What new power looks like

We can see the power of distributed, crowd-sourced business models every day — witness Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb. But veteran online activist Jeremy Heimans asks: When does that kind of "new power" start to work in politics? His surprising answer: Sooner than you think. It’s a bold argument about the future of politics and power; watch and see if you agree.

So this is Anna Hazare,

and Anna Hazare may well be
the most cutting-edge

digital activist in the world today.

And you wouldn't know it by looking at him.

Hazare is a 77-year-old Indian
anticorruption and social justice activist.

And in 2011, he was running a big campaign

to address everyday corruption in India,

a topic that Indian elites love to ignore.

So as part of this campaign,

he was using all of the traditional tactics

that a good Gandhian organizer would use.

So he was on a hunger strike,

and Hazare realized through his hunger

that actually maybe this time,

in the 21st century,

a hunger strike wouldn't be enough.

So he started playing around
with mobile activism.

So the first thing he did
is he said to people,

"Okay, why don't you send me

a text message if you support

my campaign against corruption?"

So he does this, he
gives people a short code,

and about 80,000 people do it.

Okay, that's pretty respectable.

But then he decides,

"Let me tweak my tactics a little bit."

He says, "Why don't you leave
me a missed call?"

Now, for those of you who have
lived in the global South,

you'll know that missed calls

are a really critical part
of global mobile culture.

I see people nodding.

People leave missed calls all the time:

If you're running late for a meeting

and you just want to let them
know that you're on the way,

you leave them a missed call.

If you're dating someone and
you just want to say "I miss you"

you leave them a missed call.

So a note for a dating tip here,

in some cultures,

if you want to please your lover,

you call them and hang up.
(Laughter)

So why do people leave missed calls?

Well, the reason of course is that

they're trying to avoid charges

associated with making calls
and sending texts.

So when Hazare asked people
to leave him a missed call,

let's have a little guess how
many people actually did this?

Thirty-five million.

So this is one of the largest coordinated
actions in human history.

It's remarkable.

And this reflects the extraordinary strength
of the emerging Indian middle class

and the power that their
mobile phones bring.

But he used that,

Hazare ended up with this massive
CSV file of mobile phone numbers,

and he used that to deploy

real people power on the ground

to get hundreds of thousands of
people out on the streets in Delhi

to make a national point of
everyday corruption in India.

It's a really striking story.

So this is me when I was 12 years old.

I hope you see the resemblance.

And I was also an activist,

and I have been an activist all my life.

I had this really funny childhood

where I traipsed around the world

meeting world leaders and
Noble prize winners,

talking about Third World debt,

as it was then called,

and demilitarization.

I was a very, very serious child.
(Laughter)

And back then,

in the early '90s,

I had a very cutting-edge
tech tool of my own:

the fax.

And the fax was the
tool of my activism.

And at that time, it was the best way

to get a message to a lot of people

all at once.

I'll give you one example of a fax
campaign that I ran.

It was the eve of the Gulf War

and I organized a global campaign
to flood the hotel,

the Intercontinental in Geneva,

where James Baker and Tariq Aziz

were meeting on the eve of the war,

and I thought if I could
flood them with faxes,

we'll stop the war.

Well, unsurprisingly,

that campaign was wholly unsuccessful.

There are lots of reasons for that,

but there's no doubt that
one sputtering fax machine

in Geneva was a little bit
of a bandwidth constraint

in terms of the ability to
get a message to lots of people.

And so, I went on to
discover some better tools.

I cofounded Avaaz, which uses the
Internet to mobilize people

and now has almost
40 million members,

and I now run Purpose, which
is a home for these kinds of

technology-powered movements.

So what's the moral of this story?

Is the moral of this story,

you know what, the fax is kind of
eclipsed by the mobile phone?

This is another story of
tech-determinism?

Well, I would argue that there's
actually more to it than that.

I'd argue that in the last 20 years,

something more fundamental has changed

than just new tech.

I would argue that there has
been a fundamental shift

in the balance of power

in the world.

