Ten Laws Of The Modern World - Forbes.com

Link: Ten Laws Of The Modern World - Forbes.com.

• Moore's Law. In 1965 Moore (he co-founded Intel three years later) noted that components on silicon chips were doubling every year. In 1975 he amended that to every two years.

• The Back Side of Moore's Law. This one says that digital stuff gets 30% to 40% cheaper every year--at the same performance point.

• Andy and Bill's Law. It went like this: "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

• Metcalfe's Law. Metcalfe said the usefulness of a network improves by the square of the number of nodes on the network.

• Gilder's Law: Winner's Waste. The best business models, he said, waste the era's cheapest resources in order to conserve the era's most expensive resources.

• Ricardo's Law. The more transparent an economy becomes, the more David Ricardo's 19th-century law of comparative advantage rules the day.

• Wriston's Law. He said capital (meaning both money and ideas), when freed to travel at the speed of light, "will go where it is wanted, stay where it is well-treated...."

• The Laffer Curve. Cut taxes at the margin, on income and capital, and you'll get more tax revenue, not less.

• Drucker's Law. Contribution puts the focus where it should be--on your customers, employees and shareholders.

• Ogilvy's Law. Ogilvy wrote that whenever someone was appointed to head an office of O&M, he would give the manager a Russian nesting doll. These dolls open in the middle to reveal a smaller doll, which opens in the middle to reveal a yet smaller doll...and so on. Inside the smallest doll would be a note from Ogilvy. It read: "If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

These are very powerful.