Peter Hinssen launches new book ‘The Network Always Wins’

The premise of the ‘The Network Always Wins’ is as simple as it is inescapable: whenever the outside world – under the influence of the digital and the social web, in particular, – transforms itself into a network, then organizations, too, must become a network. The book tells us what happens when markets evolve faster than ever before: when young go-getters with a disruptive idea and a limited budget bring, from one day to the next, a sector to its knees, when customers become competitors or competitors join hands to pull ahead of the rest of their industry. 

`The Network Always Wins’ shows what these evolutions mean for business models, for HR policy, for management boards or for profit margins. It’s a manual for organizations that wish to survive the increasingly uncertain and complex outside world, by tackling ingrained habits and planning their own growth. For all those who (want to) realize that the traditional forms of organization – which date back to the Industrial Revolution and are centered around hierarchy, structure, control and efficiency – no longer work in the present day of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity & ambiguity).

The idea for the book originated from a combination of Hinssen’s own experiences as a start-up entrepreneur, his countless (professional) conversations with entrepreneurs and business managers and the unique experiences that he gained during his many Innovation Tours in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.

“Nowadays, agility is the only true competitive edge”, claims Hinssen. “A company may well have the best talent on its payroll, the soundest strategies of a brilliant top management, but if it is too slow and rigid to react to a change in the market – or to, itself, effect a new, groundbreaking trend in that market – then all those assets will count for nothing. Every company possesses `start-up DNA’ as well as the speed and fearlessness that go with it. And that goes for large(r) organizations to. You just have to look at MasterCard, W.L. Gore Company or AstraZeneca and how they manage to keep a fresh, enterprising perspective. Companies which, without exception, think and operate as a network. That’s how you survive and thrive in today’s market.”

Both Adam Pisoni (co-founder of Yammer) and Carlota Perez (Author of `Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: the Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages’) are big fans of his. Check here the first reactions of readers and where the book can be bought online. Paper versions will also be obtainable at the Standaard and Acco bookshops, from late April onwards.

‘The Network Always Wins’ is Hinssen’s third book, following on from Business/IT Fusion (2008) and The New Normal (2010). It has, for some time now, been exclusively available as a beta version at Hinssen’s presentations but it is now, in a brand-new version – supplemented with many recent examples – being marketed commercially through the international publishers, McGraw Hill.