Ways to make money

We tend to over-estimate impacts in the short term because of all the “machinery” of the existing systems, and under-estimate the (cumulative) impacts in the longer term because our necessarily limited view on the scope and reach of the activities and systems.

I do agree it will not be day and night, in terms of difference, but I also believe that the accumulated changes will eventually create something clearly different than today's capitalism.

I couldn't agree with you more. After reading Young's post, my first thought was that juxtaposing the words “fundamental” and “rethinking” should be banned from usage.

And while I agree that many bloggers (in particular) talk and write as if there was no progress before they came belong, I think there's another motivation underlying their thoughts: The desire to be a part of the “revolution”.

And this is something that not just today Gen Yers are guilty of. Twenty-five years ago it was the revolution that PCs would bring about, then it was the client/server revolution, followed by the knowledge management revolution, then the Internet (Web 1.0) revolution, and now the Web 2.0 revolution.

What IS different this time around, however, is — thanks to blogs — the number of people who are able to make their thoughts about the so-called revolution publicly heard. And when you're surrounded by a lot of people who echo your thoughts about the need for a “fundamental rethinking”, then you start believing it.

I've spent the last decade watching our profit being invested in digital media. That department now is four times the investment of our real product manufacturing yet they only bring 15% of the total revenue after a true seven-year run-up. It started with fantastic speeches about how this was the future and technology would simplify our work and cut costs.

Now, we are being told it's over and we've got to go all in for digital. The new CEO comes in and the speeches are the same as the ones from 2001-2002, but the terminology has slightly changed. This time, we've got to do the work and it's going to be hard and it's pretty much 24/7. Interesting how it's changed. Now websites and digital products are expensive and hard to produce and we all have to sacrifice and do more.

Why do we have to go all in? Because that's what the business media says. Here's the reality, we don't need a social site and we don't even need a website. We need to keep that digital brochure out there and direct people to the our website re-sellers. Cut that digital to the bone and focus on building real products.

However, familiar longstanding challenges remain and are compounded by the effect of those technologies. Namely, that people still need the skill to spot opportunities for creating value, and must now do so from increasing flows of information and interaction. Furthermore, a more open value creation system means companies must relinquish (to a certain degree) control over the creation process. Traditionally this has been very difficult for companies to do. The technology may be there, but it needs to be accompanied by the right mindsets and skills to be truly useful.

It will be very interesting to observe what happens with innovation models for existing companies, and how it will help startups compete with the established ones.

Through history it can be technological and sociological shifts has turned things up side down, where yesterdays winners became loosers. The velocity of this will probably decide if it is a revolution or not.

Lately there has been talk of the Tipping Point theory coming into play here. When social media and open innovation models reaches a certain level it will evolve “epidemically”.

I am no academic about this matter, but nevertheless I’ve written a blog post about it on my name link provided.