Why you can't expect business as usual

I spent the morning with Alan Moore (Communities Dominate Brands) today. Alan and I agree; where the network touches, it disrupts. Expect to see him publishing more on that before too long.

It's not just about new ways of making content. It's about new ways of making. Everything.
It's not just about new modes of advertising. It's about new modes of production.

(Got an example of how/where the network will disrupt - from education to politics and beyond? Add your contribution to A Shared Vision of a Networked World here.)

We're getting better and better at delivering the right commercial messages at the right time and to the right people, by focusing on communities and making use of social data analytics. And perfecting this has big wins for ad agencies, marketeers, commercial enterprizes and media... and this is a fantastic leap forward compared to the interruptive advertising that has gone before.

But the ultimate wins are about people taking control of the creation of the product they want to own.

Advertising, so far as I can understand, is about closing the gap between the supply of that which is created and the demand for that product. This has profound implications. Implications that are regularly shied away from by the 'business2.0' brigade.

Perhaps they have a fear of biting the hand that feeds? If your pitch is to the suited business community the view from around the curve, if taken to its extremity, is a scary place indeed.

What is disintermediated by truly co-creational processes? The owners of the means of production.
Apply? Who are the mediators in business: Corporations? Companies?

Now, I'm not about to predict the end of the company overnight - just as it's unfair to completely write off mass media. But it is reasonable to understand that just in the same way that mass media has been disrupted by the network (leading to the emergence of a new global mass-niche focused community-driven approach) so the story for corporations must change, too.

Media is having to reinterpret itself (Why Media IS the New Business Ecology, is my stab at this). So must the corporation.

Looking far enough ahead may help us steer the right course. What do you see?