“[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action.”

“We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.”

“An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them.”

“Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [...] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.”

“A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.”

“The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.”

“Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”