You ask any activist how
to understand the world,

and they'll say,
"Look at where the power is,

who has it, how it's shifting."

And I think we all sense that
something big is happening.

So Henry Timms and I —

Henry's a fellow movement builder —

got talking one day and
we started to think,

how can we make sense of this new world?

How can we describe it and give

it a framework that makes it more useful?

Because we realized that many

of the lessons that we were
discovering in movements

actually applied all over the world

in many sectors of our society.

So I want to introduce you to
this framework:

Old power, meet new power.

And I want to talk to you about
what new power is today.

New power is the deployment

of mass participation
and peer coordination —

these are the two key elements —

to create change and shift outcomes.

And we see new power all around us.

This is Beppe Grillo

he was a populist Italian blogger

who, with a minimal political apparatus
and only some online tools,

won more than 25 percent of the vote

in recent Italian elections.

This is Airbnb,

which in just a few years

has radically disrupted the hotel industry

without owning a single
square foot of real estate.

This is Kickstarter,

which we know has raised over a billion dollars

from more than five million people.

Now, we're familiar with all of these models.

But what's striking is the commonalities,

the structural features of
these new models

and how they differ from old power.

Let's look a little bit at this.

Old power is held like a currency.

New power works like a current.

Old power is held by a few.

New power isn't held by a few,
it's made by many.

Old power is all about download,

and new power uploads.

And you see a whole set of
characteristics that you can trace,

whether it's in media or
politics or education.

So we've talked a little bit
about what new power is.

Let's, for a second, talk about
what new power isn't.

New power is not your Facebook page.

I assure you that having a
social media strategy

can enable you to do just as much download

as you used to do when you had the radio.

Just ask Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,

I assure you that his Facebook page

has not embraced the power
of participation.

New power is not inherently positive.

In fact, this isn't an normative
argument that we're making,

there are many good things
about new power,

but it can produce bad outcomes.

More participation, more peer coordination,

sometimes distorts outcomes

and there are some things,

like things, for example,
in the medical profession

that we want new power
to get nowhere near.

And thirdly, new power is not
the inevitable victor.

In fact, unsurprisingly,

as many of these new power
models get to scale,

what you see is this massive pushback

from the forces of old power.

Just look at this really
interesting epic struggle

going on right now between
Edward Snowden and the NSA.

You'll note that only one of
the two people on this slide

is currently in exile.

And so, it's not at all clear

that new power will be
the inevitable victor.

That said, keep one thing in mind:

We're at the beginning of a
very steep curve.

So you think about some of
these new power models, right?

These were just like someone's

garage idea a few years ago,

and now they're disrupting
entire industries.

And so, what's interesting
about new power,

is the way it feeds
on itself.

Once you have an experience of new power,

you tend to expect and
want more of it.

So let's say you've used a
peer-to-peer lending platform

like Lending Tree or Prosper,

then you've figured out that
you don't need the bank,

and who wants the bank, right?

And so, that experience tends
to embolden you

it tends to make you want
more participation

across more aspects of your life.

And what this gives rise to is

a set of values.

We talked about the models

that new power has engendered —

the Airbnbs, the Kickstarters.

What about the values?

And this is an early sketch

at what new power values look like.

New power values prize
transparency above all else.

It's almost a religious
belief in transparency,

a belief that if you shine
a light on something,

it will be better.

And remember that in the 20th
century, this was not at all true.

People thought that gentlemen
should sit behind closed doors

and make comfortable agreements.

New power values of informal,
networked governance.

New power folks would never
have invented the U.N. today,

for better or worse.

New power values participation,

and new power is all about do-it-yourself.

In fact, what's interesting
about new power

is that it eschews some of
the professionalization

and specialization that was

all the rage in the 20th century.

So what's interesting about these

new power values and these
new power models

is what they mean for organizations.

So we've spent a bit of time thinking,

how can we plot organizations

on a two-by-two where, essentially,

we look at new power values

and new power models

and see where different people sit?

We started with a U.S. analysis,

and let me show you
some interesting findings.

So the first is Apple.

