The Network Always Wins: How to Influence Customers, Stay Relevant, and Transform Your Organization to Move Faster than the Market by Hinssen, Peter;

Short description:

"An easy and enjoyable read that teaches a lot about the future world you'll work and live in. Studded with examples, illustrations, diagrams, entertaining bits of history and personal experiences, the text flows naturally and keeps you interested from the beginning to the end. The best thing is that, without effort, you will understand the deep paradigm shift in which we are all involved."
--Carlota Perez, Author of Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital

"This book embodies the essence of how companies have to adapt to the era of networks, and how to transform themselves into fluid and responsive organizations."
--Adam Pisoni, co-founder of Yammer

Long description:

The Definitive Business Guide to Surviving and Innovating in the Digital Age

The world is changing faster than ever. With the rise of new digital markets and the consequent network-ization of our environment, the phrase “The customer is always right” takes on a whole new meaning.

This powerful guide from serial entrepreneur and radical innovation consultant Peter Hinssen shows you how to keep your company up to speed with your market, engage with customers at a time when loyalty keeps fading into the background, and transform your organization into a network in order to thrive in this era of digital disruption.

The Network Always Wins provides step-by-step strategies to help you:

• Reinvent your company—even after the market has flipped
• Tap into the force of the network—and survive in a market characterized by speed, uncertainty, and complexity
• Maintain relevance—and stay on top of emerging trends
• Connect with your customers—and encourage them to interact

This business guide is as illuminating as it is pleasant and fun to read. It provides everything you need to adapt your organization for this exciting new age of networks and digital disruption. You’ll learn how to evolve faster, connect deeper, and make better decisions than ever before. You’ll find proven methods to speed up your reaction time, beat the clock of your competitors, and anticipate consumer trends before they even happen.

In today’s fast-moving marketplace, networks are power. This book shows you how to harness that power. For your company. For your customers. For your continued success in the digital age.

The Definitive Business Guide to Surviving and Innovating in the Digital Age

The world is changing faster than ever. With the rise of new digital markets and the consequent network-ization of our environment, the phrase “The customer is always right” takes on a whole new meaning.

This powerful guide from serial entrepreneur and radical innovation consultant Peter Hinssen shows you how to keep your company up to speed with your market, engage with customers at a time when loyalty keeps fading into the background, and transform your organization into a network in order to thrive in this era of digital disruption.

The Network Always Wins provides step-by-step strategies to help you:

• Reinvent your company—even after the market has flipped
• Tap into the force of the network—and survive in a market characterized by speed, uncertainty, and complexity
• Maintain relevance—and stay on top of emerging trends
• Connect with your customers—and encourage them to interact

This business guide is as illuminating as it is pleasant and fun to read. It provides everything you need to adapt your organization for this exciting new age of networks and digital disruption. You’ll learn how to evolve faster, connect deeper, and make better decisions than ever before. You’ll find proven methods to speed up your reaction time, beat the clock of your competitors, and anticipate consumer trends before they even happen.

In today’s fast-moving marketplace, networks are power. This book shows you how to harness that power. For your company. For your customers. For your continued success in the digital age.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Let’s Get Started xv


CHAPTER 1 THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
The Theory of Everything 2
The RAND Corporation 3
The Ultimate Model 6
Stepping into the Unknown 6
VUCA 8
VACINE 9


CHAPTER 2 SPEED, AND WHY THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY MATTERS
A Brief History of Time 14
Speed 14
Faster, Faster, Faster 14
The Era of Now 15
Clock Speeds 16
Internal Clock Speed 17
The Clock Speed Conundrum 18
The Theory of Relativity 19
Breaking the Sound Barrier 20


CHAPTER 3 LINEARITY IS DEAD
Chasing Simplicity 24
Linear Systems 25
Dynamic Systems 26
New Language of Systems 28
Complex Adaptive Systems 29
Entropy 30
Schrödinger’s Cat 31
Depressed Yet? 31
The Age of Networks 32
The Core Vocabulary of Complex Systems 33
Scale-Free Networks 35
Conclusions 36
HOW THE MEDIA DISCOVERED NETWORKS 37


CHAPTER 4 INFORMATION BECOMES A FLOW
It’s a Small, Small World 44
Flow of Magic 45
Information Becomes a Flow 46
Information Theory 47
The Signal and the Noise 48
The Gambling Connection 50
The Gambler’s Fallacy 52
The Signal and the Noise, 2.0 52
The Little Elephant 53
The Mathematics of War 54
Graphs Rule The World 56
The Rich Club 58
Leverage the Power of Networks 60
The Topology of Your Organization 64
EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF NETWORKS 67


CHAPTER 5 WHEN MARKETS STOP BEING MARKETS
Book Bind 79
The Original Speedboats 80
The (Old) Heart of Marketing 81
Consumers Take Over 82
Good Clean Funnel 83
A Real-Life Mad Man 84
Disruptive Forces 85
Don and Martha 86
From Firefly to Amazon 88
Recommendations 89
The Second Life of Netfl ix 90
Getting Personal 91
The Popcorn Experiment 92
Unconscious Branding 93
Fear, Trust, and Hormones 94
Markets are Becoming Networks 95
The Tribe Has Spoken 96
The Agency Will Do All That 97
The Paradox of Choice 99
Conclusion 99
They Bought a Zoo 102
Watching Water Boil 103
THE ERA OF NETWORKED HEALTH 105


CHAPTER 6 WHEN ORGANIZATIONS BECOME NETWORKS OF INNOVATIONGeneration N 115
Org Charts and Their Discontents 116
Reimagining Careers 117
Relevance Replaces Loyalty 118
The Antihierarchy 120
The Opposite of Fragile 121
Both Wave and Particle 123
Conway’s Law 125
Build Fluid Organizations 126


CHAPTER 7 CREATION AND DESTRUCTION
Broken Halos 130
Built to Last 130
Creative Destruction 131
Phoenix from the Ashes 133
The Halo Effect 134
Written in the Stars 135
Building Stellar Companies—and Black Holes 136


CHAPTER 8 STRATEGY FOR THE AGE OF NETWORKS
Fun with Creeping Death 140
Frozen, Fluid, Rigid, and Superfluid 142
Fluidity and Start-Ups 144
The Thermodynamic Cycle of Organizations 145
The Triune Brain 147
The Triune Networks 149
Why Start-Ups Are Magic 150
Industry Disruption 153
It Takes a Network to Fight a Network 154
The Golden Rule 155
The Holy Trinity in the Age of Networks 156
Waves of Disruption 160
The Age of Networks 161


Epilogue 163
Endnotes 171
Sources 183
Index 187
About the Author 203