Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Scale, 2.0, and Intent

There's a discussion going on at the moment about 2.0 plays not technically scaling very well.

Let me add my 2c.

This is a much bigger issue than technology. One of the big problems for 2.0 is, yeah, scale - but not in technological terms; rather, in strategic terms.

Many of my clients, like many other 2.0 players in general, have come up with game-changing business models and strategies. But, IMHO, my main criticism is that 2.0 in general is not thinking big enough. Scale is important because the network is, for successful players, exponentially valuable; not just in textbooks, like it was in 1999, but in the real world, as I've demonstrated.

Radical innovations like the ones 2.0 is spawning are beyond disruptive - for many industries, 2.0 is already reshaping industry economics in fundamental ways; something that happens once only every few decades. Consider the media or consumer goods industries, for example.

So, yes, scale is important - but less so in terms of servers and architectures, than in terms of thinking how you can really leverage network scale economies to revolutionize your industry. This should be the intent of 2.0 players - to vaporize, atomize, and otherwise reduce incumbents to irrelevance.

-- umair // 12:46 AM // 0 comments

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