Sean Park Portrait
Quote of The Day Title
The real source of all growth is human creativity and entrepreneurship, which always comes as a surprise to us, especial ... [hover]
George Gilder

Coming up for air.

Clay ShirkyImage via Wikipedia

It’s like when you are 10 and you get a brand new bike for your birthday and it rains, torentially, for the next month.  And all you can do is sit there and stare at it shining in the garage…

So think of this post as a short, sweet sortie into the rain of meetings, deadlines and travel that have stuffed September fuller than a turkey bound for Christmas…

As you know, I believe that markets and financial services in the 21st century are ultimately digital businesses, cornerstones and representations of the “information economy”.  As a result, I would suggest that anyone wanting to lead and/or succeed in these businesses needs a lucid and enlightened understanding of this information economy and the internet substrate that underlies it.  This probably sounds obvious but, at the risk of sounding patronizing, I would suggest that many (heretofore successful) business people in financial services have at best a superficial or tangential understanding of these powerful currents running under the surface of our emerging information economy.

In the spirit of trying to redress this situation,  I would like to bring attention to two people who I would suggest could form the core curricular foundation for an executive course in Information Economy 101.  These are not obscure personalities but in their universe, mainstream thought leaders, celebrities even.  Indeed for many (most) readers of the Park Paradigm, this will be old hat.  However my hope is that some readers will not have been exposed to their thinking previously and that perhaps others (already familiar) would be nudged to push this information into their organizations and to their leaders.  Call me crazy, but I think any person tasked with running a large financial services company is unqualified unless they are familiar with the concepts so powerfully articulated by people like Clay Shirky and Cory Doctorow.

Cory’s Cambridge Business lecture is a great place to start:

PS This is the first post I’ve done with tools from (that great seedcamp winning company) Zemanta …can’t believe it took me almost a year!

Related articles by Zemanta

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Permalink||Comments|Filed under 'Business, Economics, Management, Peak Hierarchy, Sixth Paradigm, Web X.0'
Park Paradigm 2.0 Now what?
  • Albert
    This has been an extraordinary week. It would be truly awesome if you could comment on what has happened.

    There is this Econ Professor in New York Stern Univ., Nouriel Roubini, who said the independent broker / dealers business model is fundamentally flawed. Do you agree with him? If so, how does technology change this? Someone like Cory Doctrow doesn't have a background in finance and economics, so I don't expect Cory would be able to comment on what has happened, but you seem to be more than capable! Roubini seems focused on the business model design and structure of the brokers, not really about information technology. A lot of people like Roubini love the ego boost of being seen as a guru who can say "I told you so" about a collapse of 100+ year old institutions, but what Roubini doesn't say is what probably or could become from the ashes. Its doubtful that Roubini hangs out at Starbucks drinking coffees with Cory Doctrow :-)

    Check out these excerpts:

    http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2008/09/18/t...

    Roubini further prognosticated that, “in a few years’ time, there will be no major independent broker dealers as their business model…is bust and the risk of a bank-like run on their very short term liquid liabilities is a fundamental flaw in their structure…”

    http://www.rgemonitor.com/

    Roubini cites the following reasons why broker dealers are failing:

    1) model of originate and distribute securitization with generating fees has collapsed so those revenues are gone

    2) now that independent broker-dealers have access to Fed support and will likely be regulated like banks, with higher capital and higher liquidity requirements and lower leverage, it raises the question of how they will make money

    3) these broker-dealers borrow very short-term in the repo market, are highly leveraged, and they lend and invest in the long-term

    4) commercial independent broker-dealers do not havea stable deposit base and have only limited Fed access

    US government refused to provide a financial backstop to potential buyers of Lehman Brothers and thus seems to have drawn a line in the sand as to how far it will go to bail out broker dealers
  • Albert
    What happened to the previous comments on this post, about the baby boomers egos, and politicians? They were interesting!
  • Albert, apologies had to re-install Disqus and so the comments were wiped. I took a copy before and will look to repost over the weekend, but attribution will be lost I think.
  • Great post. Just testing your comments after the Disqus re-install
blog comments powered by Disqus