The Laws of Disruption

“In the Laws of Disruption, Downes brings to life how industrial age law is leaving today’s companies in the lurch, and how tomorrow’s businesses and business leaders will usher in a new age of lawful innovation, content creation and content ownership, one that will deliver meaningful rights to companies and ordinary citizens alike. Ignorance of the law is no excuse; not knowing the laws of disruption for companies in today’s rapidly digitizing world could prove fatal.” – Paul F. Nunes, Executive Research Fellow Accenture Institute for High Performance

“The Laws of Disruption is important reading for all of us. It provides valuable guidance for confronting innovations and reacting to them with vision and responsibility, and eye- opening examples of the failures that result when we don’t.” – Andy Lippman, Associate Director MIT Media Lab and Co-Director, Digital Life Project

“Critical reading if you want to understand the last ten years–and be ready for the next ten.” – Tim Wu, Professor of Law Columbia University and co-author, ‘Who Controls the Internet?’

“The convergence of information and communications technology is fundamentally disruptive – we’ve know this for a long time; Downes’s model helps clarify where, and how, to pay attention.” – Dan’l Lewin, Corporate Vice President Microsoft Corporation

“Larry Downes’ The Laws of Disruption is a must read for entrepreneurs. Many of the most interesting venture backed technology companies to emerge in the last decade (e.g., Google, Skype, YouTube, Facebook) have been products of the Law of Disruption. As a Venture Capitalist, Larry Downes’ book may well serve as the guide to my next great investments.” – David Hornik, General Partner August Capital

Reviews

	“Downes is a gifted observer of the laws of digital disruption, a phenomenon in which the technological advances and new digital modes of commerce and communication outpace the ability of social, economic, and legal frameworks to keep pace.”
	“Downes offers a guided tour of what’s happening and what’s next, what’s legal and what’s not, and how all of it is likely to impact individuals and businesses. Laced with examples of how conflicts and shifts are playing out in real life, the book looks beyond typical strategic advice, offering a fresh and valuable perspective….”
	“Mr. Downes’s libertarian instincts are admirable, particularly since government intervention often fails anyway…. Mr. Downes may well overstate the case when he says that our ‘industrial-age legal system’ will not survive, but there is no doubt that a lot more disruption lies ahead.”
	“Downes eloquently expresses the problems that many industries face and shows how using old laws to maintain the status quo is futile. The digital revolution is here and we will make sense of it – somehow.”
	“The Laws of Disruption is the closest thing you will find to a genuine cyber-libertarian manifesto these days. But Downes isn’t a rigid ideologue; his skepticism of government regulation of the high-tech economy is based more on practical considerations and the fundamental ‘law of disruption.’ … I highly recommended The Laws of Disruption and found it to be the most enjoyable of all the books I read this year.”
	“Downes is a dreamer, a visionary but also a relentless empiricist — driven by insatiable curiosity — and a diehard pragmatist — almost wholly preoccupied with understanding what works, what doesn’t, and why. This is a brilliant achievement.”