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New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World
The classic book on business strategy in the new networked economy— from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable
Forget supply and demand. Forget computers. The old rules are broken. Today, communication, not computation, drives change. We are rushing into a world where connectivity is everything, and where old business know-how means nothing. In this new economic order, success flows primarily from understanding networks, and networks have their own rules. In New Rules for the New Economy , Kelly presents ten fundamental principles of the connected economy that invert the traditional wisdom of the industrial world. Succinct and memorable, New Rules explains why these powerful laws are already hardwired into the new economy, and how they play out in all kinds of business—both low and high tech— all over the world. More than an overview of new economic principles, it prescribes clear and specific strategies for success in the network economy. For any worker, CEO, or middle manager, New Rules is the survival kit for the new economy.
Forget supply and demand. Forget computers. The old rules are broken. Today, communication, not computation, drives change. We are rushing into a world where connectivity is everything, and where old business know-how means nothing. In this new economic order, success flows primarily from understanding networks, and networks have their own rules. In New Rules for the New Economy , Kelly presents ten fundamental principles of the connected economy that invert the traditional wisdom of the industrial world. Succinct and memorable, New Rules explains why these powerful laws are already hardwired into the new economy, and how they play out in all kinds of business—both low and high tech— all over the world. More than an overview of new economic principles, it prescribes clear and specific strategies for success in the network economy. For any worker, CEO, or middle manager, New Rules is the survival kit for the new economy.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1998
51 people are currently reading
1200 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Kelly
132 books1,601 followersKevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control."
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
November 28, 2017
This is a prescient book for 1998. Much of Kelly's vision is now a reality. It's a tribute to Kelly. I'd like to see if he is still writing. Most of his ideas have become commonplace, so I'd be hesitant to recommend this read.
My takeaway is Let Go At The Top. If you're climbing mountains, sometimes you must descend a smaller peak before climbing a bigger one.
My takeaway is Let Go At The Top. If you're climbing mountains, sometimes you must descend a smaller peak before climbing a bigger one.
October 17, 2020
With the booming of the internet in the 1990’s, the economy started changing massively and its change has only become more drastic since. With such vast change it would be easy to think a book from 1998 about “new rules for the new economy” would be anything but new. You could be forgiven for assuming it would be outdated 22 years later. Rather it’s as relevant as ever.
It was as if Kevin Kelly hopped in a plane and flew up to 30,000 feet, cruising over Silicon Valley to get a big-picture view of how the economy was already starting to change. (In some ways, he was in a prime position to do so as the editor of WIRED magazine at the time.) He was the man for the job; Kevin Kelly is a master of noticing trends, analyzing them, synthesizing them into big ideas, and articulating them with clarity.
I found myself wishing I was more business-oriented so that I could implement these new rules. Sadly, I could only roll these palatable morsels of insight around in the playful joy of fantasizing myself as CEO of a nebulous and idyllic business. Which was kind of a fun meta-thought process as I read the book. Maybe I’m weird.
A lot of ideas from Kelly’s previous book (Out of Control) about Complexity science, biology, and technology are honed in and applied to a changing economy here. But where Out of Control is vast and theoretical, New Rules is sharp and concise -informative and practical.
There are regularly occurring emboldened sentences acting as succinct summaries of the major ideas, helping to categorize and reiterate key ideas along the way (and enable speed-readers?). The graphs are immediately approachable; less professional science/data-esque and more intuitive/apprehension based. They occur frequently throughout and add an extra dimension of visual representation to what is being said in the text. Helpful.
This is the shortest of Mr. Kelly’s non-fiction but it in no way lacks the dense volume of quality content with sufficient explanation. It packs a punch for only (roughly) 150 pages.
And it builds nicely too: out of the 10 chapters, the final few are increasingly interesting. Rarely do non-fiction books achieve any sort of “arch” or come to a crescendo; the chapter on opportunities did just that for the book.
Ultimately, it would be great if Kelly updated this book and added some more rules for what is (and will always be) a newer economy. This book could certainly do well as a re-release. How about it Mr. Kelly (or Viking Press): an updated 25 Year Anniversary Edition?
It was as if Kevin Kelly hopped in a plane and flew up to 30,000 feet, cruising over Silicon Valley to get a big-picture view of how the economy was already starting to change. (In some ways, he was in a prime position to do so as the editor of WIRED magazine at the time.) He was the man for the job; Kevin Kelly is a master of noticing trends, analyzing them, synthesizing them into big ideas, and articulating them with clarity.
I found myself wishing I was more business-oriented so that I could implement these new rules. Sadly, I could only roll these palatable morsels of insight around in the playful joy of fantasizing myself as CEO of a nebulous and idyllic business. Which was kind of a fun meta-thought process as I read the book. Maybe I’m weird.
