Edgerati are people who venture out onto various edges, engage with participants on those edges, develop deep insight from their involvement on the edge and report back to the rest of the world what they have learned.
Wrote the definitive book on the growing fragmentation of markets and the growing importance of the long tail and continues to enlighten in his exploration of economies of abundance
Read: The Long Tail
Increasing returns economics are critical to understanding competitive dynamics in technology and electronic networks in particular. These economics can be powerful, although they are far less widespread than often believed. Brian is one of the most insightful economists regarding increasing returns.
Read: Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
John Perry Barlow
John and I went to Wesleyan together, stirred up some trouble there and each, in our own way, have continued to stir up trouble ever since. John has been a champion of individual freedom on the Net from its inception. He is also very astute about the diminishing value of information on electronic networks and the increasing value of personal relationships. Read: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Great insight regarding the culture and incentive structures that are shaping the network society Read: The Wealth of Networks SITE
Friend and former colleague who more effectively than anyone integrates the latest insights from the field of complex adaptive systems with the world of business
Read: The Origin of Wealth
Austrian economist who thinks clearly and deeply about the interplay between institutional frameworks and economic activity
Read: Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development and Calculation and Coordination
Chris is a social media consultant and co-author of Trust Agents, an important book emphasizing the importance of trust in the emergence and evolution of scalable social networks online.
Read: Trust Agents
Erik is one of the most thoughtful economists writing about the impact of electronic markets on buyers and sellers.
Read: Understanding the Digital Economy : Data, Tools, and Research and Strategies for E-Business Success
One of the pioneers in social network analysis with a particular focus on understanding the structure of networks and the various roles that participants can play in these networks
Read: Structural Holes and Brokerage and Closure
Clay and I go way back to early days at BCG. His concepts regarding the business implications of disruptive technology are essential for any business executive - we are all operating in markets that are being shaped by technology capabilities.
Read: The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
This man was amazing. Writing for over sixty years, Peter Drucker essentially pioneered the study of business management as a distinct discipline. He has always been at the leading edge of understanding changing management challenges and opportunities.
Read: The Essential Drucker: In One Volume the Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Post-Capitalist Society, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Esther has made her home on the frontiers of technology innovation for a long time now. Leveraging an awesome network of personal relationships, she can be counted upon to spot interesting new technologies before most of the rest of us and, more importantly, to grasp the profound implications of these new technologies.
Read: Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age
If you follow only one business strategist on the impact of electronic networks on business strategy, Philip is the one (other than me, of course). Philip and I started out at BCG together many years ago.
Read: Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy
Focuses on the critical role of the creative class in driving innovation and on the growing importance of talent spikes in amplifying the efforts of the creative class
Read: The Rise of the Creative Class, The Flight of the Creative Class and The Great Reset
One of the economists leading the charge in developing more dynamic theories of the firm
Read: Entrepreneurship and the Firm and Strategy, Economic Organization, and the Knowledge Economy
Writes perceptively about processes of globalization and the role of digital technology infrastructures in helping us to connect more effectively regardless of geographic location
Read: The World Is Flat, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and Hot, Flat, and Crowded
George is cantankerous and provocative, but his provocations are usually dead on target. Ranging from the microcosm to the telecosm, George has always focused on the role of technology in reducing scarcity in one dimension and increasing it in other dimensions. Since scarcity creates economic value, you need to understand George's insights.
Read: Telecosm: The World After Bandwidth Abundance and Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology.
A prolific writer and entrepreneur who has been focused for years on the edge of new marketing practices emerging and evolving as a result of new media
Read: Permission Marketing, Tribes and Linchpin
Michael was the first person to develop the economic implications of scarce attention (the fact that each of us only has 24 hours in the day while the range of options competing for our attention is rapidly expanding - how we choose to allocate our attention will increasingly determine who creates wealth and who destroys wealth). Anyone seeking to understand the evolving role of marketing and competitive dynamics needs to understand Goldhaber's insights.
Another pioneer in social network analysis who has applied his perspectives to the emergence and evolution of business networks and innovation clusters
Read: “The Strength of Weak Ties” (PDF)
Friedrich von Hayek
Nobel Prize winning economist who captured the challenges and opportunities of coordinating economic activity when tacit knowledge is so widely distributed, rapidly evolving and difficult to access
Read: “Economics and Knowledge” and “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
Bridges the chasm that separates enterprise IT types from the digerati in an ongoing effort to craft a powerful new synthesis he describes as Web Oriented Architecture
Read: Web 2.0 Architectures
Peter has been an articulate critic of the impact of government regulation on the evolution of telecommunications networks and a champion of market dynamics as the best way to shape technology innovation.
Read: Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm
digital youth culture. How marginalized kids become great sources of innovation. Creator of the genres of participation – hanging out, messing around and geeking out and the various trajectories through these forms of participation in the digital age.
Michael is an economist who focuses on the tension between shareholders and corporate management. Anyone interested in the relationship between organizational design and corporate financial performance needs to be familiar with Jensen's work.
Read: A Theory of the Firm: Governance, Residual Claims, and Organizational Forms and Foundations of Organizational Strategy.
One of the pioneers in the rich field of complexity theory, Stuart is both eloquent in his writing and insightful in his thinking. More than that, he has enthusiastically taken on the challenge of translating some of his more conceptual insights into practical tools that can help businesses create value. He is one of the early pioneers in thinking about economic webs.
Read: Investigations, The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, and At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.
