Bob Johansen - The Reciprocity Advantage: A New Way to Partner for Innovation and Growth

More praise forThe Reciprocity Advantage

This is a thinkers book that will make companies and leaders face the future with potential answers rather than uncertainty. A practical read from start to finish.

Nigel Travis, Chairman and CEO, Dunkin Brands

If your business is squeezed by ever-tightening margins and confronted daily by disruptive forces, understanding your reciprocity advantage will open you to the potential of nontraditional partnerships as a path to large-scale growth.

Donald Hall, Jr., CEO, Hallmark

Few industries have been more disrupted by the Internet than news media and print publishing. This new how to guide provides a road map that can allow publishing companies to become disruptors and create a bright future for themselves and the people they serve.

Bill Toler, CEO, Swift Communications

In The Reciprocity Advantage, Ronn and Johansen provide a new golden rule for business: give to grow and share to scale. A must-read.

Scott Anthony, Managing Partner, Innosight, and author of The First Mile and The Little Black Book of Innovation

Every winning strategy is based on a compelling insight, and The Reciprocity Advantage is loaded with insight. Capturing a reciprocity advantage will be the next strategic advantage.

William G. Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management, Columbia Business School, and author of Strategic Learning

Bob Johansen and Karl Ronn have produced a book that offers masterful insight into one of the defining features of todays world: advantage through reciprocal value creation. Our old win-lose models are no longer fit for purpose. The best businesses today are aiming higher. Bob and Karls vision will help any leader unlock new forms of value with new thinking.

Aron Cramer, President and CEO, Business for Social Responsibility

The Reciprocity Advantage is required reading for my Marketing for Social Profit students. It gives readers at all levels of business experience perspectives and actionable information to enhance business and innovation results. Anyone interested in growing and making a positive collaborative impact should read this book.

Linda L. Golden, Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor in Business, The University of Texas at Austin

With their uncanny knack for seeing the future, Bob Johansen and Karl Ronn offer a priceless gifta fresh, practical strategy for collaboration that can advance both margin and mission in organizations of all kinds. Leaders at every level will benefit from their wisdom.

John R. Ryan, President and CEO, Center for Creative Leadership

THE RECIPROCITY ADVANTAGE

Other Books by Bob Johansen

Get There Early

Leaders Make the Future

Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Organization

(with Rob Swigart)

Global Work

(with Mary OHara-Devereaux)

Leading Business Teams

Groupware

Teleconferencing and Beyond

Electronic Meetings

(with Jacques Vallee and Kathleen Spangler)

A NEW WAY TO PARTNER FOR INNOVATION AND GROWTH

BOB JOHANSEN and KARL RONN

The Reciprocity Advantage

Copyright 2014 by Bob Johansen and Karl Ronn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler:

Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingram publisherservices.com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-62656-106-9
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-107-6
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-108-3

2014-1

Project Management and book design: BookMatters. Copyediting: Tanya Grove.

Indexing: Leonard Rosenbaum. Cover design: Archie Ferguson.

To Robin & Elizabeth,

Our life partners

Part One
Reciprocity on a Massive Scale

Part Two
Future Forces That Will Demand Reciprocity

Part Three
How to Develop Your Own Reciprocity Advantage

Reciprocity and advantagelong thought of separatelywill become increasingly synergistic. The next competitive advantage will be reciprocity advantage. This book shows you how to create a reciprocity advantage for your business.

The disruptions of the next decade will require organizations to think about and practice reciprocity on a massive scale. Now is the time to move, to ride the coming disruptions to your own benefitand to the benefit of others.

Reciprocity will be key to business growth in the future. If you can create a reciprocity advantage, you will be able to grow your business in new ways. You may not have to do so right now, but you will within a decade. This is a future you cannot avoid.

Reciprocity is a means for disruptive business innovation and growth. Developing a reciprocity advantage will require intelligent giving that will lead to discoveries of how to make money in new ways. Think: give to grow.

The concept of reciprocity is rising and is going to work in new ways. It makes good business sense and is a better way to live. Having a reciprocity advantage will be essential to thrive in the coming world.

The goal of this book is to seed a transformational yet practical conversation about both reciprocity and advantagesimultaneously and from two very different perspectives. Bob Johansen is a practicing futurist, while Karl Ronn is a product innovation practitioner. Mapping the territory of reciprocity advantage requires both visionary foresight and practical innovation, combined in new ways.