A lot of ideas from Kelly’s previous book (Out of Control) about Complexity science, biology, and technology are honed in and applied to a changing economy here. But where Out of Control is vast and theoretical, New Rules is sharp and concise -informative and practical.
There are regularly occurring emboldened sentences acting as succinct summaries of the major ideas, helping to categorize and reiterate key ideas along the way (and enable speed-readers?). The graphs are immediately approachable; less professional science/data-esque and more intuitive/apprehension based. They occur frequently throughout and add an extra dimension of visual representation to what is being said in the text. Helpful.
This is the shortest of Mr. Kelly’s non-fiction but it in no way lacks the dense volume of quality content with sufficient explanation. It packs a punch for only (roughly) 150 pages.
And it builds nicely too: out of the 10 chapters, the final few are increasingly interesting. Rarely do non-fiction books achieve any sort of “arch” or come to a crescendo; the chapter on opportunities did just that for the book.
Ultimately, it would be great if Kelly updated this book and added some more rules for what is (and will always be) a newer economy. This book could certainly do well as a re-release. How about it Mr. Kelly (or Viking Press): an updated 25 Year Anniversary Edition?
June 10, 2019
Amazing how spot on this book was and how extremely relevant it still is. The current examples in the book are outdated now but it's easy to see how the principles is now. It is now mostly and overview of the world with only a few predictions still panning out but I think Kelly goes 10/10 in this book.
June 20, 2009
Older book about the increasing digitization of the world. Not even really related to the internet. Short and sweet.
One cool idea I had was:
How does someone who has been down a dead end path tell someone on that same path where they are and where they are going? How can you convince them without their seeing it for themselves?
Quotes:
"The key premise of this book is that the principles governing the wold of the soft - the world of intangibles, of media, of software, and of services - will soon command the world of the hard - the world of reality, or atoms, of objects, of steel and oil, and the hard work done by the sweat of brows."
"Communication is the economy."
"We know the industrial revolution succeeded because we can no longer see its soldiers, the motors."
"The value of a network explodes as its membership increases, and then the value explosion sucks in yet more members, compounding the result."
"Are network superwinners in fact monopolies? They are not like any monopolies of the industrial age."
"The great innovation of Silicon Valley is not the wowie-zowie hardware and software it has invented. Silicon Valley's greatest "product" is the social organization of its companies and, most important, the networked architecture of the region itself - the tangled web of former jobs, intimate colleagues, information leakage from one firm to the next, rapid company life cycles, and agile email culture."
"Drucker's Rule - they must be ten times better than what they hope to displace."
"In the network economy a firm's primary focus shifts from maximizing the firm's value to maximizing the network's value."
"Eventually technical standards will become as important as laws."
"Relationships are more powerful than technical quality."
"But you have to descend and risk extinction in order to have the opportunity to rise again."
"It is so cheap to complete a transaction from almost anywhere, anytime, that tiny slivers of value, built upon microcosts of transactions, can be surgically inserted into all manner of processes and products. Because each microvalue sliver is so cheap, there is economic room for multiple microvalue slivers where before there was only room for one intermediary. As transaction costs plummet to the nanopenny level, some little crumb of value can be profitably added to more and more processes."
"Network technology increases the size of the largest firms yet makes it more possible to have smaller firms while also increasing the number of midsized firms."
"In its place: a world of demassified niches. Niche production, niche consumption, niche diversion, niche education. Niche world...Instead of the mass technology of broadcast TV, we now have net-centric alternatives."
"Firms such as Amazon should be viewed as primarily selling intangible relationships. "Amazon should not be compared to actual stores selling books. Rather...the value that Amazon adds is in the reviews, the recommendations, the advice, the information about new and upcoming releases, the user interface, the community interest around certain subjects. Yes, Amazon will arrange to deliver the book to your door, but you as a customer are really paying them for the information that led you to your purchase."
"The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs. Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do...the question for each worker is not "How do I do this job right?" but "What is the right job to do?""
One cool idea I had was:
How does someone who has been down a dead end path tell someone on that same path where they are and where they are going? How can you convince them without their seeing it for themselves?
Quotes:
"The key premise of this book is that the principles governing the wold of the soft - the world of intangibles, of media, of software, and of services - will soon command the world of the hard - the world of reality, or atoms, of objects, of steel and oil, and the hard work done by the sweat of brows."
"Communication is the economy."
"We know the industrial revolution succeeded because we can no longer see its soldiers, the motors."
"The value of a network explodes as its membership increases, and then the value explosion sucks in yet more members, compounding the result."
"Are network superwinners in fact monopolies? They are not like any monopolies of the industrial age."
