New Power

December 4, 2017
Heimans and Timms expand a popular Harvard Business Review article on the concept of “new power”—“open, participatory, and peer-driven,” as opposed to “old power,” which is “closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven”—with mixed success in their first book. The authors draw on their own experiences (Heimans’s as CEO and cofounder of consultancy Purpose, Timms’s as executive director of New York City’s 92nd Street Y), as well as on interviews with other innovators and an expansive review of examples of the “new power,” including Airbnb, Black Lives Matter, and the Ice Bucket Challenge. Although Heimans and Timms are effective communicators, the book suffers from too many case studies—however interesting individual entries are—and not enough structure and analysis. Heimans and Timms don’t shy away from the darker side of “new power” (e.g., ISIS’s social media campaigns) but also don’t explore it in any depth, instead focusing throughout on success stories. The book ends leaving the reader with the lingering question of whether the phenomenon it identifies will “do more to bring us together and to build a more just world than it does to divide us and exacerbate inequalities.”

March 1, 2018
A study of the "new power" made possible by connectivity.Heimans, CEO of Purpose, which "builds and supports social movements," and Timms, executive director of the 92nd Street Y, debut with an illuminating discussion of how technology and our rising expectations have enabled us to achieve our goals on a greater-than-ever scale. Old power, write the authors, depends on expertise and what you own or control, as in Fortune 500 companies. New power relies on connectivity and the desire to participate and collaborate, as in Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook (as well as protest movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter and terrorist groups like the Islamic State). Using online engagement, crowdsourcing, and peer-to-peer approaches, new power offers a fresh means of participation and a "heightened sense of agency" for all involved. The authors detail how power--old, new, or a combination of both--is now exercised by people, companies, and movements to quietly shape our lives in impactful ways. Old power has the top-down voice of a corporate press release; new power soars through "meme drops," which "spread sideways, coming most alive when remixed, shared, and customized by peer communities"--e.g., in the ice bucket challenge and Pepe the Frog. Heimans and Timms provide fascinating examples of new power at work: how NASA enlisted the crowd (nonexperts) to foster open innovation; the heightened participatory experience of worship at Denver's House of All Sinners and Saints, where whoever shows up is in charge; and how crowdsourcing of ideas rejuvenated the Lego brand. The authors also offer a cogent analysis of the contrasting campaigning styles of Barack Obama (participatory) and Donald Trump ("leader of a vast, decentralized social media army" via Twitter). Their accounts of how diverse groups like the National Rifle Association and TED use both old and new power approaches with great success may well inspire many.These ideas--first introduced in the Harvard Business Review----will intrigue anyone who wants to channel the new power of the crowd.

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April 15, 2018

Heimans is the cofounder and CEO of Purpose, a company that builds and supports social movements, and Timms is executive director of the 92nd Street Y in New York and cofounder of Giving Tuesday. The differences between old (from the top) and new (participative and peer-driven) power are explored by the authors and a significant blend between the two is examined and pursued. The strength of the "meme" in spreading ideas is explored. Examples of new power efforts such as Black Lives Matter, Facebook, and Uber, as well as individuals employing it such as Pope Francis and Lady Gaga, are discussed in detail. Shifts in style from past to present are examined as well as projected into the future. VERDICT This important title should be available in libraries of all types, as it examines challenges impacting organizations today while offering alternatives and solutions for the future.--Littleton Maxwell, formerly with Robins Sch. of Business, Univ. of Richmond

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018
What, you may ask, is new power ? It's Facebook; it's Uber; it's #blacklivesmatter; it's the power of social media and the internet; and it's based on a simple idea: anyone and everyone can participate. Heimans, a political activist, teams up with philanthropist Timms to explore this new power structure and show readers how they, too, can affect real change in the world by exploiting the interconnectedness of the world's population and the fact that ideas can move around the world at the speed of light (and, not incidentally, the fact that ideas can't be controlled by any one person or group of people). Using concrete examples to illustrate their points, the authors build up a picture of a world controlled not by the traditional power structures (corporations, political groups) but by its ordinary citizens, uniting in a common goal even though they're scattered around the world, creating change with the power of their words and ideas. A thought-provoking and eye-opening book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)