👋 On time for your weekend: a weekly round-up of what was written or said at the interaction of #technology, #business, #design and #organisation, and stood out.
📚 Reading
The secret giant in the passion economy:
Firstly, people will increasingly identify with and trust other people rather than starting with a specific type of product or impersonal brand .. Secondly, what is scalable is empowering individuals to build their business, to carve out a niche, and build their audience, rather than focusing on a specific content medium.
👊 Empowerment is the new shape of scale—Li’s Newsletter
Permeable Organizations — Exploring the boundary of the firm:
Instagram, while only a company of 13 when it sold to Facebook for a billion dollars, was already home to a whole economy of influencers, early adopters and passionate users. While there are few formal relationships here it’s clear that future companies will need stronger recognition of their orbital stakeholders - with new ways of giving them access, voice and ownership.
🚀 Empowerment is the new competitive advantage—Little Futures
Anti-monopoly vs. Antitrust:
So much modern antitrust action against tech companies is like pushing on a string: the reason these companies have power is because so many customers choose to use them, and it is both difficult and probably unwise to try and regulate the individual choices of billions of users.
🤔 Empowerment is the new monopoly—Stratechery
🎧 Listening
Transitioning to a Multi-polar World:
I think the way we’re going now is we’re going towards a values-based, multipolar world. So what I mean by that is that when it comes to economics and politics and climate change, each of the big regions has got very different values and approaches- and those values will inform how they build out their economy
Michael O'Sullivan—Structural Shifts by Aperture
The Exponential Era:
What is challenging today, and why we call it the exponential era, is digital transformation and convergence of technologies impacting all industries. Nobody is immune and that means you going to have to look at how things are changing, what new ecosystems might develop and where is your position in them.
Michael W. Wright—The Wicked Podcast
When Efficiency Goes Too Far:
The business,just like the economy, is not a machine, it's a natural system, a complex adaptive system. Businesses will have to think more about how the system works as a whole and stop worshipping at the altar of deeper and deeper narrow expertise.
Roger Martin—HBR IdeaCast
📬 Suggestions?
Please, feel free to send tips and ideas for the next issue by replying to this email. Or, send them directly to hello@futuring-architectures.com 🙏
This week’s cover photo is by David Menidrey on Unsplash