Original article by Jeremy Heimans on HBR:

Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures.

New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s more forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

The Participation Scale

New power gains its force from people’s growing capacity - and desire - to go far beyond passive consumption of ideas and goods.



New Power Models

Power, as British philosopher Bertrand Russell defined it, is simply « the ability to produce intended effects. » Old power and new power produce these effects differently. New power models are enabled by peer coordination and the agency of the crowd - without participation, they are just empty vessels. Old power is enabled by what people or organizations own, know, or control that nobody else does - once old power models lose that, they lose their advantage.

Old power models tend to require little more than consumption. A magazine asks readers to renew their subscriptions, a manufacturer asks customers to buy its shoes. But new power taps into people’s growing capacity - and desire - to participate in ways that go beyond consumption.

Sharing and shaping

Facebook is the classic example of a new power model based on sharing and shaping. Some 500 million people now share and shape 30 billion pieces of content each month on the platform, a truly astonishing level of participation upon which Facebook’s survival depends.

NikeID, an initiative in which consumers become the designers of their own shoes, now makes up a significant part of Nike’s online revenues.

Funding

Millions of people now use new power models to put their money where their mouth is. The crowdfunding poster child Kiva, for example, reports that some 1.3 million borrowers living in 76 countries have collectively received more than half a billion dollars in loans.

Peer-to-peer giving, lending, and investing models effectively reduce dependence on traditional institutions.

One inventor just set a new record on Kickstarter, raising more than $13 million from 62,000 investors.
new power funding models are not without their downside: The campaigns, projects, or start-ups that are most rewarded by the crowd may not be the smartest investments or those that benefit the most people. Indeed, crowdfunding puts on steroids the human tendency to favor the immediate, visceral, and emotional rather than the strategic, impactful, or long-term.

Producing

In the next level of behaviors, participants go beyond supporting or sharing other people’s efforts and contribute their own. YouTube creators, Etsy artisans, and TaskRabbit errand-runners are all examples of people who participate by producing.

Co-ownership

Wikipedia and Linux
Many of the decentralized peer-directed systems Yochai Benkler calls « peer mutualism »

The Alpha Course is a template for introducing people to Christian beliefs. Anyone wishing to host a course can freely use its materials and basic format - 10 meetings devoted to the central questions of life - with no need to gather in a church. Catalyzed by a model that empowers local leaders, the course has reached 24 million people in living rooms and cafés in almost every country in the world.

What’s distinctive about these participatory behaviors is that they effectively « upload » power from a source that is diffuse but enormous - the passions and energies of the many.

New Power Values

A teenager with her own YouTube channel engages as a content creator rather than as a passive recipient of someone else’s ideas. A borrower on the peer-to-peer finance platform Lending Club can disintermediate that oldest of old power institutions, the bank.

the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer shows the largest deficit in trust in business and government since the survey began in 2001.

Among those heavily engaged with new power - particularly people under 30 (more than half the world’s population) - a common assumption is emerging: We all have an inalienable right to participate. For earlier generations, participation might have meant only the right to vote in elections every few years or maybe to join a union or religious community.

Governance

New power favors informal, networked approaches to governance and decision making. The new power crowd would not have invented the United Nations, for instance; rather, it gravitates toward the view that big social problems can be solved without sate action or bureaucracy.

Collaboration

New power norms place a special emphasis on collaboration, and not just as a way to get things done or as part of a mandated « consultation process. »

Sharing-economy models, for example, are driven by the accumulated verdict of the community. They rely on reputation systems that ensure that, say, rude or messy guests on Airbnb have trouble finding their next places to stay.

DIO

« do it ourselves »
The heroes in new power are « makers » who produce their own content, grow their own food, or build their own gadgets.



Transparency

New power proponents believe that the more light we shine, the better.

the shift toward increasing transparency is demanding a response in kind from our institutions and leaders, who are challenged to rethink the way they engage with their constituencies. Pope Francis - the leader of an organization known for its secrecy - is surprisingly attuned to the need to engage in new power conversations. His promise to make the Vatican Bank more financially transparent and reform the Vatican’s media practices is an unexpected move in that direction.

