Executive Thought Leadership

The economics of networking has completely altered the way prosperity is achieved—whether it is the standard of living in a country or the shareholder value earned by a company.

We've been trained for 50 years to look at economics in a particular way, with an emphasis on tangible, physical assets and products. These are still important, of course, but competitive success is now also driven by the ability to leverage the Internet to create intangible value—in speed, convenience, customization, personalization, and service.

How well companies and countries exploit these intangibles will determine who wins and who loses in the coming years. At Cisco, we are focused on what we call the network effect: how the power of the Internet can redefine productivity.

In this issue, we feature our interview with Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly .