(2006-09-13) Haque Network And Globalization

Umair Haque on the Network Economy ("2.0") and/vs Globalization. I Commented that it's maybe more about BigWorld vs SmallWorld.

• 2.0 vs media (New Media vs MSM) is pretty much over. 2.0 (very decisively) won... The truth is that Business Model Innovation at the edge is not so hard. There, it's Value Creation that's the hard part. When it comes to 2.0, business models happen - they're the products of deep, consistent experimentation (Iterative). But the key insight is that once you've created the value, if you do experiment, you will more than likely learn how to capture it - that's an almost inevitable function of persistence, risk, and reward (viz Google, MySpace, Skype, etc). Though the question may be tricky, it is, in fact, loaded deeply in your favour. (Hmm, note that of those 3, 2 of them Sold Out before they had any significant revenue.)

• Today, we're ignoring new markets which are where the principles of 2.0 can drive enormous growth and profits - and where they can create some serious, durable, meaningful value... This vast ugliness that globalization is exposing is an enormous market gap for 2.0 - for Market-s, Network-s, and Community-s to create value by really unlocking the potential of globally mobile capital - rather than letting owners of that capital amplify their returns by literally beating the time, effort, dignity, and life out of poor people... Globalization creates wealth at the cost of the social, the cultural, and the human. 2.0 creates wealth by amplifying the social, the cultural, and the human. For the next wave of Entrepreneur-s, this will be the market gap where profits are to be discovered... Where can connectivity - not bandwidth, but connectedness to resources, insitutions, other people - create the most value? I think, right now, the answer is where people who are ruthlessly exploited because they're disconnected from their homes, their families, the states, each other, and, to be honest, almost anything but sheer labour - where the social, human, and financial costs of these deeper kinds of disconnectedness from all the kinds of capital (social, human, financial, etc) are enormous. This is why, for a while now, I've thought that Kiva is hands down the most revolutionary startup I've seen for ages - it is awesome because it hints at the enormous possibilities in harnessing the principles of 2.0 on a global scale, and to create value where value counts most.

See later/related 2007-03-13-HaqueNingMistarget.