Providing live commentary and feedback from the “Power of Less” Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
Part I: Economics 2.0, Highly Effective Strategies for Putting Your Business on a Recession Diet
This three-hour workshop from Dion Hinchcliffe explored a number of key topics relating to Enterprise 2.0, including both the opportunities and pitfalls of the Web 2.0 era:
- Open Business & Open Supply Chains
- Online Communities
- Open Data
- Product Development 2.0
- Network Effects
- Crowdsourcing & Open Sourcing
- All Rights Reserved vs. Some Rights Reserved
- Mashups and APIs
The economics of business is fundamentally changing. Where we once tried to hoard our brand and IP, it now makes more sense to share it and let others use it. Where we once relied exclusively on internal resources, we can now tap the wisdom of our customers and the broader wisdom of the crowd. Where business models were once built on hardware and software, the new mega-corporations (like Google) are being built on data. Where we once relied on our Web site as a single point of access, we can now offer APIs and leverage those assets by enabling third parties to build on that underlying value. Above all, we can learn to leverage the power of the network. That is where value can expand exponentially and scale can be achieved rapidly.
Slide number seven is called “Avoiding Cargo Cults.” These are defined as “a group conducting rituals imitating behavior that they have observed among the holders of desired objects.” In other words, don’t do something because others have been successful in doing it and just because you can. Be original. Be unique. Be one of a kind.
A few of the web resources we noted:
- Get Satisfaction: People-powered customer service
- Clickatell: Bulk SMS Gateway
- Crowdspring: A marketplace for crowdsourced design, including logos
- OpenStreetMap: Wiki mapping
Introduction
You may ask yourself, “What does a wind turbine have to do with Web 2.0?” This type of imagery may be at home on the Max Gladwell category pages, but Web 2.0 is about software and the web as a platform. It’s about status updates, online communities, and those petulant bloggers. What is the context for wind energy?
It would appear that the organizers of the Web 2.0 Expo and Summit have, whether consciously or not, discovered Max Gladwell. The Expo is themed as “the power of less,” and while this speaks to the challenges of our new economic reality, it’s also a core principle of sustainability.
This evolution toward a more conscious Web 2.0, if you will, started with Tim O’Reilly’s keynote last year and was book-ended by Al Gore’s closing keynote at the Web 2.0 Summit. We’re looking forward to covering the event through the Max Gladwell lens and will update this post in a live-blogging fashion.
If you’re at the event, this is our current schedule. Feel free to @ reply Rob Reed via Twitter if you want to meetup. And if you know of any green-themed exhibitors or events, feel free to suggest them in the comments.
Lastly, we’ll be celebrating the Max Gladwell New Year at San Francisco Green Drinks on Wednesday, April 1st. More on that later.
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1 Max Gladwell Networking Event for Entrepreneurs | Max Gladwell // Apr 7, 2009 at 11:01 am
[...] attended an Enterprise 2.0 workshop at the recent Web 2.0 Expo that highlighted these and other principles of Economics 2.0. In many ways, the most open companies [...]
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