new-power
Best Thing: Reviewers often praise the book for its insightful analysis of power dynamics and its practical strategies for fostering engagement and participation. Worst Thing: Some reviewers criticize the book for being overly dense or complex, making it difficult for casual readers to fully grasp its concepts.
Key Insights
- Old power vs. new power — the core distinction. Old power is held by few, closed, leader-driven, and downloaded to followers. New power is made by many, open, peer-driven, and uploaded by participants. Neither is inherently good; both can serve good or bad ends. The question is how organizations navigate the shift.
- The participation scale — frictionless entry with paths upward. New power organizations succeed by making it trivially easy to take the first step (share, like, donate a dollar) and then offering structured escalation paths for those who want to do more (organize, volunteer, lead). Most crowdfunding campaigns raise most money in the last three days — the participation cascade, once started, has its own momentum.
- Capturing a moment to galvanize a movement. Movements built on new power are latent until a trigger event gives them shape. The capacity to recognize and amplify that moment — to give it a frame, a demand, and a clear next step — is the key organizational skill. Speed and coherence in the first hours matter more than perfection.
- New power values: participation, transparency, do-it-ourselves, collaboration. The book maps the values that accompany new power structures: distrust of closed institutions, preference for peer-to-peer over expert-to-public, expectation of voice and influence rather than passive reception. Organizations that hold old power while claiming new power values are easily exposed as inauthentic.
- The ACE model — Affordable, Connected, Engaging. New power flourishes when the barriers to participation are low (affordable), when participants can connect with each other (not just with leaders), and when the experience of participating is genuinely engaging rather than performative. Missing any element produces a shell of participation.
— Drafted from external sources; review and edit to make your own.
From earlier notes:
- Frictionless entry but then easy paths up the participation scale
- Be ready to capture a moment to galvanize a movement
- Most crowdfunding happens in last 3 days