Metcalfes law: “The value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes.”
By Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com Corporation and major designer of Ethernet. (Read more about the phenomen under Network effects)

Reed’s law is the assertion of David P. Reed that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network.
“[E]ven Metcalfe’s Law understates the value created by a group-forming network as it grows. Let’s say you have a GFN with n members. If you add up all the potential two-person groups, three-person groups, and so on that those members could form, the number of possible groups equals 2n. So the value of a GFN increases exponentially, in proportion to 2n. I call that Reed’s Law. And its implications are profound.”

Moores Law – Moore’s Law is the empirical observation made in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months.

Economical laws – related to IT:

Transaction cost (Coase) – transaction cost is a cost incurred in making an economic exchange. The general idea is later broken down into three types of transaction cost: Search and information, bargaining cost and policing and enforcement cost. (Note: Transaction cost is becoming more and more important!. Read more Even more here)

Coordination cost (Simon/Cordella) – The cost of processing this information coordination cost. If these costs exceed the benefits of IT, then the implementation becomes something negative and expensive. (More here under “publication”)

Coases Penguin (Yochai Benkler) – Benkler’s ultimate thesis is that some of the restrictions that copyright and patent law place on the free flow of information are preventing commons-based peer-production from reaching its full potential. Since this is such an effective form of knowledge production, Benkler argues, it is worth reconsidering whether the costs really outweigh the benefits. (Read article here)

About media content

Long Tail (Chris Anderson) -Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.

Content is NOT king (Odlyzko) – In the paper Content is Not King, published in First Monday in January 2001, he argues that
1. the entertainment industry is a small industry compared with other industries, notably the telecommunications industry;
2. people are more interested in communication than entertainment;
3. and therefore that entertainment “content” is not the killer app for the Internet.

Update: Besides this descriptive “laws” – it makes sense to take a quick glimpse at the “The cluetrain manifesto”, which was a call to action, delivered by four technologists and writers in 1999: “A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

The Manifesto points out:
- Theses 1 – 6: Markets are Conversations
- Thesis 7: Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy
- Theses 8-13: Connection between the new markets and companies
The information available in the marketplace is superior to that available from the organisations themselves
- Theses 14 – 25: Organisations entering the marketplace
connects with the ‘voice’ of the new marketplace (thesis 14-16) or risk becoming irrelevant (thesis 16).
- Theses 26 – 40: Marketing & Organisational Response
it is suggested that such intranets re-establish real communication amongst employees in parallel with the impact of the internet to the marketplace (thesis 48) and this will lead to a ‘hyperlinked’ organisational structure within the organisation which will take the place of (or be utilised in place of) the formally documented organisation chart (thesis 50).
- Theses 41 – 52: Intranets and the impact to organisation control and structure
full communication can exist between those within the marketplace and those within the company itself
- Theses 53 – 71: Connecting the Internet marketplace with corporate Intranets
how those expectations and changes will require a corresponding change from organisations
- Theses 72 – 95: New Market Expectations