New Rules for the New Economy

Kevin Kelly, editor of the Wired magazine, enumerates in this book the main rules of the new economy. Not only he explains them in a succinct way but also recommends what strategies companies and people should follow to succeed in the new environment.

I would like to focus this paper in one of those rules, the “Let Go At The Top” rule. This doesn’t mean that I consider it the most important one, but it is the one that most companies will be less likely to understand. Even if some companies understand it, they will always be tempted to prolong their success expecting that they will be able to continue their grow without having to cross that scary valley of less fitness. Devolution is something that most companies do not want to hear about. What they are not aware of is that while they are ignoring this fact and focusing on the short term, companies are compromising their long-term success. Most of the times, when they realize the mistake they have done, it is already too late and the opportunity is gone.

In addition to the precious strategies described in the end of the chapter, I would recommend companies to clearly communicate to all the stakeholders what is their long-term goal, the higher peak they are trying to reach. This includes shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, partners, society, … in a way that they will all understand the reason why the company is temporarily crossing the valley and they will all support that decision for the benefit of innovation.

As Kevin states, in the summary at the end of the book, “abandoning the highly successful … becomes the most difficult and yet the most essential task”.