Living Networks: Leading Your Company, Customers, and Partners in the Hyper-Connected Economy

From the Publisher: Today, every aspect of business is dominated by networks. The powerful impact of broadband and mobile networking is being accelerated by emerging technologies ranging from XML to peer-to-peer. These drivers, together with swiftly changing consumer and worker behavior, are bringing these networks to life. In an economy dominated by the flow of information and ideas, the rules of success have changed dramatically. Living Networks shows managers the profound business implications-and offers detailed, specific guidance on how to respond. Ross Dawson shows how to use tomorrow's living networks to build lasting customer and partner relationships based on transparency, collaboration, and shared value. Dawson introduces proven techniques for leading companies toward tomorrow's business models and for leveraging living networks in the creation of new products, services, and intellectual property. Simply put, he not only shows leaders how to leverage changes in technology but in the underlying sources of business value. * Doing business in a world with "zero degrees of separation" Leveraging living networks for competitive advantage * New rules for business relationships How to accelerate trust and earn attention * The organization as "network presence" Understanding the enterprise as an ongoing flow of marketing, feedback, and community * The real "convergence"- and its real impact One giant market space: telecom, information technology, media, finance, and beyond * How living networks will liberate the individual Plugging inpersonal fulfillment The executive's guide to profiting from ubiquitous networks. Networks come alive: understanding the "everywhere, all-the-time" flow of information and ideas Get to market faster, better, and smarter by leveraging the new "distributed innovation" Professional networks of best-of-breed experts: making traditional service delivery models obsolete Exploiting networks without losing control over your intellectual property How living networks can liberate the individual Networks are coming to life. Billions of humans and machines are linking as tightly as neurons in a brain, generating and exchanging ideas at unprecedented speed. In Living Networks, Ross Dawson offers a systematic executive's framework for taking advantage of this extraordinary transformation. Dawson shows how to lead organizations that leverage living networks as the most powerful source of new business value. He demonstrates how to use living networks to deepen relationships with customers and partners, promote "distributed innovation," and accelerate the creation of profitable new products and services. Finally, he shows how individuals can plug into living networks to liberate themselves from conventional organizations, earn more money, and achieve greater personal satisfaction.