Community & Tools

"Self-made billionaire Richard Branson has a new favorite business book"

Self-made billionaire Richard Branson has another book to add to his long list of “must-reads”: “New Power,” by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms.

In it, the authors discuss a shift from “old power,” which they define as being “held by few” and “closed, inaccessible and leader-driven,” to “new power,” which is “made by many” and “open, participatory and peer-driven.”

The power shift is one that Branson, who started his first business half a century ago, has witnessed and one he thinks has the potential to do good.

The book is particularly helpful, says Branson, because the authors explain how to build and successfully channel new power: “It’s a useful lens to use when thinking about how business has changed, how to spread ideas or start a movement, or create change.”

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Review of New Power

During the UK general election in 2010, an otherwise anxious electorate, rendered untrusting by a recent financial crisis, was offered a rare laugh. A Labour party election broadcast poked fun at Conservative leader David Cameron’s central social policy idea of “the Big Society” . His vision of a citizenry empowered to take control of their public services was lampooned with the image of a harassed working mother answering various hotlines between shifts manning local services in the absence of government employees.

Years later, it is easy to scoff at the latest evangelists for a participatory revolution. They tend towards grandiose ideas to “restore vitality to our essential social functions” or even “reinvent democracy”, as Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms put it in their handbook on how organisations can cope in a digital age. The calls are becoming deafening for an overhaul of how elites meet the public’s demands and harness ideas from new sources.

Now that political and social movements such as #MeToo have demonstrated there is a different way to exert influence via social media, the authors are likely to find an eager readership for their book — including both those at the top of the tree, anxious to keep their perch, and the activists and upstarts at the bottom trying to shake them out of it.

The “new power” in question is characterised as surging like a human current through peer networks and grassroots initiatives — in contrast to traditional old power, jealously guarded by leaders and hierarchies, that is handed down from on high.

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Video episode on New Power examples

“Strength in numbers” is the idea that a group of people has more influence than just  one person—that the collective is stronger as a whole. It’s also one of the guiding principles in “New Power”, a book by authors Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms about the power dynamics in the 21st century.

Heimans and Timms assert there is a new form of power, one that democratises and equalises our ability to create change. It’s what fuels movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. But not every successful movement is an altruistic one. The “new power” principle can be harnessed by anyone. It’s one of the reasons ISIL and the so-called alt-right movement in the United States have been effective.

So just how is new power reshaping our world and how do you turn a moment into a movement? Heimans and Timms will explain in this episode of The Stream.

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#GivingTuesday and New Power

Back in 2012, 92nd Street Y Executive Director Henry Timms came up with a simple but powerful idea: a day all about generosity to follow the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy. Together with his team, Timms created #GivingTuesday, and its now-iconic heart-shaped logo, then started sharing the idea with the Y’s network. Their approach was fully inclusive, with no rules: Participants were encouraged to rework the logo, call the campaign whatever they liked, and invent ways to involve their own networks.

Six years later, #GivingTuesday has grown into a worldwide movement, adapting and evolving with each community and nonprofit that adopts it (see our own GAgives), and growing year over year in participation, donations, and acts of generosity.

This decentralized approach is what Timms calls “new power.”

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Jeremy Heimans on Crowd Power and Politics

The election of Donald J. Trump surprised many, most of all the Democrats. Jeremy Heimans, a political activist and the Founder of the online media company Purpose, explains it simply: Donald Trump won the internet, and thus won the presidency. Heimans is a political activist and the Founder of the online media company Purpose, explains it simply: Donald Trump won the internet, and thus won the presidency. It’s largely the same way the NRA stays in the public eye: through dominating the conversation. Trump and the NRA, for all their foibles, are both masters at what Heimans calls “New Power” — being able to seize the moment and keep people talking — and anyone attempting to beat him needs to become a master at it, too. Jeremy’s new book is the highly recommended New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World-and How to Make It Work for You.

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Crowdfunding and New Power

Crowdfunding is having a profound effect on business. So much so that I believe that by 2030 all good ideas will be incubated through crowdfunding.

Why? Because crowds, i.e. the opinion of the market, is deemed more trustworthy than the voice of a few opinionated industry leaders; pluralism is overtaking individualism. John Auckland from Tribefirst explains that there will be a time in the near future where ideas or new brands won’t be trusted if they can’t show they’ve been validated by the crowd.

I’m not the only one who believes this paradigm shift will be absolute. In their recently-published book, called New Power, authors Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans argue that we’re shunning old 20th Century values in favour of new power values of disintermediation, leader-less movements and crowdsourced ideas. In this world our voices are heard through online petitions, our banks are crowdsourced and our beer is owned by the people. It also has its dark side, leading to populist politics that can be open to manipulation, such as Donald Trump, Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

So how will this affect the startup and funding scenes, and will this help to drive the industry forward? And how can your idea gain more traction by embracing these new powers?

