:: The Park Paradigm ::

Markets for the Digital Generation

Malcolm Matson observes that a new business paradigm - c2b, consumer to business - is in the acendancy:

This classification of the world into “service/content providers” and “service/content users” lies at the very heart of the obsolete and flawed Cable-TV and telecoms business models. It is what gives rise to their desperate attempt to differentiate ‘bits’ from ‘bits’. Ultimately this is fruitless and doomed effort to make water run uphill, for the liberating impact of these technologies is unstoppable – as end users enjoy the impact of Moore’s Law on the ever more powerful array of “digital creative tools” and as OPLANs begin to emerge around the world, then we will see an explosion of C2B activity – not just at the internet level but locally, within neighbourhoods, cities and communities. The mind can only glimpse through a glass darkly what positive social and economic impact this may have – positive for all of us and quite the opposite for some vested interests that thought their ‘right to life’ was immutable. Bring it on …

Rebecca Blood calls it the dawning of the “age of participatory culture” and the end of the industrial age.

What does a c2b paradigm mean for other industries. Telecoms and media seem to be the focus but if this idea is real (and I think it is) it will certainly have profound implications (and create real opportunities) for other industries, including financial services.

So what might the implications be for financial services? Is it (just) the emergence of peer-to-peer business models? (zopa, intrade, etc.) Is it back to the future with mutual banking or insurance models? Or is there more? I suspect there is, although I’m not so sure that the c2b model in financial services is as intuitively as obvious as it might be in say media and entertainment. It’s certainly something I’ll be thinking about and I’d welcome any views or ideas on this front.

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Always nice to be noticed.

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Here in sunny/rainy Copenhagen at reboot. This is the eighth edition but my first time. The idea behind the gathering (organized by Thomas Madsen-Mygdal) is to ‘reboot’ your brain; be exposed to new ideas, new people:

reboot8 is a community event for the practical visionaries who are at the intersection of digital technology and change all around us… 2 days. 400 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas.
Applied towards us as individuals, citizens, teachers, culture workers, entrepreneurs, creators and change makers.

This morning I saw a fantastic presentation:

“Let disruptive technologies disrupt!”

“These are the economics of abundance. The market value of something that is infinitely available is zero.”

Malcolm J Matson, founder of OPLAN Foundation talks on the imminent downfall of the incumbent telecoms companies (full presentation here.) Refers to Perez’s Technological Revolutions (one of the most insightful books I have ever read) in discussing the need (for governments) to allow new disruptive technologies to emerge and thrive independent of vested existing interests or technologies. Here is Malcolm’s blog.

Aside from being a compelling speaker and having an excellent presentation, what really struck a cord for me is that many of the points he made with respect to broadband and telecoms are analogous to my views on some of the issues and opportunities facing the financial services industry in the digital century.

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