One of the original Apple evangelists and still going strong as entrepreneur, venture capitalist and prolific writer who explores the requirements for disruptive innovation
Read: Rules for Revolutionaries
Political scientist who writes extensively on the challenges of fostering cosmopolitan societies that effectively integrate cultural diversity and overlapping group loyalties
Read: The Liberal Archipelago
Karim explores the dynamics and performance of distributed innovation systems where enterprises and communities intersect
Read: Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software and The Principles of Distributed Innovation
Economist exploring a dynamic theory of business institutions with a particular emphasis on the role of modular systems and business networks in facilitating the rapid evolution of business innovation
Read: Firms, Markets and Economic Change and The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism
Founder of a social media consulting group who has long been perceptive about the evolving dynamics of social media and the techniques required to build influence as well drive organizational transformation
Read: Groundswell and Open Leadership
Economist focused on the organization of knowledge within the economy and understanding the evolutionary processes within economies.
Read: Knowledge, Institutions and Evolution in Economics and Equilibrium and Evolution
role of electronic networks in reshaping relationships, both personal and business. The metaphor of moving from broadcast to conversations is critical to understand how to succeed on networks.
Read: The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual and Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
Earlier than most of us, Tom was focused on the impact of electronic networks in reshaping business organizations. He provides deep insight into the new organizational options and requirements enabled by network technology.
A deeply insightful Kiwi who has been tracing the evolution of the Internet and built a blog into a thriving business by helping others to understand where this is all headed.
Started by investigating the changes in the telecommunications industry but began to realize the story was much broader and is now a leading analyst of Internet trends at GigaOM Network as well as a venture investor
The crossing the chasm guy and prolific writer and thinker about innovation processes and the challenges in moving innovations into markets.
Read: Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin
Barry J. Nalebuff (along with Avinash K. Dixit)
This team writes perceptively about game theory and decision-making processes focusing on anticipating and preempting what others will do.
Read: Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy
Tim O'Reilly. Tim is one of the leading publishers and conference organizers in the technology world today. Developer of the first Internet portal back in 1995, Tim was one of the first people to see the economic potential of the Internet. Today, he is one of the leading champions of peer-to-peer and open source technology.
Nobel Prize winning economist who explores the institutional arrangements helping to support economic activity in the commons, with a particular focus on cooperation, trust and collective action
Read: Governing the Commons and Understanding Institutional Diversity
John Padgett. A historian by profession and affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute, John's work is critical for anyone who wants to mobilize and exploit the potential of economic webs. Concentrating on Renaissance Italy, Padgett provides compelling evidence of the role of networks of relationships in creating shaping opportunities during times of fundamental change and uncertainty. Read: "Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400 – 1434"
Particularly interested in design as a disposition and in the vital exchange between ideas and architecture, thought and action and the role of the tacit in design.
Read: The Road That Is Not a Road and the Open City
Economic historian focusing on the role of technology infrastructures in economic history and analyzing patterns of infrastructure deployment and adoption
Read: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
Has been a senior IT executive in a number of large and well-known companies but also writes perceptively about the broader social and economic implications of the network technology.
Eric Raymond. Eric is one of the most active champions of the open source software movement. He is also a strong advocate of personal freedom on electronic networks. Eric is always a provocative and challenging thinker.
Read: The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
Howard Rheingold. Howard was the first person to draw attention to the social phenomenon of virtual communities on electronic networks. He understands the complex social dynamics that emerge and evolve in these virtual communities.
Read: The Virtual Community : Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
Teaches media studies at the New School University, is a prominent writer of fiction and non-fiction work and a producer of documentaries. He has written a book that takes the Big Shift to an entirely new level, tracing important shifts in the economy and society since the Late Middle Ages
Read: Life, Inc.
Proponent of “global cities” thesis exploring evolution of informational architectures that integrate cities around the world into dense networks
Read: The Global City and Global Networks, Linked Cities
Christian is a collaborator and friend. He's a leader in the emerging field of online ecosystem strategy and has deep knowledge in double loop marketing and online community building.
Klaus Schwab. Klaus does not write a lot, but he is one of the most entrepreneurial and visionary men that I know. Starting with a small gathering of European executives more than 25 years ago, Klaus built the World Economic Forum into an extraordinary gathering place for business and government leaders. He has a broad range of interests, he has been a constructive force for the peaceful settlement of disputes around the world and he is currently focused on helping to promote social entrepreneurship to address some of the most pressing social issues around the world.
Clay Shirky. Clay is an articulate evangelist for peer-to-peer technology and Web services. Clay summarizes his interests as "systems where vested interests lose out to innovation" and "systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners". He is always a thoughtful commentator on current technology trends.
Read: Planning for Web Services: Obstacles and Opportunities
One of the leading theorists on the attention economy with a particular interest in techniques to augment attention, Linda has written eloquently about continuous partial attention and the aphrodisiac of attention. She has been an executive in the tech industry and spent many years at Microsoft Research.
Widely read blogger on the digital movements and their impacts on music industry, government and education.
Sherry explores the complex interaction between electronic networks and personal identity. She offers a very nuanced view of the complex ways we present ourselves and construct relationships online.
Read: Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
Hal is an economist who resolutely applies the rigor of his discipline to the world of technology and electronic networks. Refusing to get carried away by hype, he asks basic questions to generate deep insight into the dynamics of competition in markets shaped by new technology.
Read: Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
Prolific and insightful management theorist who introduced such organizational concepts as “loose coupling”, “mindfulness” and “sensemaking”
Read: Managing the Unexpected and Sensemaking in Institutions
Explores the emergent structures that help us to more effectively organize the growing array of data and information that flourishes on our digital networks
Read: Everything is Miscellaneous and Small Pieces Loosely Joined