"The great innovation of Silicon Valley is not the wowie-zowie hardware and software it has invented. Silicon Valley's greatest "product" is the social organization of its companies and, most important, the networked architecture of the region itself - the tangled web of former jobs, intimate colleagues, information leakage from one firm to the next, rapid company life cycles, and agile email culture."
"Drucker's Rule - they must be ten times better than what they hope to displace."
"In the network economy a firm's primary focus shifts from maximizing the firm's value to maximizing the network's value."
"Eventually technical standards will become as important as laws."
"Relationships are more powerful than technical quality."
"But you have to descend and risk extinction in order to have the opportunity to rise again."
"It is so cheap to complete a transaction from almost anywhere, anytime, that tiny slivers of value, built upon microcosts of transactions, can be surgically inserted into all manner of processes and products. Because each microvalue sliver is so cheap, there is economic room for multiple microvalue slivers where before there was only room for one intermediary. As transaction costs plummet to the nanopenny level, some little crumb of value can be profitably added to more and more processes."
"Network technology increases the size of the largest firms yet makes it more possible to have smaller firms while also increasing the number of midsized firms."
"In its place: a world of demassified niches. Niche production, niche consumption, niche diversion, niche education. Niche world...Instead of the mass technology of broadcast TV, we now have net-centric alternatives."
"Firms such as Amazon should be viewed as primarily selling intangible relationships. "Amazon should not be compared to actual stores selling books. Rather...the value that Amazon adds is in the reviews, the recommendations, the advice, the information about new and upcoming releases, the user interface, the community interest around certain subjects. Yes, Amazon will arrange to deliver the book to your door, but you as a customer are really paying them for the information that led you to your purchase."
"The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs. Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do...the question for each worker is not "How do I do this job right?" but "What is the right job to do?""
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2011
KEVIN KELLY was Executive Editor for Wired magazine in 1998 when he wrote this book. What he wrote then is coming to pass today with the advent of the RFID chip technology, the so-called "Internet of Things," and much more.
In Chapter 1, "This New Economy," he speaks of "an emerging new economic order," a "new highly technical planetary economy" that was on the horizon. "This new economy has three distinguishing characteristics," he writes. "It is global. It favors intangible things -- ideas, information, and relationships. And it is intensely interlinked. These three attributes produce a new type of marketplace and society, one that is rooted in ubiquitous electronic networks."
Now, what this all means long-term is where we are today with the 2011 release of the IPv6 Internet Protocol, in which "every atom on earth will have its own unique web address," it has been said.
Concurrently, Kelly writes: "What this means is that chips are becoming cheap and tiny enough to slip into every object we make. Eventually, every can of soup will have a chip on its lid. Every light switch will contain a chip. Every book will have a chip in it spine. Every shirt will have at least one chip sewn into its hem. Every item on a grocery shelf will have stuck to it, or embedded within itself, a button of silicon. The day will come when every item will ... contain a tiny sliver of embedded thought."
In Chapter 1, "This New Economy," he speaks of "an emerging new economic order," a "new highly technical planetary economy" that was on the horizon. "This new economy has three distinguishing characteristics," he writes. "It is global. It favors intangible things -- ideas, information, and relationships. And it is intensely interlinked. These three attributes produce a new type of marketplace and society, one that is rooted in ubiquitous electronic networks."
Now, what this all means long-term is where we are today with the 2011 release of the IPv6 Internet Protocol, in which "every atom on earth will have its own unique web address," it has been said.
Concurrently, Kelly writes: "What this means is that chips are becoming cheap and tiny enough to slip into every object we make. Eventually, every can of soup will have a chip on its lid. Every light switch will contain a chip. Every book will have a chip in it spine. Every shirt will have at least one chip sewn into its hem. Every item on a grocery shelf will have stuck to it, or embedded within itself, a button of silicon. The day will come when every item will ... contain a tiny sliver of embedded thought."
March 6, 2008
“Network will drive the new economy” is what Kevin Kelly has tried to emphasize in this title. Whether it is a network of dumb things or a network of human beings.Organizations which will understand the intricacies of network and invest in it will survive in the world where everything is in a flux and nothing is constant .Ten profound rules which are going to revolutionize the way business will be done in the twenty first century are well cited in the book which I have documented in my blog.
Read here
Read here
June 24, 2008
I feel like I just stepped out of the indutrial age into the info age. Great read.
March 15, 2010
This a must read and game-changer
February 27, 2014
Contains some good insights pertaining to the revolution that the world is currently undergoing.
July 2, 2019
Kevin Kelly does a superb job at explaining how to adapt to the coming changes with technology disrupting the economy, he show how in the Information Age the value of relationships and trust is more important then ever because so much information out there and so many options. Kelly discusses how when one opportunity is lost other opportunities are created also when one new technology or niche is created others open up. The other idea is why solve problems when you could simply seek new opportunities.
