Enjoy! It sounds reasonable to me, to rethink our copyright and patent law. We may change the rules to enable even faster collective learning in the future to save our existence. To be continued...

Enjoy! Have you noticed, how the different talks fit perfectly together? I love it. To be continued...

Enjoy! Since Larry Lessing delivers some of the best presentation I have seen. I am sure he make a difference by convincing more and more people of the need of action. That makes me optimistic.

To be continued...

Enjoy. Some of my readers may know this one already from another post. To be continued...

Enjoy. Education makes a difference. A big difference. To be continued...

Enjoy! Believe me, you will never forget the final. To be continued...

Enjoy! It is a tough one for pessimists. To be continued...

Well, I am an optimist. And I mean a real optimist. Some may even say I am hopelessly optimistic. I find myself in intensive discussions with less optimistic people all the time - nearly every day. I write this post since it takes so much energy to hear the same pessimistic view of the world again and again, despite all the ground-breaking, positive developments. I hope to inspire some of you by collecting some of the most inspiring talks on the Internet. Here comes the fist:

If you believe that we live in violent times, Steven Pinker will surprise you with "A brief history of violence".

Enjoy! To be continued...

Please don't miss his lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". It is one of the most inspiring and touching speeches I have seen in my life. Randy's talk is full of brilliant humor, wit and wisdom. His big heart is touching.

PS: Kudos go to Tobi. Thanks for the hint!

Well, there are at least four poor reasons for my lack of postings:

1. I was gone sailing for a while. Awesome!

2. Twitter is kind of addictive: heartnsoul

3. Our new internal CoreMedia Blog is addictive as well (partly public). This blog will be merged with it soon.

4. I am currently preparing to publish a book on Enterprise 2.0 and needed some material their.

Stay tuned.

Ein Video-Interview hat nämlich schon seinem Wesen nach einen besonderen Wert: Es zwingt mich meine Gedanken direkt und unmittelbar auf den Punkt zu bringen (siehe auch "Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden"). Und gleichzeitig gibt es mir nachträglich die Gelegenheit mich bei dieser Übung auch noch kritisch zu beobachten und dabei meinen blinden Fleck zu verkleinern ("Nuscheln wird als Stilmittel deutlich überschätzt"). Wirklich erhellend!

Das Ergebnis des letzten Experimentes dieser Art ist gerade unter den Creative Commons Lizenzbedingungen online gegangen. Ulrike Reinhard und Lutz Berger haben meinen Kollegen Henrik Schürmann und mich letzte Woche zum Change Management bei CoreMedia interviewt und das Ergebnis zu einem ansprechenden Video-Format zusammen geschnitten.

Hintergrund des Interviews ist die SCOPE 07 - The Future of Learning Conference. Da das Thema "Kollektives Lernen" CoreMedia bewegt und vielen bei uns sehr am Herzen liegt, haben wir uns entschlossen die Konferenz als Sponsor zu unterstützen und uns gleichzeitig inhaltlich einzubringen. Wir sind gespannt.

Herzlichen Dank an Ulrike Reinhard und Lutz Berger. Das war bereits im Vorfeld der eigentlichen Konferenz eine sehr schöne (Lern-)Erfahrung.

The paradigm shift labeled "Web 2.0" reached the shore of conventional enterprises mainly build upon hierarchies. Digital Natives enter conventional enterprises and the fun begins. They demand to work in the new paradigm and cause change. So, it would be good to be able to answer one important question: Why should any enterprise make intensive use of social software and transform itself into an Enterprise 2.0?

Well, I have been thinking about this for a while now and did what I had to do: I started to transform CoreMedia into an Enterprise 2.0.

The change management was all about changing the corporate culture. At the beginning, the use of social software was only a minor point. By now, it has emerged to a central aspect.

Through my own experience I came to the conclusion that the main aspect of Enterprise 2.0 is raising the order of connectivity between all stakeholders. And here is my hypothesis: With more and better connections between employees, managers, partners, customers and to the rest of the world, an enterprise will be more aware of its environment. It will be more agile and more creative. It will be more competitive and, therefore, stays longer alive. Well, at least on average.

I really like to put this hypothesis to a test through a study. I expect to find evidence that the rate of innovation and the customer orientation raises along with the order of connectivity.

And I expect to see some evidence "being connected" means "staying alive" in a networked economy and society.

Anyone interested in making this topic the topic of her/his thesis? Please contact me directly or through this blog.

Well, I also like their search tools and most of their other amazingly innovative services like Google Earth, Google Maps, etc.

Google has fundamentally changed the world we live in. They made Bill Gates' vision "information at your fingertips" mainly come true. Actually, I was one of Google's big fans. I loved them for being different, for "don't be evil" and for all the smart and funny ideas around the Google logo.

However, something important has changed: I don't like Google anymore.

About 15 to 18 months ago they started to lose my friendship. I became more and more skeptical:

Was "don't be evil" great marketing or a great vision? What do they really think about transparency? Where can I see my own profile with all the profile data Google has collected about me over years now? Where can I delete all the entries about myself I dislike? Do they own my profile data? Do they provide my profile data to government authorities on request? Who is Google in person?

I’ve realized that it is way too dangerous in the long run to have a single company with such a huge power over all of us getting stronger and stronger. It simply feels wrong.

And we ain't seen nothing yet. For Google it seems to be pretty easy to enter and dominate also other markets. They offer more and more attractive services for free, collect even more and better profile data and sell a lot more ads. They started with search, added mail, maps, blogs, calendar, analytics, office applications, video, and the like. Then, they added billing and telephony. More to come. Now they are well positioned to become the biggest operator on earth.

