Don Tapscott Quotes

Knowledge is exploding, so you need to commit yourself to a plan for lifelong learning.

Institutions are becoming naked, and if you’re going to be naked … fitness is no longer optional. If you’re going to be naked, you better get buff.

Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the internet is.

The university is in danger of losing its monopoly, and for good reason. The most visible threat are the new online courses, many of them free, with some of the best professors in their respective fields.

In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it’s very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access, not just to knowledge, but to the intelligence contained in people’s crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis.

To me, this is not an information age. It’s an age of networked intelligence, it’s an age of vast promise.

Throughout the 20th century, we created wealth through vertically integrated corporations. Now, we create wealth through networks. We are at a turning point in human history, where the industrial age has finally run out of gas.

The social world is transforming the way we create wealth, work, learn, play, raise our children, and probably the way we think.

Collaboration is important not just because it’s a better way to learn. The spirit of collaboration is penetrating every institution and all of our lives. So learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.

The blanket assertion that corporations are people obfuscates the complex issues at play in the changing business world. Corporation are institutions. People are people.

Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.

Leaders of institutions everywhere have lost trust. The global economy is stalled and the world is deeply divided, too unequal, unstable and unsustainable.

If you work for and eventually lead a company, understand that companies have multiple stakeholders including employees, customers, business partners and the communities within which they operate.

Peering succeeds because it leverages self-organization—a style of production that works more effectively than hierarchical management for certain tasks.

Leadership is happening, but it’s not coming from the leaders of the old institutions. Everywhere you look, you see these extraordinary, sparkling new initiatives that are under way.

We are at a punctuation point in human history where the Industrial Age and institutions have finally come to their logical conclusion. They have essentially run out of gas.

To be successful in a knowledge economy firms need to create learning organizations.

These kids [of the current generation] have no fear of technology … sort of like I have no fear of a refrigerator.

Your network is your filter.

Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection.

There’s a whole generation of young people who are faced with the so-called ‘jobless recovery.’ Necessity is the mother of invention. They are out there, all around the world, creating new companies.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.