About the book
Nicolas Colin argues that for three decades the world has been moving out of the fading Fordist age and into the digital age, a change as radical as the earlier one from railroads and steel mills to the factory era. He reads history as showing that economic security for the many produces prosperity for all, but only with a safety net that protects both households and businesses from the risks the digital age brings. He describes two camps: those who want back the rules of the post-war boom, and others, especially in tech, who see current institutions as outdated. In his view the real answer is a full redesign of the safety net that does its job without blocking progress.
Carlota Perez praised it as a primer on the technological present with bold proposals for a Safety Net 2.0. Azeem Azhar, creator of Exponential View, called it carefully documented and contemporary.
We hope you love the books people recommend! Just so you know, The CEO Library may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.
This book has 3 recommendations
Dan Colceriu (Creator/Strategy, Digested newsletter)
My favourite book in 2018 was HEDGE by Nicolas Colin. The book resonated with me in many ways, but the two most important angles would be:
As a corporate strategist in the fintech vertical, the book has captured my imagination by surfacing a few important paradigm shifts, such as the rise of the multitude as a power structure in the corporate value-chain (end-users are now both consumers and suppliers), the implications of increasing returns to scale to business models, and the imperative of reinventing consumer finance and insurance based on how people will live and work in the future (more hunting, less settling, changing jobs faster, the new reality of continuous risks that are now part of people’s lives). As I grasped with this perspective, and then re-assessed the current fintech landscape, it gave me a new theory about the startups that might be the winners in this space – because there’s a difference between radical reinvention of finance and the simple digitization of it, by applying a layer of tech on top of existing practices.
Personally, the book resonated with me mostly by flagging the asymmetry between today’s job market realities (people hunt more and the career is re-defined as a series of gigs across the world), versus the policymakers’ failure to grasp with these new realities and create new institutions that are designed to remove the friction that comes with this unprecedented geographical and economic dynamism. Having changed countries twice in the past 2 years, I experienced first-hand the downside of economic-hunting and the failure of the current societal infrastructure to serve us – from banking services, to housing, to governmental institutions. But this vacuum creates opportunity, especially for existing or future entrepreneurs as the book clearly illustrates, and this opportunity is what has been keeping me up at night, lately.
Azeem Azhar (Creator/Exponential View)
Carefully documented yet contemporary, Hedge makes for compulsive and thought-provoking reading, which will hopefully stir you into action.
Carlota Perez (Author)
An eye-opening primer to the technological present, proposing bold solutions for a ‘Safety Net 2.0’ and a better future for all.
Get this book on Amazon | Barnes & Noble
See more books recommended by
Dan Colceriu, Azeem Azhar, Carlota Perez
See more books written by
Appears in collections
Sources
- Best Books Read in 2018 by The CEO Library Community
- Hedge - advanced book praise