Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Saturday, April 08, 2006

The Microchunking Economy

While the media industry continues to completely miss the real meaning of the tectonic economic shifts happening under their feet, [email protected] sums it up very nicely:

"...It is the birth of a new clip culture."

He's 100% right.

Of course, the question is: why is this inevitable? Simple: the economics of attention dictate that microchunking media is the dominant strategy.

Also note that this article asks the same old question: how will YouTube "monetize" it's success.

If there's one single lesson I can give you these days: do not ask this question. It is the wrong question.

Business models at the edge - in fact, most great business models - happen. They're emergent; the result of doing, learning, and doing again.

That's why focusing on analysing which business models will "work" will kill you dead when discontinuous changes are tearing your industry apart. Hiring consultants to do it for you will only make you even worse off.

Instead, you have to focus on the deep economics of your industry. You have to relearn, rethink, and experiment with value creation and capture, often from the ground up, letting go of old assumptions and concepts. This is what killed newspapers, books, cars, and music - and is about to kill movies, food, CE, etc.

It's only by letting go of the old that you can renew decayed strategies. And asking the business model question is too often the single biggest cause of holding onto the old, instead of embracing the radical and the new.

-- umair // 8:00 PM // 0 comments

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