The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future

The cofounder of America Online and the Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship shares a roadmap to success for future innovators.

Steve Case was on the leading edge of the Internet revolution when he cofounded AOL in 1991. He was an entrepreneur in a business that hadn’t even been invented, yet he saw how significantly his efforts could change not only America, but the world. In The Third Wave, Case uses his insights garnered from nearly four decades of working as an innovator, investor, and businessperson to chart a path for future visionaries.

From his position as an investor in startups like Zipcar and LivingSocial, Case predicts the future of the economy and describes what he calls the “Third Wave of the Internet.” AOL and other companies introduced early consumers to the Internet in the first wave; search giants such as Google and companies such as Apple have led us into the second wave, the app economy; and the third wave will be “the Internet of things,” in which every experience, product, and service will be transacted online. Using his own experience, and examples from companies he’s invested in, he lays out a vision for the future of success in a disrupted age.