Alchemy of Change by Gideon Rosenblatt

Software-based businesses like Amazon and Netflix are rapidly displacing traditional businesses, but it goes much deeper than that. Software will soon replace much of what you do at work – and at lower cost and with better service. The question is – how far will we take this? Will software someday run our companies?

I love it when a scientist comes along and proves something that, on an intuitive level, I just knew had to be true. That’s what just happened for me while watching Martin Nowark talk about his work on cooperation…. Just as I suspected: cooperation isn’t all fluffy white bunnies.

The boundary between what’s inside and what’s outside the firm is where the future of organizational thinking now lies. The membrane is a powerful metaphor for the way modern organizations connect with people, organizations, and their environment more generally.

Trust makes networks work. When trust is high among members of a network, there’s a wonderful cohesiveness and capacity to get work done. When it’s low and relationships are plagued by suspicion, networks collapse into brittle organizational structures that rarely offset their operational costs in real world outcomes.

Friend Discovery connects an organization’s CRM database with the social networks of its customers. That helps customers connect with friends who also care about the organization’s work – and that’s a game-changer.

First-order engagement is engaging employees. Second-order engagement is engaging customers and partners. Third-order engagement is when customers and partners engage other customers and partners in the organization’s work.

Twitter is not a social network. It’s a “real-time information network” and once you see it that way, its competitive edges look a lot closer to Google than Facebook. Facebook is a social network utility, while Twitter is a social network application with real-time information as its end goal.

One day it dawned on me that my romantic relationships felt a bit like two hearts on a teeter-totter. Staying out on the edge was exciting and fun, but love at the center is more mellow and sweet – it’s deeper. It is the stuff of the soul and I can no longer really imagine a world without it.