerfully admits that his buildings couldn't be cost-effective--or even built--without Catia, the computer-aided design and engineering software that translates his quirky squiggles and cockeyed cardboard models into structurally sound designs.

Catia happens to be the same software Boeing used to digitally design its breakthrough 777 jumbo jet and that Chrysler ultimately picked as its platform to engineer automotive bestsellers like its PT Cruiser. The shocker is that Gehry's firm began using Catia as a design medium first. But the issue isn't Catia; it's that software can create a seamless continuum between conceiving forms and implementing them. The process of creating an innovative automobile or airplane or building begins to look pretty similar. So benchmarking the innovation process becomes just as important as benchmarking the product.

The business of architecture is becoming the architecture of business. A General Electric, a Nokia, a Sony, a GM would now be foolish not to benchmark its own innovation infrastructures against today's architectural process innovation. Carefully scan Gehry Talks--a recently published coffee-table book describing both his products and his processes--and it's immediately clear that the problems confronting physical architecture in a digital world correspond perfectly to those confronting innovative companies struggling to balance the talents of their people with the potential of their technologies.

The most important impact, perhaps, is how the technology reengineers the architecture of relationships. For Gehry, the balance of power flips inside out. "The new computer and management systems allow us to unite all the players--the contractor, the engineer, the architect--with one modeling system," says Gehry. "It's the 'master builder' principle. I think it makes the architect more the parent and the contractor more the child--the reverse of the 20th-century system. It's interesting because you wouldn't think that would happen with something as technical as the computer, but in fact it has. And you wouldn't think an office like ours would lead it." The irony is that Gehry himself scarcely touches the technology. He relies on his talented cadre of CADs--computer-aided designers--to translate his sketches into Catia models. Those Catias are turned into Styrofoam, cardboard, or metal models of differing scales, which Gehry spends days or even weeks pondering. Those musings, in turn, generate new insights that iterate further Catias. Those iterations have to respect the software's programmed constraints: Titanium cladding torques at this thickness but not at that; glass windows reflecting light at that angle will create heat traps. Gehry constantly manages a dialogue among his vision, the constraints, and his colleagues. He is composer and conductor both.

So is the future of technology-driven design innovation an Ayn Rand-like resurgence of the heroic creator? Are Gehry's colleagues collaborators or are they gifted technicians ably serving the creative vision of the master builder? Do organizations invest in these innovation infrastructures to create "stars" or collaborative communities? The technologies extend the span of individual control even as they facilitate interactions between experts. This is certainly one design management challenge that Gehry and Gates share.

As achingly beautiful as Gehry's buildings may be, the truly stunning possibility is that the way Gehry designs and builds may prove to have a more enduring impact than the structures Gehry's firm has actually designed and built. More surprising yet, there's a better than even chance that the role of technology to empower--and constrain--master builders may become one of the most important design conflicts that organizations will have to resolve if they hope to define their innovation agenda.

MICHAEL SCHRAGE is co-director of the MIT Media Lab's e-markets initiative and author of Serious Play. Reach him at michael_schrage@fortunemail.com.