Open-source economics

Here's another great TED video about how business in the information age has to be approached differently than business from the industrial age. The change is based on technology, the web, and collaboration.

Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. Yochai Benkler has been called "the leading intellectual of the information age." He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization and economic production.

Open-source economics

Way-new collaboration

This is another great video from TED talking about how collaboration is the future of business. I think business is seen as a zero-sum game - if I win someone else has to lose. Well this video argues how that was based on a biological scarcity of resources mindset - and not how business works.

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

Way-new collaboration

The rise of the amateur professional

Sometimes large companies create products for profit - or for a specific business model. This talk argues how the BEST products are designed by the users - the people who want the product. An example here is how the mountain bike was not designed by a large bike company - but by the biking enthusiasts. No longer can companies design products and then get a read from "passive" consumers who say they like it or not - now I believe the call is for entrepreneurs to design in collaboration with consumers.

In this deceptively casual talk, Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't.

The rise of the amateur professional

Recession Hits Small Businesses

Technology never ceases to amaze me. Here is a State of Small Businesses Survey by Huffington Post which captures the effect of the poor economy on small businesses. What I was also most impressed by was how their data was being shared. They surveyed small business owners and asked them about layoffs or reducing working hours and their expectations for their business in the short run. I love how they put all of the data on the web in google maps. You can click on a "dot" below and read the survey response from that business owner!

As a quick side note - we started our business in one of the worst times to do so - during the internet post bubble in 2000 and 2001 when no one wanted to touch a startup and the "good old days" were over. But we were small and did it on our own and are still in business 8 years later!

Huffington Post - Small Business Survey - Click on a business to see their response.

View Larger Map

Recession Hits Small Businesses

How a ragtag band created Wikipedia

Sure there's eBay, Facebook etc etc - but probably nothing defines the power of the internet to me as well as Wikipedia - which basically houses the shared knowledge of the collective. Here's a great video on one man's vision of a free encyclopedia for all. One more quick note - I love how Wikipedia is seen as a living organism constantly growing and improving. The business lesson is that through collaboration you can build something on such a massive scale that no corporate structure could afford to take on.

Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

How a ragtag band created Wikipedia