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Book review of New Power

It’s not often I use the term, “page-turner” to describe a work of nonfiction; however, this is an accurate description of New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms. I took the book with me on a trip for work and found myself wishing the flights and layovers were just a little longer, so as not to interrupt my reading. I even read the book in my hotel room at night after the workday, which was a mistake a couple of nights because I found myself reading instead of getting the sleep I needed.

The subtitle of the book is, “How power works in our hyperconnected world – and how to make it work for you.” What makes the book so compelling are the heavy doses of relevant examples sprinkled throughout each chapter. Some of the case studies are familiar, but many are not. The diversity of the case studies makes the work relevant to just about anyone interested in how to successfully navigate our world of instant communication and connection.

As an aside, I appreciate how delicately the authors shared insights about politically sensitive topics without pandering to or demeaning either side of the political divide. The sensitive topics they explored made the book relevant to many of the issues we face today, and they did a nice job highlighting hot button topics without alienating people across the political spectrum.

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"New Power author Jeremy Heimans: 'Like it or not, the old world isn't coming back'"

There is nothing out of the ordinary about a book that makes one angry. We have all read ones that provoke us, and the internet is an inexhaustible feast for anyone easily outraged. It is unusual, however, to read a book that makes one mad with oneself.

The co-authors of New Power could not be more likable. Clever, witty and creative, Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans are baby-faced wunderkinds of digital activism; the type whose optimistic energy ought to make one feel hopeful for the future. So it is uncomfortable to confess that I hated almost every word, and wished more than anything for them to be wrong. The reason their book made me so cross with myself was that, if they are right, it means my way of thinking is old-fashioned and elitist – the very problem, in fact, they are trying to solve.

Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

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New Power nad leadership

The students of Parkland, Fla., top Fortune’s 2018 list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, and the #MeToo movement clinches the third spot. Movements matter—today as much as ever. Individual crusaders when joined together can collectively topple corporate executives, undercut industries, upend elections, and wreak havoc on policy plans.

With the advent of social media and other democratizing technologies, much is written now about “new power”—how decentralized networks often triumph over more conventional, top-down models. But new power is old news to social change makers.

While every movement embodies collective leadership, not all campaigns are created equal. Some successfully coalesce around a common vision. Others fail to gain traction, spinning out of control or momentarily flaring bright, then fizzling.

Whether a movement succeeds is determined by how it is led. Any group of impassioned people can mount a protest or organize a march on Washington, but social change making at the end of the day is an act of leadership.

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"Why crowdfunding heralds a new power, and what this means for small businesses and start-ups"

Look around at the world’s many unpredictable events and it could not be clearer that our political, and social, tectonics plates are shifting.

Fueled by the digital revolution of young technology adoptees who are now reaching adulthood, it is in many ways unsurprising that the connected generation is rejecting old leadership paradigms, and favouring the peer-to-peer model over outdated intermediaries.

As the plates shifted, crowdfunding has been able to blossom, and its societal impact is far more radical than you might realise.

My prediction is that by 2030, all worthwhile ideas will be brought to life via crowdfunding.

As the crowd increasingly becomes the zeitgeist, the perceived wisdom of industry leaders loses its resonance. In other words, pluralism is overtaking individualism. It won’t be too long before all new ideas and brands will not be trusted unless they’ve first gained the trust of the crowd.

This is, of course, just a prediction. However, I’m not the only one theorising this radical shift. In New Power, the fascinating new book by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans, the pair propose that we’re trading 20th Century values for new power values of disintermediation – leaderless movements and crowdsourced ideas.

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Podcast with Jeremy Heimans

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

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What we can learn from Boaty McBoatface

In March 2016, the British Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) decided to crowdsource the name of its new $300 million arctic explorer vessel. It hoped the public would suggest something like ‘Shackleton’ or ‘Endeavor’, but the moment someone suggested the name ‘Boaty McBoatface’, it went viral and shot to the top of the poll. The NERC had the right idea in harnessing the power of crowds, explains Henry Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y in New York, but it lacked the skills needed to pull it off. Instead of turning Boaty McBoatface into an opportunity to revive science education and merchandise Boaty, it shut the idea down, canceled the competition and named the ship ‘Sir David Attenborough’. “There’s a set of very clear skills in how you go about harnessing the crowd. And you look around the world right now, any corporation, any nonprofit, any leader who wants to come out on top needs to think a lot more carefully about how they negotiate with the crowd,” says Timms. Here, he shares the four key components of successful crowdsourcing and brand building, and explains how Lego used those methods to pull itself out of near-bankruptcy and up to new heights. Henry Timms is the co-author of New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World-and How to Make It Work for You

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Henry Timms is interviewed on Kessa Schraene's podcast

The book “New Power” describes how to turn a moment into a movement. Co-author and 92nd Street Y Executive Director Henry Timms shares benefits of transparent, generous and “leaderful” organizations.

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Top 25 books for corporate America in June

800-CEO-READ, a leading direct supplier of book-based resources compiles a monthly list of best-selling business books based on purchases by its corporate customers nationwide. Here are the best sellers for June 2018, plus descriptions of the Top 10…

“New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You” by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, Doubleday Books In an era increasingly shaped by new power, this groundbreaking book offers us a new way to understand the world — and our role in it.