In this framework, we actually
described Apple

as an old power company.

That's because the ideology,

the governing ideology of Apple

is the ideology of the perfectionist

product designer in Cupertino.

It's absolutely about that beautiful,
perfect thing descending upon us

in perfection.

And it does not value, as a
company, transparency.

In fact, it's very secretive.

Now, Apple is one of the most
succesful companies in the world.

So this shows that you can

still pursue a successful
old power strategy.

But one can argue that there's
real vulnerabilites in that model.

I think another interesting comparison

is that of the Obama campaign

versus the Obama presidency.

(Applause)

Now, I like President Obama,

but he ran with new
power at his back, right?

And he said to people,

we are the ones we've
been waiting for.

And he used crowdfunding

to power a campaign.

But when he got into office,

he governed like more or less
all the other presidents did.

And this is a really interesting trend,

is when new power gets powerful,

what happens?

So this is a framework you
should look at

and think about where your
own organization

sits on it.

And think about where it
should be

in five or 10 years.

So what do you do if you're old power?

Well, if you're there
thinking, in old power,

this won't happen to us.

Then just look at the Wikipedia
entry for Encyclopædia Britannica.

Let me tell you, it's a very sad read.

But if you are old power,

the most important thing you
can do is to occupy yourself

before others occupy you,

before you are occupied.

Imagine that a group
of your biggest skeptics

are camped in the heart
of your organization

asking the toughest questions

and they can see everything
inside of your organization.

And ask them, would they
like what they see

and should our model change?

What about if you're new power?

Is new power kind of just
riding the wave to glory?

I would argue no.

I would argue that there
are some very real challenges

to new power in this nascent phase.

Let's stick with the Occupy Wall Street
example for a moment.

Occupy was this incredible example
of new power,

the purest example of new power.

And yet, it failed to consolidate.

So the energy that it created

was great for the meme phase,

but they were so committed to participation,

that they never got anything done.

And in fact that model

means that the challenge for new power is:

how do you use institutional power

without being institutionalized?

One the other end of the spectra is Uber.

Uber is an amazing,

highly scalable new power model.

That network is getting denser and denser

by the day.

But what's really interesting
about Uber is

it hasn't really adopted new power values.

This is a real quote from
the Uber CEO recently:

He says, "Once we get rid of the dude
in the car" — he means drivers —

"Uber will be cheaper."

Now, new power models
live and die

by the strength of their networks.

By whether the drivers and the consumers

who use the service actually believe in it.

Because they're not an exercise
of top-down perfectionism,

they are about the network.

And so, the challenge,

and this is why it's in
no way surprising,

is that Uber's drivers
are now unionizing.

It's extraordinary.

Uber's drivers are turning on Uber.

And the challenge for Uber —

this isn't an easy situation for them —

is that they are locked into
a broader superstrcuture

that is really old power.

They've raised more than a billion
dollars in the capital markets.

Those markets expect a financial return,

and they way you get a financial return

is by squeezing and squeezing

your users and your drivers

for more and more value

and giving that value to your investors.

So the big question about the future
of new power, in my view, is:

Will that old power just emerge?

So will new power elites just become

old power and squeeze?

Or will that new power
base bite back?

Will the next big Uber

be co-owned by Uber drivers?

And I think this going
to be a very interesting

structural question.

Finally, think about new power

being more than just an

entity that scales things

that make us have slightly
better consumer experiences.

My call to action for new power

is to not be an island.

We have major structural
problems in the world today

that could benefit enormously

from the kinds of mass participation

and peer coordination

that these new power players

know so well how to generate.

And we badly need them to
turn their energies and their power

to big, what economists might call

public goods problems,

that are often beyond markets

where investors can easily be found.

And I think if we can do that,

we might be able to fundamentally change

not only human beings' sense of
their own agency and power —

because I think that's the most
wonderful thing about new power,

is that people feel more powerful —

but we might also be able to change

the way we relate to each other

and the way we relate to
authority and institutions.

And to me, that's absolutely

worth trying for.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)