The Network Always Wins: How to Influence Customers, Stay Relevant, and Transform Your Organization to Move Faster Than the Market

An entrepreneur, advisor, lecturer and writer, Peter Hinssen is one of the most sought-after thought leaders on radical innovation, leadership and the impact of all things digital on society and business. For more than fifteen years, Peter led a life of technology startups. Today he is founder of Nexxworks, co-founder of Across Group, and Chairman of Across Technology. He lectures at various business schools like the London Business School and the Stockholm School of Economics, is a Senior Industry Fellow at the 'Center for Digital Transformation' of the 'The Paul Merage School of Business' at UC Irvine and functions as a board advisor on disruptive and digital innovation.

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

Acknowledgments ixPreface xiLet's Get Started xvCHAPTER 1 THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTYThe Theory of Everything 2The RAND Corporation 3The Ultimate Model 6Stepping into the Unknown 6VUCA 8VACINE 9CHAPTER 2 SPEED, AND WHY THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY MATTERSA Brief History of Time 14Speed 14Faster, Faster, Faster 14The Era of Now 15Clock Speeds 16Internal Clock Speed 17The Clock Speed Conundrum 18The Theory of Relativity 19Breaking the Sound Barrier 20CHAPTER 3 LINEARITY IS DEADChasing Simplicity 24Linear Systems 25Dynamic Systems 26New Language of Systems 28Complex Adaptive Systems 29Entropy 30Schrödinger's Cat 31Depressed Yet? 31The Age of Networks 32The Core Vocabulary of Complex Systems 33Scale-Free Networks 35Conclusions 36HOW THE MEDIA DISCOVERED NETWORKS 37CHAPTER 4 INFORMATION BECOMES A FLOWIt's a Small, Small World 44Flow of Magic 45Information Becomes a Flow 46Information Theory 47The Signal and the Noise 48The Gambling Connection 50The Gambler's Fallacy 52The Signal and the Noise, 2.0 52The Little Elephant 53The Mathematics of War 54Graphs Rule The World 56The Rich Club 58Leverage the Power of Networks 60The Topology of Your Organization 64EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF NETWORKS 67CHAPTER 5 WHEN MARKETS STOP BEING MARKETSBook Bind 79The Original Speedboats 80The (Old) Heart of Marketing 81Consumers Take Over 82Good Clean Funnel 83A Real-Life Mad Man 84Disruptive Forces 85Don and Martha 86From Firefly to Amazon 88Recommendations 89The Second Life of Netfl ix 90Getting Personal 91The Popcorn Experiment 92Unconscious Branding 93Fear, Trust, and Hormones 94Markets are Becoming Networks 95The Tribe Has Spoken 96The Agency Will Do All That 97The Paradox of Choice 99Conclusion 99They Bought a Zoo 102Watching Water Boil 103THE ERA OF NETWORKED HEALTH 105CHAPTER 6 WHEN ORGANIZATIONS BECOME NETWORKS OF INNOVATIONGeneration N 115Org Charts and Their Discontents 116Reimagining Careers 117Relevance Replaces Loyalty 118The Antihierarchy 120The Opposite of Fragile 121Both Wave and Particle 123Conway's Law 125Build Fluid Organizations 126CHAPTER 7 CREATION AND DESTRUCTIONBroken Halos 130Built to Last 130Creative Destruction 131Phoenix from the Ashes 133The Halo Effect 134Written in the Stars 135Building Stellar Companies-and Black Holes 136CHAPTER 8 STRATEGY FOR THE AGE OF NETWORKSFun with Creeping Death 140Frozen, Fluid, Rigid, and Superfluid 142Fluidity and Start-Ups 144The Thermodynamic Cycle of Organizations 145The Triune Brain 147The Triune Networks 149Why Start-Ups Are Magic 150Industry Disruption 153It Takes a Network to Fight a Network 154The Golden Rule 155The Holy Trinity in the Age of Networks 156Waves of Disruption 160The Age of Networks 161Epilogue 163Endnotes 171Sources 183Index 187About the Author 203