Futuresquared

Episode #241: Jeremy Heimans on New Power

Futuresquared Podcast

Jeremy Heimans is the co-founder and CEO of Purpose, an organization headquartered in New York that builds and supports social movements around the world. He is the co-founder of GetUp!, an Australian political organization with more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined. He has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business and received the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary Visionary Award. With Henry Timms, Jeremy is co-author of the book NEW POWER: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How to Make It Work for You, forthcoming April 2018 from Doubleday. Their thinking on “new power” was featured as the Big Idea in Harvard Business Review, as one of 2014’s top TED talks with over 1.25 million views, and by CNN as one of the Top Ten Ideas to Change the World in 2015.

We explored a number of topics during our conversation, including:

  1. What new power is, how it differs to old power and what it means for today’s organisations
  2. How new power can be used for good and evil
  3. Lessons from the likes of LEGO, TED and Boaty McBoatface

 

You’ll learn that and much more in my conversation with the one and only, Jeremy Heimans.

 

Topics discussed:

  • Jeremy’s book
  • Jeremy’s upbringing and involvement in politics from the age of 8
  • What new power values and models are and how they differ from old power
  • How large, traditional organisations are stuck in old power models and what the consequences of this might be
  • Why radically transparent organisations have an edge over secretive ones
  • The characteristics of a new power organisation
  • Parallels between movements and methodologies like Agile and new power values
  • The power of feedback loops and how to use them in a new power economy
  • How the blockchain might support organisations looking to become more collaborative and decentralised
  • How dark movements such as ISIS are co-opting new power
  • How Facebook operates a new power model with old power values, perhaps to the detriment of society
  • Why you should…occupy yourself?
  • Why organisations need to commit if exploring new power and not just pay lip service to it as was the case with Boaty McBoatface
  • How LEGO and TED use new power
Listen here