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"Business Books of the Month: April Edition"

Self-organising movements, from #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy to #MeToo and #NeverAgain, are hard to analyse. By definition, they tend to start from the grass roots and grow without obvious structure until they either attain a more formal structure or disintegrate.

The authors have first-hand experience of the workings of “new power” — which is informal, collaborative, open and participatory. Jeremy Heimans is co-founder of Purpose, which helps oil the wheels of social movements, and Henry Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, the venerable New York cultural hub, helped launch the #GivingTuesday campaign.

One of their insights is that new power values and old power values are not synonymous with “good” and “bad” values, and most organisations and leaders are likely to blend the two. Isis has used new power tools such as social media to recruit. Barack Obama campaigned with a new power model and values, but adopted the more rigid and formal model of an old power leader. As the authors point out: “In a world of old and new power colliding, competing, and converging, everyone is on the move.”

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"In Our Hyperconnected World, Dallas Leaders Find ‘New Power’ With Public Collaboration"

United Way has been working in the social sphere for more than 125 years, but don’t call it “old.”

At least when talking about it in terms of “old power,” as outlined by authors Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans, says Jennifer Sampson, president and CEO of the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

Sampson read the 2014 Business Review article and noticed under examples of old power institutions, Timms and Heimans listed United Way.

“That caught my eye and I didn’t like it. I don’t want to lead an old power,” said Sampson, who in 2011 became the first female CEO of the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

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Podcast with Grant Oliphant and Henry Timms

For most of recorded history, the rules of power were clear: Power was something to be seized and then guarded at any cost. This “old power” was owned by a tiny fraction of humankind, and beyond reach for the vast majority of people.

But the ubiquitous connectivity of our world today is allowing something altogether new to occur, and makes possible an extraordinarily different kind of power: people-centric, participatory-focused and spreading with lightning-fast speed.

“If you are able to harness this new power, you are likely to come out on top,” says Henry Timms, co-author of “New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You.”

As executive director of the historic 92nd Street Y cultural and community center in New York City, Henry is a passionate believer in the new power distribution that technology allows. The 92nd Street Y serves 300,000 visitors each year, and garners millions of online interactions. Partnering with the United Nations Foundation in 2012, Henry founded #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving fueled by social media and collaboration. To date, it has raised more than $300 million for organizations, charities and events, and made nearly 22 billion online impressions.

“We Can Be” host Grant Oliphant, president of The Heinz Endowments, asks in this episode what old power — large institutions, bureaucracies and top-down structures — gets wrong, and if it can peacefully co-exist with the new power paradigm that Henry espouses.

Henry’s answers may surprise you, and he is crystal-clear on what’s really at stake: “New power is becoming the essential skill of the 21st century,” he says. “Those that can harness the energy of the connected crowd and create opportunities for people to engage on their own terms will win.”

Henry dives into how the Parkland survivors, the Me Too movement, Local Motors and Black Lives Matter have gotten it right, and why our most challenging task may be figuring out how — or if — we can ensure this new power is used for good. “Those on the side of the angels need to get mobilized,” Henry says. “And I mean quickly.”

On this episode of “We Can Be,” learn about this new power: how to get it, why it’s changing our hyper-connected world and why we should be hopeful about what it can do.

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"Living in a New Power world requires new competencies"

The current legal and administrative infrastructure as well as economic systems in most countries are still very much unsupportive of such independent workers, entrepreneurs or people who take the risk of living and working outside of what Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans refer to as the “Old Power” world of long-term stable jobs and affiliation, of professionalism and career paths, of competition and status.

These tensions between enjoying the life of freedom I want and being able create my own reality every day on the one hand, and the uncertainty, unpredictability and responsibility this brings on the other hand, are increasingly going to be the life of many of those in my generation who see themselves as “makers”, who are unsatisfied with the world as it stands today, and who seek to create a new one by harnessing the collective intelligence and energy of the crowd — or what Jeremy and Henry call “New Power”.

To be able to handle the tensions inherent in living in a world of New Power requires a whole new set of competencies which most of us have never learned at school, in our families nor in society at large.

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I’m old power.  I have old power values.  And I work in an old power model.

This is one of the things that I learned by reading New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World and How to Make It Work for You.

A quick way to situate where you and the institution / organization that you work on the new power compass is to check out the matrix below.  (Stolen from the HBR article in which the book grew out of):

The realization that I’ve spent my life in “Castles” hit me sort of hard.  (My only non higher ed gig was at Britannica).

Last week I spent a few days at ASU’s EdPlus unit. EdPlus is the learning innovation and online education unit of ASU.  It is an institution whose culture most closely embodies new power values.

Read the full article here.

"Social activists tell how to make the hashtag work for — not against — you in 'New Power'"

There’s real power in those hashtags — just ask Harvey Weinstein and Starbucks.

They’ve learned the hard way that the wrath of social media can be swift and ferocious.

None of this is a surprise to Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms.

