How will the future unfold? What is the impact of technology on business & society? As technology reorders the world in which live, who will be the winners and who will be the losers? Join Azeem Azhar, curator of the Exponential View newsletter, in deep conversation with the world's leading thinkers and practitioners exploring these and other important questions. The views expressed on this podcast are those of its hosts, guests, and callers, and not those of Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/podcasts/exponential-view
episode 1: How Network Effects Rule the World (with James Currier)
Google, Facebook, Apple, and Uber are just some of the enormous companies that derive part of their value from network effects: The more users they have, the more value they provide. Network effects aren’t new. The basic principles that underpinned faxes and phone lines also underpin social media. But rapid technological change has made network effects more prevalent and more powerful than ever before.
Serial entrepreneur and early-stage investor James Currier is one of the world’s foremost experts on networks, and on the companies that use them best. He joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how companies with network effects dominate markets, and why their influence will likely continue to grow.
They also discuss:
- Why network-effects companies dominate global markets, and how they can recast the way we think about the world.
- Why networks can become harder to manage as they grow – and harder to do without.
- The problems globe-spanning networks can cause – especially when the motives of dominant corporate players don’t align with what’s best for our societies.
- How we should govern those networks in the coming decades.
@JamesCurrier
@azeem
@exponentialview
Further resources:
- NFX’s Network Effects Bible (NFX)
- “How to Regulate Facebook, with Nick Clegg” (Exponential View Podcast, 2021)
- “Messi joins crypto craze as gets part of PSG fee in fan tokens” (Reuters, 2021)