Reciprocity Advantage

by Bob Johansen, Karl Ronn

A powerful new kind of competitive advantage is now possible thanks to technological and social disruptions that are already occurring. These disruptions revolutionize how companies can partner to create new growth. The Reciprocity Advantage shares a model for creating that growth: define your right-of-way (the underutilized resources you already own that you can share with others), partner to do what you can t do alone, experiment to learn, and scale the new business at low risk. Reciprocity and advantage are words that are not normally seen together, but reciprocity giving now to get later will become a normal part of winning in the future. The Reciprocity Advantage shows you how to leverage new forces like digital natives and cloud-served supercomputing now into massively scalable, profitable, incremental growth for your business. Provocative and pragmatic, leading ten-year forecaster Bob Johansen and experienced business developer Karl Ronn describe how to lean in to disruptions to create new growth for your business. They include actual cases showing early successes for a range of companies and nonprofits like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and TED. They then provide key exercises to define your promising new ideas and nurture them into healthy new businesses. Their recommendations are based on practical experience in managing the problems of new business creation and many years of helping others see the future more clearly. Distilled from hands-on work, this book gets you started today on creating your own reciprocity advantage."

Genres: Business

215 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Bob Johansen is distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley, where he helps top leaders around the world prepare for and shape the future. Bob works with corporations such as McKinsey, Tesco, UPS, Kellogg, Syngenta, and McDonald's - as well as a range of major universities and non profits. "The Reciprocity Advantage" is Bob's ninth book. A social scientist by training, Bob holds a BS from the University of Illinois, where he played varsity basketball, and a PhD from Northwestern University. To learn more about "The Reciprocity Advantage" visit the book's site at reciprocityadvantage.com

Reviews

[Manoj Joshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good work by Bob as usual. Needs deep thinking

[Hannamari · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Reciprocity Advantage is a book that neatly ties together a bunch of major trends in business, such as philanthropy, the lean start-up model and partnering. The main idea is that through reciprocity, meaning sharing one's assets now to gain profitable growth in the future, one can reach a new competitive advantage. I personally love the idea of how giving can become advantageous, even in business. The book discusses how this model is becoming possible and even inevitable because of the technological and social disruptions we are going through, such as cloud-served supercomputing, socialstructing and the new generation of digital natives.

I think this is an insightful forward-looking read for any business leader, or just anyone wanting to develop their skill set.

[Brandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting concepts and case studies here, but I thought the jargon and futurist speculation was too much for my taste. I was looking for some more applicable best practices on an everyday, smaller scale.

[Mills College Library]

302.14 J652 2014

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting update on partnering that works in new technologies and concepts, like the cloud, socialstructing, 3D printing, etc.