Together they’ve written New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You, released by Doubleday earlier this month and now the publishing company’s hottest title.

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"Business Books to Watch in April"

The definitive guide to spreading ideas, building movements, and leaping ahead in our chaotic, connected age. Get the book New York Times columnist David Brooks calls “the best window I’ve seen into this new world.”

For most of human history, the rules of power were clear: power was something to be seized and then jealously guarded. This “old power” was out of reach for the vast majority of people. But our ubiquitous connectivity makes possible a different kind of power. “New power” is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It works like a current, not a currency—and it is most forceful when it surges. The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel.

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"The ‘New Power’ Generation: A Manifesto For A More Humane World"

Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures.

New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

Heimans and Timms join us to explain how it applies to modern movements, from MeToo to the youth-led call for gun legislation after the shooting in Parkland, Florida.

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"For your reading list: We review 3 intriguing business books"

We live in an increasingly connected, globalised world. Movements like #MeToo or the alt-right, corporations like Facebook or Uber – the explosion of these ideas demonstrate the changing nature of power.

No longer static, power is now chaotic and mutable, and ordinary citizens may find themselves in power one day, and then lose it the next.

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"New Power: An Interview with Henry Timms"

Heimans and Timms spent three years talking to practitioners, academics and researchers on the cutting edge of what they call new power, which flows from what they think of as the essential skill of the 21st century: the ability to harness the energy of the connected crowd.

Their research and conversations took place all around the world and included everyone from the heads of intelligence agencies in Washington to frontline health workers in the Netherlands. They write about the battle and balance between old power to new power, and show how they’re fueling the defining transformation of our times. But like all fast-moving trends, sometimes it’s hard to see it clearly when we’re right in the middle of it, which makes New Power just that much more important. It’s a guide to spreading ideas, launching movements, raising money and much more.

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"#DeleteFacebook Is Just the Beginning. Here’s the Movement We Could See Next"

A few years ago, you may remember seeing Facebook (FB, +0.91%) posts like this dotting your newsfeed.

The posts were based on an urban myth. The Rome Statute in fact covers crimes against humanity, not Facebook’s relationship with its users. But the popularity of such posts remind us that the #DeleteFacebook movement we have seen in recent days has much deeper roots.

Continue reading to see more of the Fortune adaption from Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans book New Power.

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"The Nonprofit Book We’ve Been Waiting Four Years To Read Is Finally Here"

New power is not just a passing trend, it matters for civil society.

Connectivity and platforms like Facebook can bring us closer together and inspire amazing work or they can be weaponized to drive us further apart as we’ve been witnessing over the past 18 months.

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May 4th, 2018 — Asheville, NC — Not being a climatologist, meteorologist, or environmental health specialist is a challenge when you are trying to raise awareness of the exposure impacts of the weather and the environment on health. However, that’s because the model for the distribution of weather and environmental knowledge and information is based on old power. We have a system that distributes weather and environmental exposure information to the masses when in fact individuals are sensitive to these exposures uniquely.

Our physician-centered healthcare system runs on old power. In New Power, by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, they explain;

“Physicians have become accustomed to being keepers of medical knowledge, distanced from their patients by a hyphenated lexicon and inscrutable prescriptions.”

In the case of environmental factors, if physicians did not understand the impacts of outdoor weather or environmental exposures on an asthma patient, or they felt the correlation was insufficiently validated, it was neglected. Asthma educators arose, in part, because physicians were not sufficiently educating patients about the triggers that could cause negative health outcomes. This is in part because we lacked the infrastructure that is emerging today; wearable sensors, big data, and machine learning that could inform physicians of the exposure impacts on their patient.

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"Jeremy Heimans: To truly defeat the NRA, we have to learn from them"

Jeremy Heimans believes he’s figured out the secret to the National Rifle Association’s power — and it isn’t necessarily what you think.

“The NRA has systematically sought to project this image of its own might, even though it’s actually one of the less effective spenders in U.S. elections in terms of outcomes,” Heimans, the CEO and co-founder of Purpose, told Mic. “It often takes credit for races that either the pro-gun supporting candidate was going to win anyway, or where it invested less than $100 in the outcome of the race.”

“We all want to be more powerful, and we all want to make change and impact in the world,” Heimans said. “Today we have a choice about what kind of power we choose to exercise: old power and new power.”

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New York City event

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"raceAhead: Finding New Power At Work"

If the world seems increasingly wild and unfamiliar, you’re not alone. Hashtags, hate speech, and social movements ignite without warning, companies (like Uber) and candidates (like Obama and Trump) ascend from nowhere, and every day we are confronted with more evidence that technology is enabling both the best and worst human impulses…

Rather than parrot the now familiar tech-topia talking points of “democratization” and prosperity through connectivity, the authors offer both context and practical advice that one can use to succeed in a tech-enabled world that’s profoundly imperfect but ever-present.

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"There are fewer wars when you take power away from men in big castles"

Those who have power want to be told they have it and how to keep it. Those that don’t have power want someone to envy. As a result, the audience for books on power is seemingly endless.

