The Reciprocity Advantage

INTRODUCTIONThe New Way to Grow a Business

Reciprocity and advantage are two words that are rarely used together. Advantage is basic to business. Reciprocity is basic to life.

In the present, most people think of reciprocity or advantage. In the future, this magical juxtaposition—reciprocity and advantage—will spark new business models for innovation and growth.

Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging with others for mutual benefit. Reciprocity is a very old idea in a very new context: the shift from today’s Internet to tomorrow’s cloud-served supercomputing ecosystem. The cloud will make it possible to create more businesses with more partners globally connected. The cloud will become the world’s biggest amplifier, as we discuss in Chapter ...