Commodities of the New Economy (Page 4 of 6)
The New Economy
There is a pervasive sense that the combination of fulfilling the
basic cyberneeds and the evolution to an access-driven computing
model has created a set of new business opportunities and behaviors.
This has been called the "new economy." The more cynical may contend
that the primary role of the new economy is to sell equity. While
there may be a grain of truth in this, we see the new economy
comprised not simply of companies that sell goods and services via
the Internet, build the infrastructure of the Internet, or exploit
the existence of the Internet, but instead comprised mainly of those
companies that have imbued themselves with a high degree of
Internet-ness and have integrated the Internet into the very fabric
of their businesses. The new economy is comprised of companies
leveraging technology to fundamentally alter their cost of operating
as a business and enhancing their ability to create their future
business environment.
We see the new economy as possessing several key characteristics.
These include:
An information- and idea-based economy
The new economy places a significant value on information,
intellectual property, and ideas. Additionally, it places a very
high premium on being able to create, manage, and market information,
ideas, and intellectual property.
Intellectual property and technology embedded in organizations,
services, and manufactured products. The products, services,
and companies of the new economy ride on a foundation of technology
that is used to optimize their operations. The Internet is the prime
example of this. However, there is also no reason that a company that
manufactures products cannot be a new economy company.
Discontinuity and change are expected.
Because of near virtual foundations at many new economy companies and
the emphasis on industry standards for the movement of information,
companies are able to nearly recreate themselves as virtual. This
facilitates an environment of accelerated change and movement.
Strategies created around "taking advantage" and "responding" are
ultimately losing strategies because they do not create an environment.
They are rather strategies for survival. The new economy is
characterized by a self-perpetuating cycle of change and non-linearity,
where the participants in the new economy need to create change and
chaos in order to succeed.
Access to information has become the lifeblood of the all companies
and organizations, and leveraging the Internet has become the primary
means of moving that information around and sharing it within and
external to an organization. This will expand in the new economy. Key
issues that relate to information and its role in the new economy
include:
Information has become the currency of the new economy.
What makes the new economy possible is the flow of information between
organizations. In some respects, information has become the currency,
being bartered and exchanged in multiple forms, including intellectual
property rights, as the basis for consummated commerce.
Movement of the currency needs to be low friction.
While one characteristic of the new economy is unprecedented
cooperation between organizations, fundamentally enabled by the
movement of information via the standards of the Internet, this
movement needs to be at very low friction. There are numerous
attributes and characteristics of an organization that may increase
or decrease the friction level, including size and hierarchy.
Standardized ways to process, store, communicate, and consume
the currency of information - the Internet. At the most
basic level, the degree to which any organization has adopted the
Internet as its info-vascular system indicates the degree of
participation that it may actually have in the new economy. Along
with the standardized communications infrastructure, the Internet
affords industry-standard ways to store, process, and consume
information.
Exchange of currency between workers, businesses, and government
facilitates efficiencies and movement of goods and services.
Ultimately, it is the movement of information, or currency, between
organizations that facilitates the exchange of goods and services.
Without an efficient infrastructure for moving that information
within and between organizations, the chances of creating a sustainable
organization and/or group of organizations are significantly diminished.
At each stage of the evolution of computing - from creation,
network/access and now to the Webless Internet - the focus of that
stage of computing migrated to a near commodity, in both price and
availability.
Part 5 - The New Commodities
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