So I was initially cautious about another one released this week – but New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms turns out to be a nifty guide to the 21st century that is genuinely new. Instead of one more catchy way of describing how the world works, they have written a manifesto for organising that world with more humanity and purpose.

Ultimately you’ll either hate it or wish you had written it, depending on whether you believe in old or new power.

But what does that actually mean?

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Jeremy Heimans on Facebook and New Power

That’s the view of Jeremy Heimans, the co-founder of social movement platform GetUp! and movement marketing agency Purpose.

Heimans, an prominent digital activist, joins a growing chorus of experts who believe that Facebook’s advertising-funded business model which incentivises users to post attention-grabbing content, doesn’t align with its public image of “creating a more connected world” and “bringing people together”.

“We have a term we use to describe platforms like Facebook – we describe them as participation farms,” Heimans told AdNews on a recent visit to launch movement marketing agency Purpose in Sydney and promote his book New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World.

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Interview with Henry Timms on 14th & G.

This week on 14th & G, we welcome thought leader Henry Timms onto the show to discuss his book, a national bestseller, New Power. Timms is the Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y, a cultural and community center that creates programs and movements that foster learning and civic engagement. Our discussion will examine the fate of traditional institutions in the face of newcomers able to harness the energy behind a connected crowd.

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I don’t recall ever reading a nonfiction book as quickly as I’ve just read Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms’s new book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You. It helps that Phil Buchanan, CEP’s president, reviewed the book recently in The Chronicle of Philanthropy and has recommended it highly to my colleagues and me. Timms also spoke on this topic at CEP’s 2015 conference in San Francisco, back when some of the main ideas in the book were outlined in this article in the Harvard Business Review.

In Heimans and Timms’s telling, “new power” dynamics are providing new methods of participation and agency for people, organizations, and causes that we are increasingly seeing around us. While “old power” values are often formal and prize expertise, confidentiality, professionalism, and pedigree, new power values prize decentralized decision-making, organic multiplication, the wisdom of crowds, radical transparency, and a bootstrap mentality.

Read the full article here.

Review of New Power

You couldn’t wish for two better people to write this explanation and exploration of new power than Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans. Heimans founded GetUp!, a non-partisan political engagement organisation in his native Australia. It has more members than all of the country’s political parties combined. Timms is executive director of 92nd Street Y, a cultural centre. He had the idea of #GivingTuesday to encourage philanthropic acts (inspired by the capitalistic Black Friday). Like all good memes, it has been adopted and adapted globally, and is a perfect example of how, as the two men note, “a movement is successful when it moves on its own”.

But what is “New Power”? It is about values and, more importantly, how those values are structured and realised. New power focuses on collaboration and participation and transparency. Its methods include crowdsourcing, social media campaigns and decentralisation. “Old-power” institutions have strict, formal structures, centralised power and tend to operate esoterically.

Anyone other than those completely disengaged with world events will have noticed the growth of new power; and, in some areas, the ways old power has either dug in or attempted to adapt. Just one of the areas in which this book excels is in its carefully selected but abundant case studies. These are global and cross commerce, politics, entertainment, the charity sector and social media. There is #BlackLivesMatter in the US; the beginnings of the hugely popular online craft store Etsy; the Ice Bucket Challenge, which raised millions for a little-known disease. There are numerous examples that exist outside of this book. Off the top of my head: the Gambia elections; the number of people who have had their healthcare paid via fundraising sites; #MeToo.

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"Putting ‘New Power’ to Work in Philanthropy"

A rich and deeply researched new book expertly delineates the fundamental shift in how people get things done in a hyperconnected world, offering lessons every foundation and nonprofit leader should heed.

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"Gist: James Comey's Ego Trip"

On Monday’s Gist, we’re counting Pulitzers and powering up.

Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms sort power into two categories: old and new. Old power is like Congress: top-down, official. New power is like Facebook: decentralized, crowd-sourced. What is the best way to meld both kinds of influence to improve our lives? Heimans and Timms have the beginnings of an answer. They’re the authors of New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How to Make It Work for You.

In the Spiel, James Comey does seem ego-driven. That’s not always a bad thing.

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On its surface, New Power looks like a breathless book by two social media experts about how decentralized power is changing the world for the better. Occupy, MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the Ice Bucket Challenge, and even Oreo Cookies have shown, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms say, that New Power is people’s power, decentralized power, peer-generated power that can be channeled but not managed from on high. “It’s only a movement if it moves without you,” they say.

Reading the book, however, I found myself growing more pessimistic, conservative, elitist, and crotchety. After all, right-wing populist movements like the Leave campaign in Britain, the Tea Party and MAGA movements in the U.S., and many others utilize “New Power” too, often more effectively than their progressive or centrist opponents. The more I read of New Power, the more old and embittered I felt.

So I decided to ask them about that. Both are experts:  Timms launched the Giving Tuesday campaign, which is now part of our holiday season calendar, and Heimans co-founded the online activism platform Avaaz andPurpose.org, which has built activist campaigns for Google, the ACLU, and the LGBT group All Out, among others. Their TED talk on “new power” has gotten over 1.25 million views and CNN called “new power” one of the “top ten ideas to change the world in 2015.”

