Today’s business isn’t like yesterday’s. With global powers changing and the transforming workforce, which is spearheaded by changing demographics and emerging technology, the way we live, engage, and work is drastically different.
Through technologies such as cloud 
computing, mobility, and social media, the digital world of 2014 is even more of a global village than what Marshall McLuan experienced and anticipated in the media convergence of the 1960s. These connections have lead us to being enabled and empowered to share, make better informed decisions, and connect to resources easier than ever before.
Personally, we use Amazon, which is a network of merchants providing goods. We’ve used LinkedIn connections to find jobs and opportunities. And we’ve used Wikipedia more often than an encyclopedia to find facts and information. We rely on these communities and virtual forums to give us information…and it’s all done achieved a collaborative effort.
This connected life transcends from our personal lives and consumer behaviors, and into enterprises where businesses are integrating the use of social and business networks to connect and collaborate with those outside their physical location. Businesses are using these networks to engage with customers, converse with suppliers and partners, and create new relationships that enable greater productivity and innovation.
It’s the Networked Economy. It’s the Collaborative Economy. It’s a new way to connect and engage and realize that what you need may be more accessible than you ever thought possible.
…and here are influencers who have blazed a trail through this wild world of connections and are providing useful information, through their networks…so connect, collaborate, and learn from these influencers.
Networked Economy
Jeremiah Owyang - Jeremiah is a former industry analyst, and currently a speaker and a family man. As Altimeter’s co-founder, Owyang’s research work, in first the social media space, brought him to the forefront of the industry. He recently made the transition into researching the effects of the networked economy and the new normal of collaboration.Twitter: @jowyang - Website: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/
Sara Horowitz - Sara is the founder and Executive Director of Freelancers Union – and CEO of the social-purpose Freelancers Insurance Company (FIC). Sara has been a leading voice for the emerging economy and recognized the the vital role independent workers would play in our networked, interconnected world, far before others.Twitter: @Sara_Horowitz - Website: http://www.freelancersunion.org/
Robin Bew - Robin is the Managing Director of The Economist Intelligence Unit. He is an expert on global economy, world business environment, and industry trends, which includes the changing landscape of business networks and collaboration.Twitter: @RobinBew - Website: http://www.eiu.com/
Mark Muro - Mark is a senior fellow and policy director for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. He is interested in innovation, regions, and the clean economy.Twitter: @MarkMuro1 - Website: http://www.brookings.edu/experts/m/murom.aspx
Andrea Scalia - Andrea loves innovation, networking, ICT, design, green economy, and neuroscience. He reads a lot of books about economics and history, and wrote his own book, Microimpresa Macrocompetizione.Twitter: @andreascaliatw - Website: http://about.me/andreascalia
Todd Hoskins - Todd is helping organizations transition into the network economy, and focuses on learning, “thrivability,” and collaboration – all concepts that can increase a smooth transition into this new type of environment.Twitter: @toddhoskins - Website: http://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhoskins
Rod Falcon - Rod is a program Director. He is interested in technology horizons, networked matter, global health economy, socialstructing, health, and collaborative forecasting games.Twitter: @rodfalcon - Website: http://www.iftf.org/what-we-do/who-we-are/
Miriam Salpeter - Miriam is a social media mentor/strategist, new economy coach, and the author of three books. Miriam helps small business owners and job seekers leverage tools to help them achieve their goals.Twitter: @Keppie_Careers - Website: http://www.keppiecareers.com/about/
Ed Morrison - Ed is a Regional Economic Development Advisor for the Purdue Center for Regional Development. He is also a member of the faculty of the Purdue College of Technology, where he is engaged in innovation policy. For the past five or six years, he has been developing new approaches to strategy in open, loosely joined network.Twitter: @edmorrison - Website: http://edmorrison.com/
Drew Hofler - Drew is a fan of all things collaborative commerce. He is especially interested in the networked economy, working capital, dynamic discounts and eInvoice.Twitter: @dhofler - Website: N/A
Rachel Botsman - Rachel Botsman is a social innovator and futurist who writes, consults, and speaks on the power of collaboration and sharing through current and emerging network technologies, and on how it will transform business, consumerism and the way we live. She is the co-author of the influential book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live.Twitter: @rachelbotsman - Website: http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/
Rebecca Lieb - Rebecca is an analyst covering digital advertising at the Altimeter Group. She has consulted on digital strategy, content strategy and SEO for a wide variety of brands and professional trade organizations, and has run some major web properties in the digital marketing space such as Econsultancy‘s US operations.Twitter: @lieblink - Website: http://www.rebeccalieb.com/blog/
Antonin Leonard - Antonin is a Collaborative Economy Strategist and Co-Founder of OuiShare. He is a researcher, writer, speaker and teacher on the power of collaboration and sharing. He also works as an innovation strategist for companies, governments, and public agencies, aiming to embrace the disruption caused by the power of sharing and collaboration through network technologies.Twitter: @AntoLeonard - Website: http://about.me/antonin.leonard
Neal Gorenflo - Neal Gorenflo is the co-founder and publisher of Shareable Magazine, a nonprofit online magazine about sharing and the new way business is conducted – through collaboration.Twitter: @gorenflo - Website: http://www.shareable.net/about
