CHAPTER 8

STRATEGY FOR THE AGE OF NETWORKS

Companies will have to get in touch with their inner innovation networks, understand how to turn them into fluidity, and avoid becoming rigid corporate structures.

“Entropy: a vision of the ultimate, cosmic heat-death, a tonic of darkness and the final and ultimate absence of all motion.”

—Thomas Pynchon, from the short story “Entropy”1

I did not choose this quote haphazardly.

Thomas Pynchon is perhaps one of the most influential writers in American literary history, one of the greatest and darkest minds to put his thoughts in writing, and yet no one has ever seen him. Well, almost no one. It’s not uncommon for great writers to be reclusive, shying away from fans and hiding away in the comfort of ...

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