The Connected Company

With a foreword by Alex Osterwalder.

The future of work is already here.

Customers are adopting disruptive technologies faster than your company can adapt. When your customers are delighted, they can amplify your message in ways that were never before possible. But when your company's performance runs short of what you've promised, customers can seize control of your brand message, spreading their disappointment and frustration faster than you can keep up.

To keep pace with today's connected customers, your company must become a connected company. That means deeply engaging with workers, partners, and customers, changing how work is done, how you measure success, and how performance is rewarded. It requires a new way of thinking about your company: less like a machine to be controlled, and more like a complex, dynamic system that can learn and adapt over time.

Connected companies have the advantage, because they learn and move faster than their competitors. While others work in isolation, they link into rich networks of possibility and expand their influence.

Connected companies around the world are aggressively acquiring customers and disrupting the competition. In The Connected Company, we examine what they're doing, how they're doing it, and why it works. And we show you how your company can use the same principles to adapt--and thrive--in today's ever-changing global marketplace.

Dave Gray, SVP Strategy, Dachis Group, is an author and management consultant who works with the world's leading companies to develop and execute winning strategies. His previous book, Gamestorming (O'Reilly), has sold more than 50,000 copies and has been translated into 14 languages.

Thomas Vander Wal has been working with folksonomies since their darkest origins, and is credited with inventing the terms 'folksonomy'and 'infocloud'. He talks and writes about folksonomies more or less continuously. Thomas is also on the Steering Committee of the Web Standards Project and helped found the Information Architecture Institute. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.