Francesca Pick - Francesca Pick is a community builder and Global Connector at OuiShare, looking to help to create more sustainable and collaborative societies.Twitter: @Francesca_sp - Website: http://francesca-sp.tumblr.com/
Benjamin Tincq - Benjamin is the Co-Founder of OuiShare. He is working toward connecting the dots on the future of society in the age of communities.Twitter: @btincq https://twitter.com/btincq - Website: http://about.me/btincq
Benita Matofska - Benita is the founder and Chief Sharer of Compare and Share, the world’s first comparison marketplace of sharing economy and global movement.Twitter: @benitamatofska - Website: http://www.compareandshare.com/
Emily Castor - Emily is the Director of Community Engagement at Lyft. She is a writer and social entrepreneur with a decade of experience working to advance the public good in government and the private sector. She believes sharing-based business models are economically efficient, sustainable, and have tremendous power to build social capital.Twitter: @emilycastor - Website: http://about.me/emilycastor
Eric Lowitt - Eric advises CEOs, senior public officials, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations in the fields of strategy, collaboration, and sustainability. He is the author of The Future of Value, and his latest book, The Collaboration Economy, provides a path toward inclusive growth that addresses our most vexing global challenges.Twitter: @ericlowitt - Website: http://www.ericlowitt.com/
Hunter Walk - Hunter is a partner at HomeBrew, a seed stage venture fund for the buttom-up economy. He previously made products at YouTube, Google, and Second Life.Twitter: @hunterwalk - Website: http://hunterwalk.com/about/
Danae Ringelmann – Danae is the founder of Indiegogo, a platform for empowering people to fund what matters to them, and for others to receive funding (crowd funding resources).Twitter: @gogoDanae – Website: http://www.indiegogo.com
Business Networks and Companies
Ariba - Ariba works all around the world to make B2B commerce as easy as consumer commerce; helping companies like yours thrive in the Networked Economy.Twitter: @Ariba https://twitter.com/ariba - Website: http://www.ariba.com/
Ceres - Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful network of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy.Twitter: @CeresNews - Website: http://www.ceres.org/
SMB Network - This network is about networking and supporting small business to protect your local economies by shopping local.Twitter @smbnetwork - Website: http://www.selfmarketer.com/
Pieria - Pieria is a social network of experts and an online magazine; where industry and academia meet to discuss some of the biggest issues facing our economy today.Twitter: @PieriaView - Website: http://www.pieria.co.uk/
TechNet - TechNet is the bipartisan, political network of CEOs and Senior Executives that promotes the growth of technology and the innovation economy.Twitter: @TechNetUpdate - Website: http://www.technet.org/
Shareable - Shareable is a nonprofit news, action and connection hub for the sharing transformation.Twitter: @Shareable - Website: http://www.shareable.net/about
Collaborative Consumption - Collaborative Consumption is the explosion in traditional sharing, lending, renting and swapping redefined through tech and peer communities.Twitter: @Collcons - Website: http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/
OuiShare - OuiShare is a global network empowering citizens, public institutions and companies to build a collaborative society.Twitter: @OuiShare - Website: http://ouishare.net/
Airbnb - Airbnb is the world’s largest community hospitality company. Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more than 33,000 cities and 192 countries.Twitter: @Airbnb - Website: https://www.airbnb.com/
Collaborative Fund - The Collaborative Fund is an investment fund focused on supporting and investing in the shared future. The fund centers around two macro themes, which they believe to be at the core of business innovation in the coming years: the growth of the creative class and the collaborative economy.Twitter: @collabfund - Website: http://collaborativefund.com/
Kickstarter - Kickstarter is bringing creativity to life. They work to get projects, both big and small, funded through direct support of people like you.Twitter: @kickstarter - Website: http://www.kickstarter.com/
Crowdsourcing.org - Crowdsourcing.org is the leading industry resource offering the largest online repository of news, articles, videos, and site information on the topic of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.Twitter: @Crowdsourcing_ - Website: http://www.crowdsourcing.org/
TaskRabbit - Website and mobile app where you can outsource small jobs and tasks to fully vetted people right in your neighborhood.Twitter: @TaskRabbit - Website: https://www.taskrabbit.com/
Getaround - Getaround rents cars from people nearbyTwitter: @Getaround - Website: https://twitter.com/Getaround
Skillshare - Skillshare is a global community where you can learn real-world skills from incredible teachers.Twitter: @skillshare - Website: http://www.skillshare.com/
Carpooling.com - Carpooling.com is the largest ridesharing network. They work to connect people so they can share their rides, reduce CO2 and save money.Twitter: @carpoolingcom - Website: http://www.carpooling.com/us/
Forrester Research - Forrester Research is a global research and advisory firm serving professionals in 13 key roles across three distinct client segments. They guide leaders in business technology, marketing and strategy, and the technology industry through independent fact-based insight, ensuring their business success today and tomorrow.Twitter: @forrester - Website: http://www.forrester.com/home/
Crowd Companies - Crowd Companies is a brand for the Collaborative Economy. Its mission is to bring empowered people and resilient brands together to collaborate for shared value.Twitter: @CrowdCompanies - Website: http://crowdcompanies.com/
Altimeter Group - Altimeter Group provides research and advisory for companies challenged by business disruptions, enabling them to pursue new opportunities and business models.Twitter: @altimetergroup - Website: http://www.altimetergroup.com/
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See other influencer lists here:
Top 60 Customer Experience Influencers
Top 51 Human Potential Influencers
Top 46 Resource and Optimization Influencers