Based on his September 1997 Wired article, Executive Editor Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy can't quite decide whether it's a network manifesto or a management handbook. So call it both.
Kelly's bid to be a digital Drucker pays off. Blunt, tight, and explicitly written not to be obsolesced by The Next Great Web-Business Buzzword, New Rules is sure to provoke attitude from the SoMa, Sand Hill Road, and Redmond crowds. More traditional business folks will find it provocative to the point of insulting. I can just hear a fortysomething GM or GE manager tut-tutting over the "impractical" insights Kelly proclaims as gospel. Too bad for them.
Managers who find The Economist a tad too intellectual had best steer clear. At the core of Kelly's argument(s) is a zealous ideological belief that postindustrial network economics turns conventional business-school wisdom inside out.
The conceptual origins of New Rules clearly traces to Kelly's earlier Out of Control, a sprawling jumble of brilliant ideas and metaphors about complexity. New Rules is more streamlined. No narratives here; just a whirlwind of ideas backed up by evidence. Indeed, the only thing I find truly irritating about the book is that it isn't spiced with the skepticism that Kelly brings to his editing. For example, he urges, "Make customers as smart as you are. For every effort a firm makes in educating itself about the customer, it should expend an equal effort in educating the customer." Um, excuse me, but sometimes an educated consumer is not the best customer.
Ultimately, the title is a misnomer. New Rules is less about rules than about probes, principles, and provocations designed to challenge managers who think an MBA confers vision and that what's happening on the Web is an exercise in irrational exuberance. For the rest of us, it is a nifty codification of things we have personally experienced made coherent and compelling.
New Rules for the New Economy, by Kevin Kelly: $19.95. Viking: (800) 788 6262.
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