ASEAN's champions and critics alike believe that in order to remain relevant, the organization must change. For Acharya, “ASEAN should seize the moment or fade away as a new regional and global leadership takes over.” Acharya believes that ASEAN's ability to implement the ASEAN community blueprint faithfully and its capacity to deal with new challenges will determine its success or failure. Others, such as Thitinan Pongsudhirak, believe that ASEAN's future lies in its ability to transform from a “top-down intergovernmental organisation driven by policymaking elites and bureaucrats” to a “bottom-up process via the third-track of peopleto-people enmeshment” as envisioned in its new charter.

This study shares the view that ASEAN must be able to respond decisively to changes in the global order (marked by globalization) and changing constellations of actors (emergence of global, non-state actors) to continue to be relevant.

The main argument of this study is that ASEAN should harness ICT to enhance its network form of organization and thereby become more effective and remain relevant.

Following Castells, this study believes that networks are “the most flexible, and adaptable forms of organisation, able to evolve with their environment and with the evolution of the nodes that compose the network”. Historically, networks are weak in coordination, particularly, the management of complexity. But this historic weakness has been superseded by the use of ICT by networks. Castells believes that ICT not only allows networks to keep their flexibility and adaptability, but ICT also allows:

ICT could become ASEAN's most useful tool in achieving its goal of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”.