Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets: The New Economic Rules of Engagement in a Wireless World, Author: Walter B. Wriston, ISBN: 978-0-8179-4861-0, Publisher: Hoover Institute Press, Pub Date:  November 06, 2007.

 "Walt Wriston gives us ideas to use, insights into what the future holds, and suggestions about what can be done to best achieve a bright and promising future"—from the Foreword by George P. Shultz

The Internet has changed everything. It is altering the way institutions, both public and private, are managed, and the way individuals react to one another, their workplace, and their government. From an economic and business perspective, the race to win is between those who "get it" and those who don't. In Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets, Walter Wriston explores the consequences of the changes produced by the new economy of the Internet, defining the new rules and examining some of the promising initiatives under way to create a system of measuring and valuing assets that reflects our new economic realities.

A long-awaited follow-up to the author's Twilight of Sovereignty, this book shows that, in today's economy, intellectual capital is more important than physical capital—and in fact, the very source of wealth and how it is created has changed—and that businesses must adapt to this change or perish. Although he acknowledges that some of the "old" rules—those based on human nature rather than economic dogma—still apply today, Wriston also shows how the information revolution has radically affected business and government practices, as well as political policymaking throughout the world.

Despite the sweeping changes brought about by the "wireless revolution," the author argues against increased government regulation, instead making the case that we must count on a society of trustworthy people, and that it is not more laws that should form the basis for regulating the new economy but the personal ethics of good people.

Walter B. Wriston was the former chairman and chief executive officer of Citicorp. In 2004 he received the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. He died in 2005.

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Copyright © 2007 the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

This follow-up to the author's Twilight of Sovereignty explores the consequences of the changes produced by the new economy of the Internet, defining the new rules and examining some of the promising initiatives under way to create a system of measuring and valuing assets that reflects our new economic realities. Wriston shows that in today's economy, intellectual capital is more important than physical capital—and that businesses must adapt to this change or perish.

About Author:

Walter Wriston (August 3, 1919 – January 19, 2005) was a banker and former chairman of Citicorp. As chief executive of Citibank / Citicorp (later Citigroup) from 1967-1984, Wriston was widely regarded as the single most influential commercial banker of his time.

Walter Bigelow Wriston was born in Middletown, Connecticut to Ruth Bigelow Wriston, a chemistry teacher, and Henry Merritt Wriston, a history professor at Wesleyan University who was later president of Lawrence College (1925-1937) and Brown University (1937-1955).

Reared as a traditional Methodist in Appleton, Wisconsin, Wriston was not allowed to listen to the radio or go to the movie theater on Sundays.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University in 1941 and a Master's Degree from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1942.

After graduate school, Wriston became a junior Foreign Service officer at the State Department in which position he helped negotiate the exchange of Japanese interned in the United States for Americans held prisoner in Japan. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, he served in the U.S. Army for four years, being with the Signal Corps on Cebu in the Philippines during his service.

In 1942, Walter Wriston married his first wife, Barbara Brengle Wriston, with whom he had one daughter. Two years after Barbara’s death in 1966, he married lawyer and businesswoman Kathryn Dineen.

He kept himself trim, playing tennis regularly and acting as a carpenter, electrician, plumber, backhoe operator, front-end loader operator and chain-saw-wielding tree farmer on his Connecticut retreat. During the July 1977 New York City blackout, he walked down 23 flights from his high-rise apartment, hiked to corporate headquarters, then climbed 15 flights up to his office.

Wriston is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. from Troop 2 in Appleton, WI

Wriston died in January 2005, aged 85.

From 1982 to 1989, Wriston was chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, and in June 2004 awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civil honor, by President George W. Bush.

Wriston admitted he was twice offered the job of Secretary of the Treasury, in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford. He turned down the offers, but said it was not because of the public scrutiny he was sure to face. "I've been living in Macy's window for 20 years," he said. One report is that Wriston declined the offers because these were not made to him personally by the-then President. (Family tradition also has it that Wriston would have had to take a substantial pay cut had he accepted the government position.)

In 1987, the Manhattan Institute of Policy Research initiated a lecture series in honor of Mr. Wriston.

(From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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