Affiliation

New power loves to affiliate, but affiliation in this new world is much less enduring. People are less likely to be card-carrying members of organizations (just ask groups like the ACLU that are seeing this form of membership threatened) or to forge decades-long relationships with institutions. So while people with a new power mindset are quick to join or share (and thanks to new power models, « joining » is easier than ever), they are reluctant to swear allegiance. This manes new power models vulnerable. New power is fast - but it is also fickle.

A Framework for Understanding the Players



Castles

Unlike Google, Apple largely eschews open source approaches, and despite its antiestablishment fan base and the carefully managed « maker culture » of its App Store, it is renowned for secrecy and aggressive protection of IP.

Connectors

In the top-left quadrant are organizations with a new power model - for example, a network connecting many users or makers - but old power sensibilities. This category includes technology natives like Facebook, whose model depends on participation but whose decisions sometimes seem to ignore the wishes of its community

Players in this quadrant tend toward « smoke-filled room » values while relying on a « made by many » model (and many run an increasing risk by doing so).

Cheerleaders

In the bottom-right quadrant are organizations that use old power models but embrace new power values. Patagonia, for example, has a traditional old power business model, yet it stands out for its embrace of new power values like transparency. Some of these « cheerleader » organizations, such as The Guardian newspaper, are working to evolve their positions so that they not only espouse new power values but incorporate new power models effectively.

Crowds

Their core operating models are peer-driven, and their values celebrate the power of the crowd.
This quadrant also includes distributed activist groups and radically open education models.

Some organizations have moved from one quadrant to another over time. Think of TED, the organization dedicated to « ideas worth spreading. » Ten years ago, the organization talked the talk on collaboration and networks, but in reality it lacked any kind of new power model - it was simply an expensive, exclusive, and carefully curated annual conference. Since then, TED has broadened its model by enabling self-organization and participation via the TEDx franchise and by making its previously closed content open to everyone. Both decisions have had a major impact on the scale and reach of the TED brand

Cultivating New Power

having a Facebook page is not the same thing as having a new power strategy.

shift in both model and values

Traditional organizations that want to develop new power capacity must engage in three essential tasks:
(1) assess their place in a shifting power environment,
(2) channel their harshest critic, and
(3) develop a mobilization capacity

Audit your power

A telling exercise is to plot your organization on the new power compass - both where you are today and where you want to be in five years. Plot your competitors on the same grid. Ask yourself framing questions: How are we/they employing new power models? And how are we/they embracing new power values?

Occupy yourself

What if there were an Occupy-style movement directed at you? Imagine a large group of aggrieved people, camped in the heart of your organization, able to observe everything that you do. What would they think of the distribution of power in your organization and its legitimacy?
Companies should be especially careful about building engagement platforms without developing engagement cultures, a recipe for failure.

There’s a good chance that your organization is already being occupied, where you know it or not. Websites are popping up that provide forums for anonymous employee accounts of what is really going on inside businesses and how leaders are perceived.

Today, the wisest organizations will be those engaging in the most painfully honest conversations, inside and outside, about their impact.

Develop a movement mindset

Organizations that have built their business models on consumption or other minimal participation behaviors will find this challenging but increasingly important.

The capacity to mobilize a much wider community of people can be a critical success advantage, as we saw in the defeat of « online piracy » legislation in the US, in 2012.

A key new power question for all organizations is « Who will really show up for you? »

The Challenge for New Power

Respect your communities (don’t become the Man).

If old power organizations should fear being occupied, new power organizations should fear being deserted.

Get structural

The battle ahead will be about who can control and shape society’s essential systems and structures. Will new power forces prove capable of fundamentally reforming existing structures?

Those capable of channeling th power of the crowd must turn their energies to something more fundamental: redesigning society’s systems and structures to meaningfully include and empower more people. The greatest test for the conductors of new power will be their willingness to engage with the challenges of the least powerful.

Campaigning with New Power, Governing with Old

To truly transform government, new power will need to do more than change the short-term political dynamics - it must change the rules of the game. Early experiments, such as participatory budgeting, community activism initiatives like SeeClickFix.com, and Iceland’s crowdsourced process of building a new constitution, are attempts in this direction, but none has yet proved capable of fundamentally shifting the operating system of government.