Attracting What We Need

The Power of Pull, written by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison, all of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, is a seven-chapter book published by Basic Books/Perseus Books Group. The subtitle is: How Smart Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. Roughly the first half of the book discusses the concept of pull: the ability to harness the power of networks, drawing out people and resources as needed to address opportunities, and participating actively in a flow of knowledge rather than simply possessing knowledge. Pull helps access people and resources when required, attract people and resources that are relevant and valuable, and achieve personal potential more effectively by pulling from within the qualities of performance that success demands. The second part of the book explores how pull can be put into practice at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. Chapter 3 discusses the second level of pull: attract. Due to the proliferation of information, accessing specific resources now depends more on serendipity than on searching. To increase the probability and quality of these chance encounters, access to not only digital social networks, but to the informational "edges" - areas of knowledge creation and economic growth where unmet needs and unexploited capabilities are found - of our interests is paramount.

• Organizational change
• Psychology and neuroscience
• Strategy formulation
• Resource allocation
• Social media
• Government policy and regulation
• Organizational behavior
• IT management
• Economic forecasting