John Seely Brown ("The Social Life of Information") has a new book. Back in April, Tom Friedman said, "...check out [this] smart new book by the strategists John Hagel III and John Seely Brown." From the looks of it, Brown and Hagel's ideas in this book made a significant impact on Friedman's latest thinking as reflected in "The World Is Flat."

Many firms have used outsourcing and offshoring to shave costs and reduce operating expenses. But as opportunities for innovation and growth migrate to the peripheries of companies, industries, and the global economy, efficiency will no longer be enough to sustain competitive advantage.

The only sustainable advantage in the future will come from an institutional capacity to work closely with other highly specialized firms to get better faster. Enabled by the emergence of global process networks, firms will undergo a three-stage transformation: deepening specialization within firms; mobilizing best-in-class capabilities across enterprises; and, ultimately, accelerating learning across broad networks of enterprises.

Hagel and Seely Brown discuss the strategic levers that will accelerate this migration, and they outline a new approach to strategy development that will help companies capture this shifting source of strategic advantage.

Calling for a forceful reinvention of business strategy and the very nature of the firm itself, this bold and forward-looking book reveals what every company must do today to become tomorrow’s market leader.