I sometimes think that one of the most fundamental issues that content producers (of any kind) consistently fail to get their heads around is just what they are competing against in the new world.
Just landed in Rhode Island and spending the next 2 days in Providence, long working sessions ahead, expect to some productive knowledge exchange. The topic will be around where arts meet science, design meets technology.
For all the talk of the momentous changes in media and marketing that we are living through, I felt there was a need to speak up for what I believe may be the greatest opportunity that businesses will have over the next few years to deliver real value back, accumulate not just knowledge but wisdom and understanding, and to recognise the huge opportunity we have to do things quantifiably better than we do now. So I penned a leader for the good people at Marketing Week on the subject, and they've kindly allowed me to reproduce it here in full:
Seen from the point of view of information, a modern company is a fortess - a fortress that's very good at erecting barriers to the natural flow of information from outside in and vice versa.
While these impermeable walls of opacity were (and probably continue to be) essential to being in business, they also raise the cost of doing business - by making it expensive to haul information across the border, both ways.
"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, and music is THE BEST."
This is the unabridged, non-edited version of an article published at bnet.co.uk
The Morgan Stanley report entitled “media and the Internet, how teenagers consume media” is one of the most striking examples of instant information circulation on a global scale. Matthew Robinson — a 15 year-old trainee who was asked to put together a report on how his peers were using the media — no longer needs to work on his online reputation. In a flash, his report was on everyone’s lips (on everyone’s desktop rather) and widely used as a perfect representation of generation Y usage of media and – especially – the Internet.
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