New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—and How to Make It Work for You

by Jeremy Heimans

Yes, this is because technology has changed.

But the deeper truth is that we are changing.

Our behaviors and expectations a...

This book is about how to navigate and thrive in a world defined by the battle and balancing of two big forces.

Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures.

New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

No one was the boss of this movement, and no one quite knew where it would go next.

the movement felt ownerless—and this was the source of its strength.

Every individual story was strengthened by the surge of the much larger current. Each individual act of bravery was, in fact, made by many.

Even when using social media, its default is not to engage, but to command.

they figured out how to use today’s tools to channel an increasing thirst to participate.

People have always wanted to take part in the world.

There has always been a dialectic between bottom-up and top-down, between hierarchies and networks.

But until recently, our everyday opportunities to participate and agitate were much more constrained.

Thanks to today’s ubiquitous connectivity, we can come together and organize ourselves in ways that are geographically boundless and highly distributed and with unprecedented velocity and reach. This hyperconnectedness has giv...

The following examples of life in the 1990s are excellent examples to use with audiences.

These new means of participation—and the heightened sense of agency that has come with them—are a key ingredient in some of the most impactful models of our time:

They are all channeling new power.

Think of these as new power models. New power models are enabled by the activity of the crowd—without

In contrast, old power models are enabled by what people or organizations own, know, or contro...

once old power models lose that, they lose t...

Old power models ask of us only that we comply (pay your taxes, do your homework) or consume. New power models demand and allow for more: that we share ideas, create new content (as on YouTube) or assets (as on Etsy), even shape a community (think o...

A key dynamic in the world today is the mutual incomprehension between those raised in the Tetris tradition and those with a Minecraft mindset.

The future will be a battle over mobilization.

The everyday people, leaders, and organizations who flourish will be those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them—for

new power is about much more than just new tools and technologies.

many are still deploying these new means of participation in profoundly old power ways.

This book is about a different approach to the exercise of power, and a different mindset, which can be deployed even as particular tools ...

Those who are building and stewarding vast platforms that run on new power have become our new elites.

Far from the organic free-roaming paradise the early internet pioneers imagined, there is a growing sense that we are living in a world of participation farms, where a small number of big platforms have fenced, and harvest for their own gain, the daily activities of billions.

The stakes are high for democracy as well.

Many hoped that surges of social media alone would ...

But in fact a new kind of strongman is on the rise in many parts of the world, super...

some believed could only d...

Think of him as a Platform Strongman, mastering new power techniques to achieve authoritarian ends.

Open innovation is the concept of enlisting the crowd to help solve your problem.

Unlike the old power method, where a small number of experts have exclusive access to tools, data, and machines, the goal of open innovation is to invite everyone to engage.

not only did the crowd produce quicker solutions, at much lower cost, the quality of its work was significantly higher than expected.

This section on the open innovation challenges and “two factions” within NASA are excellent.

“The tensions, debates and forces unleashed on that day, led to a very different trajectory than that planned.

The intensity of fears and resistance expressed in the room throughout the day was out of the ordinary.”

pushed on with their open innovation efforts.

they began to see two very different factions form.

One camp viewed it all as a waste of time, a nuisa...

They grumbled about the budgetary impact of the new work. They nitpicked technical details. Some refused to discuss p...

Some turned saboteur, dissuading their colleagues ...

Others showed enthusiasm in public, but provided the scantest details for the crowd to engage with and ignore...

One team even went into full ...

The other camp saw opportunity.

They created new processes and approaches to get the best out of their crowd. They invented tools that opened up their labs for knowledge to flow in and out.