New Game, New Rules

Massive changes in the shape of the world economy are deeply influencing our political systems, our industrial and environmental landscape, our socioeconomic structure, and our personal relationships. Advances in ICTs have played a large part in this change, especially the speed with which Internet-based applications have emerged onto the scene. For example, at the start of the 1990s, China was largely a planned economy and the Soviet Union still existed. Few people had heard of the Internet and email seemed closer to science fiction than reality. Now these technologies have matured into a host of applications, which both reflect and enable our natural passion to connect with one another. For the first time in history, we can see the patterns of these connections mapped in the various networks exploding onto the Internet. In business, the Internet has rewritten the rules as nearly 1 billion people worldwide go online, their shared knowledge and online reputations rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is shaping a whole new game, requiring a whole new set of rules. Welcome to the age of “open source leadership,” a new style of leadership designed for a new kind of world — one which sustains environments that are infinitely improvisational, where people do things they regard as worthwhile, and where their presence is valued.