Lucky for me, both are also in my own New York, Jewish, and (in Heimans’ case) gay orbits, so I decided to treat this interview like getting a round of drinks with these guys, playing devil’s advocate, and leaving the jokes in the final transcript. Here’s what went down.

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"For Summer Reading, Check Out These Books"

Here’s a list of books on nonprofit management and leadership recommended by Chronicle reporters and editors…

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms (2018, Doubleday). The authors demonstrate how today’s interconnected world puts power in the hands of many rather than a few, and they explain how this “new power” is redefining how we work, who governs us, and more.

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“Sparking a Movement Inside and Outside Your Organization”

In today’s hyper-connected, globalized world, where new social-political reckonings catch fire overnight, the stakes have never been greater for brands to mobilize their audiences—inside and outside their four walls—to take a stand together.

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"New Power"

Quiet Revolution is excited to spread the word about Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans’ new book New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – And How to Make it Work for You The authors sat down to answer these questions for Quiet Revolution

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"A World Without Social Media: Would That Be A Force For Good?"

When Mark Zuckerberg and his friends set up Facebook in their Harvard dormitory rooms in 2004, little did they anticipate growing a social network bigger than any country on the planet, with more than 2.1 billion monthly active users. What was surely even further from their minds, was that it would also lead to Zuckerberg being summoned to the U.S. Congress 14 years on, to face questioning over Cambridge Analytica harvesting data from up to 87 million Facebook users…

Power is shifting back into the hands of the people. There has been a revival in grassroots civic engagement, with social media giving both a voice to those silenced, and a means to galvanise. Social media is now one of the main tools for raising awareness on important issues and pushing for reform, a topic also discussed in the new book, New Power by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans.

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"New Power in the 21st Century. What are the Forces Reshaping Politics, Business and Society?"

In this week’s episode of Hidden Forces, Demetri speaks with Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, the authors of the book “New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World and How to Make It Work for You.”

So, if we accept that the world is changing and that the dynamics of power are changing with it, what then? How is this battle between old and new power determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel? How can understanding new power dynamics help us reshape the world around us in a positive way? What can the distribution of power in the 21st century tell us about how the future is going to unfold? Is our ability to mobilize the mass of humanity in previously unimaginable ways a net positive development for the aims of egalitarianism and progress?

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"Power play: An account of the rapidly evolving new world marvels at the ability of social media"

Is social media neutral? The answer to the question may depend on who you ask and when you ask the question. Donald Trump becoming the President of the US led to people around the world questioning the neutrality of the service. As companies such as Facebook were accused of rigging elections around the world, social media was termed evil. But activists from the #MeToo movement or #BlackLivesMatter would term social media as a force multiplier, mostly for good.

So there are optimists and pessimists about the impact social media can have on our lives. Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans, having built their careers and social ventures from it, fall in the former category. Although they have their reservations about the service, the view they present is mostly cheery around what social media—and an ever more interconnected world—holds for the future. But what they seem more interested in are the new corridors of power that social media is creating. They marvel at its ability to transform the 21st century and create new phenomena that are continually changing the world we live in.

New Power: How It’s Changing The 21st Century—And Why You Need To Know is an account of this rapidly evolving new world, where the authors claim that anybody with the knowledge of social media can start the next movement or commit the next faux pas. Relying on the examples of Trump, Harvey Weinstein, ISIS, #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, etc, the authors present a contrast between new power and the old. They extol the strategy of those who have successfully turned the tide using social media, while also presenting a contrast with those who still define their existence with “old power”.

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Review of New Power

Marketing Week reviews the latest books for marketers…

New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms. For most of human history, power was something to be seized and guarded. We lived in a world of rulers and subjects. But something has changed. From Jeremy Corbyn to Donald Trump; from taxis to B&Bs; from YouTube sensations to the emergence of ISIS; in our new hyper-connected world, ideas and movements can spread and flourish with astonishing force and speed. Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront some of the biggest stories of our time and trace how ‘new power’ is the key to understanding where we are and who will prosper in the 21^st century.

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"New Power: A story of broad engagement and change in a large healthcare organization"

We had a problem.

One of our organizational key strategies was having trouble getting traction. After two years of broad public consultation and the anointing of a steering committee there was still very little action beyond engagement and planning.

Although the Patient First strategy is one of four pillar strategies within Alberta Health Services (AHS), and even though it was central to health services becoming more patient and family centred, many staff and leaders expressed confusion about what Patient First was, and what it meant. Direction and planning was done by a select few people across the organization.

It was clear something had to happen. Success depended on broad engagement from staff and patients to help make services better.

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"Jeremy Heimas: The Up-start"

Meet Jeremy Heimans, co-founder and CEO of Purpose, 2012 Advance Award winner and co-author of the book New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World- and How to Make It Work for You.

