Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law combine to give individuals inexpensive and easy access to new media such as the Internet. This means that any one can set up a Web site and theoretically at least, be seen by the world. As a result many have noticed the so-called “fish-tank phenomenon”6. The fish-tank phenomenon is named after the fact that in the early days of websites, people used to put a video camera on top of their tropical fish tank (or coffee percolator, for that matter), so that when you logged on to their site that is what you saw. This added to the clutter and junk on display - today there are hundreds of thousand of silly, futile, "junk" sites that only do something silly – let the viewer build a cow, tickle Elvis Presley’s tummy, cure their addiction to lip balm, or whatever. The question that this prompts is, wouldn't it be better if, rather than relying on individuals for their input on the net, we depended instead on the considerable resources of large institutions and corporations?
The answer to this question really lies in another: What is more profound? And the answer to this second question is that, actually, it is the creative inputs of millions of individuals, all over the world who now have the ability to show us what they can do. In other words, the creative outputs of millions of individuals will beat the doings of large institutions in a great majority of cases. So, while we may see lots of junk, such as fish tanks, coffee percolators, and devices to tickle a long dead rock artist, every now and then some individual (probably a seventeen year old in their bedroom) is going to produce something so revolutionary that it will change our world. For strategists this means that many firms may find themselves threatened by small start-ups that were previously unable to get access to the market. No longer will it be good enough to merely observe one’s close and known competitors, in the future these competitors could be anyone and anywhere. They may be difficult to see before it is too late – they usually fly under the radar.
- 3218 reads
