An entrepreneur, advisor, lecturer and writer, Peter Hinssen is one of the most sought-after thought leaders on radical innovation, leadership and the impact of all things digital on society and business. For more than fifteen years, Peter led a life of technology startups. Today he is founder of Nexxworks, co-founder of Across Group, and Chairman of Across Technology. He lectures at various business schools like the London Business School and the Stockholm School of Economics, is a Senior Industry Fellow at the 'Center for Digital Transformation' of the 'The Paul Merage School of Business' at UC Irvine and functions as a board advisor on disruptive and digital innovation.

Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Let's Get Started xv

CHAPTER 1 THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
The Theory of Everything 2
The RAND Corporation 3
The Ultimate Model 6
Stepping into the Unknown 6
VUCA 8
VACINE 9

CHAPTER 2 SPEED, AND WHY THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY MATTERS
A Brief History of Time 14
Speed 14
Faster, Faster, Faster 14
The Era of Now 15
Clock Speeds 16
Internal Clock Speed 17
The Clock Speed Conundrum 18
The Theory of Relativity 19
Breaking the Sound Barrier 20

CHAPTER 3 LINEARITY IS DEAD
Chasing Simplicity 24
Linear Systems 25
Dynamic Systems 26
New Language of Systems 28
Complex Adaptive Systems 29
Entropy 30
Schrödinger's Cat 31
Depressed Yet? 31
The Age of Networks 32
The Core Vocabulary of Complex Systems 33
Scale-Free Networks 35
Conclusions 36
HOW THE MEDIA DISCOVERED NETWORKS 37

CHAPTER 4 INFORMATION BECOMES A FLOW
It's a Small, Small World 44
Flow of Magic 45
Information Becomes a Flow 46
Information Theory 47
The Signal and the Noise 48
The Gambling Connection 50
The Gambler's Fallacy 52
The Signal and the Noise, 2.0 52
The Little Elephant 53
The Mathematics of War 54
Graphs Rule The World 56
The Rich Club 58
Leverage the Power of Networks 60
The Topology of Your Organization 64
EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF NETWORKS 67

CHAPTER 5 WHEN MARKETS STOP BEING MARKETS
Book Bind 79
The Original Speedboats 80
The (Old) Heart of Marketing 81
Consumers Take Over 82
Good Clean Funnel 83
A Real-Life Mad Man 84
Disruptive Forces 85
Don and Martha 86
From Firefly to Amazon 88
Recommendations 89
The Second Life of Netfl ix 90
Getting Personal 91
The Popcorn Experiment 92
Unconscious Branding 93
Fear, Trust, and Hormones 94
Markets are Becoming Networks 95
The Tribe Has Spoken 96
The Agency Will Do All That 97
The Paradox of Choice 99
Conclusion 99
They Bought a Zoo 102
Watching Water Boil 103
THE ERA OF NETWORKED HEALTH 105

CHAPTER 6 WHEN ORGANIZATIONS BECOME NETWORKS OF INNOVATIONGeneration N 115
Org Charts and Their Discontents 116
Reimagining Careers 117
Relevance Replaces Loyalty 118
The Antihierarchy 120
The Opposite of Fragile 121
Both Wave and Particle 123
Conway's Law 125
Build Fluid Organizations 126

CHAPTER 7 CREATION AND DESTRUCTION
Broken Halos 130
Built to Last 130
Creative Destruction 131
Phoenix from the Ashes 133
The Halo Effect 134
Written in the Stars 135
Building Stellar Companies-and Black Holes 136

CHAPTER 8 STRATEGY FOR THE AGE OF NETWORKS
Fun with Creeping Death 140
Frozen, Fluid, Rigid, and Superfluid 142
Fluidity and Start-Ups 144
The Thermodynamic Cycle of Organizations 145
The Triune Brain 147
The Triune Networks 149
Why Start-Ups Are Magic 150
Industry Disruption 153
It Takes a Network to Fight a Network 154
The Golden Rule 155
The Holy Trinity in the Age of Networks 156
Waves of Disruption 160
The Age of Networks 161

Epilogue 163
Endnotes 171
Sources 183
Index 187
About the Author 203