Jeremy’s work has literally mobilised millions of citizens and consumers to help solve major global problems. He is the true definition of a global Australian achieving incredible things!

The release of his new book New Power is the talk of the town. It lays out the most important skill of the 21st Century: the ability to harness the energy of the connected crowd (for better and worse).

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“Boards of Directors: Will Old Power Give Way to New Power?”

Historically, boards of directors have been bastions of old power. A person qualified for the board by being a member of an exclusive class. Old power, as defined by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms in their new book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World and How to Make it Work for You, “works like currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven.”

Using Heimans and Timms definition, boards of directors have been quintessential old power. It is becoming evident, however, that these homogenous boards comprised of the anointed actually stunt corporate growth.

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"A new way to be powerful in a world that feels out of control"

From the out-of-nowhere victory of Donald Trump, to the insurgency of movements like #MeToo, to the growing power of platforms like Facebook to tweak our daily thoughts, feelings and habits.

Of course technology is changing, but we are also changing. To really understand what’s happening around us, we need to reckon not with changes in technology, but shifts in power.

Most of us grew up in a world built on old power. We had relatively little agency. Institutions like schools or the factory floor set narrow terms of engagement. We complied. We consumed. We paid our dues and played our part. It was a world built largely on “download”.

But in the early 21st century our ubiquitous connectivity has handed us what we can think of the new “means of participation”.

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"Let's Make New Power a Force for Good"

I’ve been loving reading “New Power”, launched just last week.

For me New Power is more than a book. While it gives plenty of examples of movements, I am experiencing New Power itself to also be a movement.

I read the forerunner article on New Power some time ago and I kept using the hashtag #newpower in my tweets. Yes, there was something about that article that spoke to me and I wanted the world to know about the ideas!

I was surprised and delighted when authors Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans in recent times reached out to me (and lots of others) to help with the launch of the book.

As I read New Power it makes more and more sense why they contacted me. I’ve been a early adopter. They made a reasonable assumption that I would get on board now. Engaging people like me is part of their strategy for movement building. People like me will take hold of the idea, add additional meaning to it and spread it to further progress consciousness of power in our societies.

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"New Power and the Dynamics of Digital Change"

If you are looking for a fresh and comprehensive analysis of how the Digital Age is transforming the civic arena, get yourself a copy of New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms’ new book, which is being released today.

What I found most valuable about New Power was the effort Heimans and Timms made to flesh out the backstory to many of the new power moments they use to enliven their larger argument. For example, they lucidly explain the origins and early organizing efforts of the group Invisible Children before they take us through its explosive flameout with the Kony 2012 video. I’ve long used that case as an example of how hard it is to convert momentary global fame into ongoing on-the-ground action in our age of hyper-distracting media, but in Heimans and Timms’ hands Invisible Children is first and foremost a great model for how to build what they call a “new power community.” That’s a place where three key factors are aligned: a platform owner who stewards the community’s brand and purpose, an engaged group of “super-participants” who do a lot of the heavy-lifting and gain meaning from being able to help shape the community, and a larger base of regular participants who come along for the ride.

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"Important new book : New Power"

At last there is “New Power”, a book that describes how to bottom-up WEAVE Online Communities into swarms of Positive Participating People.

Cases are analysed in which people interconnect, participate, cooperate and contribute meaning that can be synthesised, so it creates value by synergy to all participants.

This can scale up into a type of society I call  “The #Synthecracy”.

Its Message is in the Connections with Others.

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"3 Ways to Harness the 'New Power' That Let Airbnb, Kickstarter and Other Companies Climb to the Top"

Dictionaries pin down the first known use of the word “power” to between the years 1250 and 1300 — the same century that brought us classics including “poison,” “pitchfork” and “patience.”

Although the literary definition of power hasn’t changed, recent years have seen a shift in its cultural meaning.

There’s a reason why the likes of Airbnb have overtaken Hilton in revenue, argue Timms and Heimans. Simple investing apps with a focus on accessibility continue to grow in popularity, even as large investment management companies seem to rest on their laurels.

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“New Power” authors Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms discuss how people can obtain power in the 21st century.

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"TYT Interviews – Jeremy Heimans & Henry Timms"

Cenk interviews  authors of “New Power” Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms.

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"Your Data"

Life in Facebookistan: Speaking to Vox’s Ezra Klein a few days ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed to the company’s detection and blocking of malicious messages flowing through Messenger from inside Myanmar, inciting Muslims and Buddhists to arm themselves and go fight each other, as an example of how it is taking seriously its role in that country’s civil strife.

This is civic tech: In other news, New York Times’ columnist David Brooks read Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms’ new book New Power and sees in it evidence that “people are ingenious” and they are figuring out how to “redeem the broader social fabric” building on local ties of trust.

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"World's Greatest Leaders"

Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list is out this morning, and at the top of it are a bunch of kids—the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and elsewhere, who have challenged the powerful NRA with surprising effectiveness. That says something important about the nature of modern leadership. We live at a time when the captains of business and government are being taken on by surging currents of social media-fed sentiment. If you have any doubts about that, ask Harvey Weinstein —who once ruled Hollywood but was toppled last year by the #MeToo movement, which is No. 3 on the Fortune list.

Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms have captured this change in their just-published book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make it Work For You. They argue that “old power”–top down, jealously guarded, held by the few–is giving way to “new power”–bottom-up, participatory, peer-driven. The future belongs to “those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them–for the good, for the bad, and for the trivial.” Expect to hear more of this in the future.

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Henry Timms is the CEO of the 92nd Street Y, which “promotes individual and family development and participation in civic life within the context of Jewish values and American pluralism.” Henry founded #GivingTuesday in 2012, a growing global day of giving, and has continued to evolve the ideas and values of #GivingTuesday through a new book co-authored with Jeremy Heimans, New Power. The book – and much of the values behind #GivingTuesday – emphasize a new paradigm of decentralized, shared power, and how movement building can supplant old ideas of centralized control.

Henry talks about the intentional “open sourcing” of #GivingTuesday, how the New Power values add to donor/supporter agency – changing a perhaps more passive role to a more active one. Charities and movements which show a willingness to evolve business models based on a shared (and therefore improved) power dynamic have new opportunities with new tools. Take the New Power Quiz and share your thoughts in your favorite New Power space (Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else).

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A new book on so-called “new power” has attracted endorsements from a glittering array of public figures, ranging from entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, comedian Russell Brand and primatologist Jane Goodall to former Australian High Court judge Michael Kirby.

According to the book’s authors, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, the differences between “old power” of the 20th century and “new power” of the 21st century are the approaches to governance, competition, sharing of information, expertise, and loyalty and affiliation.

In the new power paradigm, collaboration and crowd sharing are valued. Transparency and a do-it-yourself culture are favoured over secrecy and relying on experts. Affiliation to groups is not reliant on long-term loyalty; rather, short-term affiliations can lead to greater public participation. Heimans and Timms argue that new power values have moved away from formal governance structures to informal (or networked) governance, allowing individuals to opt-in.

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New Power and crowdfunding

No one can deny that the social and political landscape is changing. Driven by the digital revolution and gathering pace as the number of so-called ‘digital natives’ reach adulthood, this paradigm shift is a result of society shunning traditional leadership models and preferring direct connection instead of intermediation. It’s because of this shift that crowdfunding was born, and the effects it’s having on society are far more profound than many realise.

I’ve been bold enough to state in the past that I believe all good ideas will be incubated through crowdfunding in the future. At the time I suggested it would be 2030 before this vision is fully realised, which still seems plausible. The thought process behind my theory is that crowds, ergo the opinion of the market, is deemed more trustworthy than the voice of a few opinionated industry leaders, in other words, pluralism is overtaking individualism. So I feel there will be a time in the near future where ideas or new brands won’t be trusted if they can’t show they’ve been validated by the crowd.

I’m not the only one who believes this paradigm shift will be absolute. In their recently-published book, called New Power, authors Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans argue that we’re shunning old 20th Century values in favour of new power values of disintermediation, leader-less movements and crowdsourced ideas. In this world our voices are heard through online petitions, our banks are crowdsourced and our beer is owned by the people. It also has its dark side, leading to populist politics that can be open to manipulation, such as Donald Trump, Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

So how will this affect the startup and funding scenes, and will this help to drive the industry forward? Or will a distrust of experts lead to a world where we’re forced to live with maniacal leaders and inanimate objects called Something McSomethingface?

Perhaps more importantly, how can your idea gain more traction by embracing these new powers?

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Review of New Power

Among the many revolutions taking place all around us in our hyperconnected world, argue authors Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms in New Power, is one involving a perennial issue in every society and culture: the nature and use of power.

“Old power,” argue the authors, is like a currency: held and directed by a leadership class that controls it jealously. “New power,” however, is more like a current of water or electricity: open, participatory and most potent when it surges. A smart leader doesn’t seek to hoard new power like currency but to channel it like a current. This new power is made possible by connectivity—facilitated by peer-to-peer communication and leadership approaches, crowdsourcing and online engagement with audiences. The authors use examples ranging from the edifying, like fundraising for a cure for A.L.S. through the “ice bucket challenge,” to the horrifying, as in the rise of white nationalist movements, to show where and how new power erupts and interrupts.

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Review of New Power

Existe um Novo Poder, emergindo das franjas do mundo interconectado, no qual as pessoas criam, compartilham e recriam constantemente suas próprias formas de interação social, de uma maneira horizontal e fluida. Frente a isso, o “Velho Poder”, centralizado, controlado por poucos, com baixo nível de transparência tenta reagir e entender o que está acontecendo “sob suas barbas”.

O Brexit (saída da Grã-Bretanha da União Europeia), a eleição do Trump e o próprio processo eleitoral brasileiro neste momento são algumas mostras de como as novas formas de organização e a mobilização distribuída (sobre a qual já falei, aqui, no Conexão Planeta) põem em cheque os sistemas representativos tradicionais.

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