florbeil

"The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, that the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone starts something." For anyone interested in social informatics, and understanding the evolution underway in the social networking underbelly of business, politics, and society-at-large, this book is an essential read. I found myself constantly jotting down notes, wanting to follow up on references he mentions, and finding applicable ideas for my work and non-profit activities. This is definitely a book that I am going to need to re-read. One particular nugget I pulled from the earlier chapters was his repeated mention of the work of Ronald Coase and his 1937 paper 'The Nature of the Firm' in which Coase discusses the value of the hierarchical organization, and that while workers could contract with each other in a market, a completely open market for labor would underperform a hierarchical model due to the high transactional costs of establishing and maintaining each relationship. Hierarchies have fewer relational transactional costs, and therefore work can be done more economically. However, with the advent of social networking-based applications and work methodologies, these transactional costs are being dramatically reduced, giving way to new business models. Fascinating stuff. A must read -- right alongside Anderson's 'Long Tail' and Gladwell's 'Outliers'

2022-11-28 23:19