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1-Page Summary of The Power of Pull
The End of an Era
Push is a business strategy that relies on people’s needs and wants. It assumes that companies can predict what their clients want, and then create products to fulfill those needs. Push also assumes that the company knows best about how to meet its customers’ demands. As a result of push, schools plan curriculums based on students’ future career paths, churches decide which rituals will lead people toward salvation, and weight-loss programs try to get everyone who signs up for them thinner than they were before they joined. The problem with this strategy is that it makes assumptions about consumers rather than listening to them or working with them as partners in creating products or services. For example, if you’re trying to help someone lose weight by giving him a diet regimen without consulting him first about his preferences or lifestyle habits (e.g., eating at restaurants frequently), he’ll probably fail because your program doesn’t fit his life style or tastes well enough for him to stick with it long enough for it work effectively.
The infrastructure is changing. We are already in the midst of this change, which began with the invention of microprocessors and shows no signs of stopping. Liberalization and policy changes encourage people to move around more freely, giving them access to new ideas. This increased competition allows consumers to have a better selection of products available for them.
As data, people and resources move quickly across the globe, information will flow more freely. As a result, exchanging knowledge rather than storing it will become increasingly valuable to business success. Information from the edge of a company (the fringe) also contributes to growth because it often has a transformative effect on how companies operate at their core—their nerve center that absorbs most of its resources but is tied to old ideas. The Internet has accelerated this change by making information more readily available and easier to share with others.
“Pull-based companies” – As push strategies shrink in importance, businesses that make themselves look and work differently will transform society.
The three waves of the Big Shift will be rolled out in a non-linear fashion. It could take five decades for the paradigm to shift completely, but each wave is significant and can be found in many modern success stories. The first level of pull is access, which means getting people or resources when you need them. The second level of pull is attracting useful and valuable people or resources to your cause. And the third level of pull is achieving something with those pulled resources that no one else has done before—solving problems and handling opportunities to get ahead, so you can achieve your goals faster than anyone else.
Access
Networking is an age-old system of connecting people who share similar interests and passions. It allows for the spread of information, knowledge, capital, influence, opportunities and collaboration. The ability to find these things when needed forms the basic level of networking. Access relies on this idea by connecting people with each other so that they can work together to solve problems more efficiently than before. For example, in June 2009 political unrest swept through Iran following its controversial elections; protests erupted and the government cracked down on social media sites to gag the public. Joichi Ito was a computer scientist with an interest in human rights who pulled together a group of techies and human rights activists from around the world to help Iranians retain access to Twitter during those tumultuous times. Unlike push business models which try predict demand or supply products based on what’s already out there, pull networks don’t do that at all – instead they connect consumers directly with whatever it is they need – like SAP’s NetWeaver tool which connects vendors who are at the edge directly with SAP engineers so that customers can get answers quickly without having to go through anyone else first (this helps both sides). The SAP example illustrates an important difference between push and pull strategies: While push platforms facilitate service providers above all else – like “open university” programs where students have maximum flexibility or Apple’s iTunes store which creates highly personalized music experiences for individual customers – pull platforms prioritize customer needs instead — like how Uber gives us access to ridesharing services whenever we want them (and not just when Uber drivers happen to be available)
