Why Read It?
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One of the first books to outline how both businesses and individuals should wholeheartedly embrace the internet.
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Explains how new attitudes, rules, and business principles are needed to ensure success in the digital age.
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Stresses the importance of people, connectedness, community, trust, and interaction in the new economy, to ensure value and vision.
Getting Started
The Caring Economy examines the author’s digital philosophy and its application to business, seeing empowerment and people-focused strategies as vital for success, rather than technological change. It considers that the digital age demands new thinking and a whole new set of business principles, and offers advice on making the best use of the internet, including how to build brands online.
Author
Gerry McGovern is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nua, and writes a popular weekly e-mail newsletter. He is a founding member of the Irish Internet Association and the Content Management Professionals Association.
Context
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Discusses the history of the internet, the truths and myths of the information society, globalization, and the strengths and limitations of computer-based business.
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Shows how people are impacted by, and impact on, new technologies and digital business issues, and claims that to succeed business should care for people—staff, customers, locals, and the people who visit their websites.
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Demonstrates how effective communication and customer interaction will be even more important in the new millennium, and how these need to be kept as simple as possible.
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Proposes that the business ambition of always becoming bigger through mergers and acquisitions sacrifices too much of value.
Impact
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Presents a number of people-centered rules for success, including empowerment, focusing on niches, focusing on value rather than costs, using information quickly to gain value from momentum, keeping communication simple, protecting and building your brand and good name, and having a long-term vision.
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Focuses on niches and communities of interest, delivering unique products and services; in the digital age, it pays to specialize.
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Analyzes the three properties of information: content, structure, and publication.
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Provides 10 points that are intended to help guide thinking and actions in the new economy.
Quotations
“What drives the internet is not technology, it’s the human touch.”
“A society that stops caring is in for trouble in the long term.”
“human relationships cannot be automated, cannot be commoditised.”
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