September 10, 2021
Published in 1999 this book is one of a kind! Most of the ideas and author's viewpoints are still valid in today's world. And that's the most fascinating part. It's like author had predicted 20 years ago what are the rules for the network economy and we are living in it. And as the author predicts each economical age is optimized or maybe even an upside-down version of old here we are in the realms of new creator economy..It gives the inspiration to create new rules for a better future.
March 22, 2023
A decidedly mixed bag. Chapter 2, which covers the Matthew effect / virtuous cycles of networked economies, seriously ignores many of the negative effects this has. Chapter 9, which details privacy and trust issues, reads like a fantasy story compared to the actual development of how many internet companies harvest and sell user data nowadays.
There are interesting points here, but it is dated and just dead wrong about how technology has come to be used in the last 20 years.
There are interesting points here, but it is dated and just dead wrong about how technology has come to be used in the last 20 years.
March 18, 2025
Each worker, by the supervising machinery and tools, produces more
rivets, more batteries, more shoes, and more items per person-hour.
Effi ciencies are for robots.
Opportunities, on the other hand, are for humans. Opportunities de-
mand fl exibility, exploration, guesswork, curiosity, and many other qualities
humans excel at. By its recursive nature, a network breeds opportunities,
and incidentally, jobs for humans
rivets, more batteries, more shoes, and more items per person-hour.
Effi ciencies are for robots.
Opportunities, on the other hand, are for humans. Opportunities de-
mand fl exibility, exploration, guesswork, curiosity, and many other qualities
humans excel at. By its recursive nature, a network breeds opportunities,
and incidentally, jobs for humans
August 11, 2017
AN outstanding book.
Considering that this was written 20 years back, the various points and the reasoning put forward is unbelievable. It is more like Seeing the future today".
Everything in the book is happening today and at an even more furious pace.
This is one of the books that can be read over and over again and you will begin to understand what is happening in today's world better
Considering that this was written 20 years back, the various points and the reasoning put forward is unbelievable. It is more like Seeing the future today".
Everything in the book is happening today and at an even more furious pace.
This is one of the books that can be read over and over again and you will begin to understand what is happening in today's world better
March 24, 2017
Still relevant information for today's world.
June 12, 2018
2006.a.continua quanto già letto
Read
June 16, 2019I have the english edition: New rukes for the bew economy
and the german edition: NetEconomy
and the german edition: NetEconomy
September 23, 2019
Classic Kevin Kelly. Great synthesization of the fundamental thoughts about networks and economies.
November 2, 2019
My review is here: https://www.bradrevell.com/2019/11/ne...
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. If you want to envision where the future of your industry will be, imagine it as a business built entirely around the soft, even if at this point you see it based in the hard.
2. Communication — which in the end is what the digital technology and media are all about — is not just a sector of the economy. Communication is the economy.
3. In the new order, innovation is more important than price because price is a derivative of innovation.
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. If you want to envision where the future of your industry will be, imagine it as a business built entirely around the soft, even if at this point you see it based in the hard.
2. Communication — which in the end is what the digital technology and media are all about — is not just a sector of the economy. Communication is the economy.
3. In the new order, innovation is more important than price because price is a derivative of innovation.
Read
February 23, 2021Useful information, a bit outdated which makes something alreadly old (but new in the book).
December 27, 2023
Iako je knjiga napisana pre vise od dve decenije i dalje vrlo aktuelna, a napisana je na temu tehnologije 😳
August 19, 2014
This book, copyright 1998, is the most marked-up and underlined book in my library. I probably re-read it twice a year, trying to push myself in favorable directions.
Written pre-Google (well, pre-Google-IPO, anyway) it is the best collection of strategic approaches to technology I've read.
@hg47
Written pre-Google (well, pre-Google-IPO, anyway) it is the best collection of strategic approaches to technology I've read.
@hg47
July 31, 2009
This has potential to be studied as a typical "dot com" era opus on the great new world that was lying ahead of us. As all books of it's kind, it is rich in far fetching generalizations and thin on great ideas.
August 28, 2009
A reference book since I first bought it long ago.
May 31, 2012
Good insights on Healthcare issues.
March 30, 2013
An optional-read book on managing technology strategy for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.
January 22, 2015
Time and time again, I come back to this book and think...wow, Had I only started and listened to what he said in this book. Such a forward thinking and revelatory read.
February 5, 2016
Interesting read, but I think he got a few of them wrong.
June 23, 2016
Book is obviously dated, but it is interesting to look back at his perspective on the future, now that it is the future.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews