John Seely Brown and John Hagel are two of the most respected technology and business thinkers in Silicon Valley. Seely Brown is best known as the long time Chief Scientist at Xerox Parc, while Hagel is the author of a number of influential business articles and books including Net Worth.
As the co-chairmen of Deloitte’s intriguingly named Center for the Edge, Seely Brown and Hagel, along with co-author Lang Davison, have just come out with a new book called The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion which is a big-picture attempt to conceptualize the shift from the old industrial economy to today’s revolutionary digital economy.
The great change in contemporary economic life – what Seely Brown and Hagel call the “big shift” – is between the old centralized command-and-control industrial economy and today’s democratized edge economy. Sometimes sounding more like Marxist revolutionaries than Deloitte consultants, Seely Brown and Hagel see the pull economy as fundamentally changing every aspect of 21st century life – from business to education to politics to social activity.
This is a big, bold take on the digital revolution which has elicited highly favorable reviews from Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Joichi Ito, Richard Florida, Eric Schmidt and Walter Isaacson. As Seely Brown and Hagel argue in the The Power of Pull: “The ultimate promise of pull is the opportunity to reclaim our individuality and pursue our potential in a was that were never feasible in a world of push…. For the first time ever, we have the real opportunity to become we are, and more importantly, who were meant to be.”
On Xerox Parc and the Center for the Edge
On why the power of pull represents the end of the command and control economy.
On the role of education and the power of imagination in restructuring business and society.
On the profound long-term shifts in the global economic system
On the cloud.