Obviously, Google doesn't have to make any money with those services directly. It is enough to improve their user profiles and they will earn more with AdSense.

This makes it pretty tough to compete with Google due to Google's strategic positioning.

And it’s getting worse. If you are a mobile operator you can choose one of two evils: If you bring Google onto your phones your customers will be happy and Google gets stronger. So you lose ground. But if you block Google and promote your own search your customers won't be happy at all and so you lose ground again.

What about copying Google? Well, it is not very likely that another company can do what Google did. The existing network effects for Google are way too strong. And another huge search company won't solve the underlying problem. Such a highly centralized power seems to be way too dangerous for normal enterprises.

So if you want to beat Google you have to change the rules of the game. You can't outperform Google the Google way.

Here is my best guess for mobile operators and any other companies that are afraid of Google and want to compete:

Go open source

Google uses a lot of decentralized mechanisms to create innovations and they hire loads of smart people. However, the whole world is still smarter than Google alone. So let's go for open source to build an open and trusted alternative to Google.

Be transparent

Google is non-transparent and non-transparency kills trust. So let's make everything transparent to you as a user, the algorithms, the source code, the policies, your profile, etc. If someone wants to change his/her profile that is fine as well. If someone doesn't like to be profiled that is fine too.

Support the Wikipedia universe

Google is a global brand everyone knows and looks for. So we need to have an even better global brand with more trust. Wikipedia.

So let's spend some money to make Wikiasearch the world’s greatest search engine, the first one being open and trusted as well.

It will be a different game for Google: It is all about trust - an extremely powerful force. Fortunately, even Google cannot win this game against Wikipedia us all.

I am really curious how long it takes until the big operators will start to implement this plan.

Well, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Beach clubs are a big thing in Germany for quite a while now. Hamburg has quite a few spots and they are still gaining momentum. (Actually, I wonder why nobody invented them earlier. With hindsight the idea to have a nice and clean beach with a fancy bar and happy people right next to your place seems to be a no-brainer.)

Some people may even say that being successful in the beach club business looks kind of easy. If the sun shines every beach club is pretty crowded anyway.

However, there are differences. Little differences, but important ones. With three separate beach clubs right next to each other, Hamburg offers a very good opportunity to feel the differences and discover a little bit of beach club wisdom.

I took the chance and tested three beach clubs in a row. It was a nice and warm Sunday evening a few weeks ago when a friend and I wanted to find our favorite beach club. We entered every single beach club for a few minutes and got a good first impression – enough to make a choice.

The first beach club offered a pretty good atmosphere. It was not too crowded since we arrived pretty late. However, all seats were taken and the mood was relaxed.

The second beach club was different. It was pretty crowded with loads of cool and stylish people. The music was louder and more aggressive. There were three security guys at the door and a lot of party people were sitting at the pool and tried to make a good impression. You can tell, all barkeepers were pretty busy.

The third beach club was well known to be the best place for families. Actually, it was not going too well that evening. To be frank: It looked pretty much dead when we arrived! Only very few seats were taken and – which was the worst part – the atmosphere was uneasy at best.

You may wonder, what was wrong with the third place. Why did they perform so badly? And what did they do about it?

Well, I guess they have struggled with their positioning and tried to fix it. It looks like they tried to attract more party people and therefore were not too happy with their family friendly image at all. Obviously, they really started to change their image (and their karma) with a big sign at the entrance:

“Dear parents and children, Our beach club is NO playground!”

It worked. At least they are not know to be the number one beach club for families anymore. Now, they are known to be the beach club with the worst karma ever.

I wonder if this sign would have served them a little better:

“Dear parents and children, playboys and playgirls, Enter YOUR PLAYGROUND and have fun!”

Well, I am still wondering what this tells me about the software business in general and CoreMedia's legal terms and conditions in detail.

What I really don't like is the Tour de France obsessed with doping and being treated arrogantly by an Air France supervisor in Paris after they have messed up my international connecting flight. I don’t like to be told that it is the fault of another Air France subsidiary instead of offering any help. And I don’t like to be sent on a 3h journey through the various terminals of Charles de Gaulle Airport to get some help from this other Air France subsidiary.

Hello Monsignor Supervisor, it was a quite expensive Air France ticket for four Air France flights. Your company sold it, your company got the money, and your company created the problem in the first place. Therefore, as a simple matter of fact, I expect your company to be kind and handle the mess without any discussion.

By the way, telling me and the other passengers from the US that this connection fails every other day wasn't too smart either. I didn’t solve any problem. And to hear that you knew about my misery even before we bought the flawed tickets from your company is even worse.

Why has your company told me to use this inaccurate flight connection, just to annoy me?

And what have you done about it personally?

Go ahead with your silly dog fight with your local sister company but don’t expect me to fly again with Air France.

First things first:

1. I don't believe in the patent system: It simply doesn't scale

Informationen grows with exponential speed with a growth rate of 66% per year. As a result it doubles in less than two years for at least a century now. The number of globally filed patents grew by 6,8 % in 2006. It was a record year for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

However, the rest of the system doesn't scale nearly as well. It doesn't scale at all. Someone has to evaluate patents and review them against prior art, existing patents and hopefully against stupidity. This takes time. And it will take even more time in tomorrow’s world with a lot more knowledge to check against. Well, we might be able to address this issue by hiring more people in countries with relatively cheap labor or some kind of crowd sourcing.

However, the main issue here is another one: The rest of the world, i.e. all other enterprises, have to spend more and more resources to keep the patent system alive. Every company has to educate all of their employees to know all the patents that might be relevant to their work all the time. How would this work - for example in the software industry? We live in a global society and offer global services over the Internet. Not even the brightest software engineers will be able to handle all the different patents in every part of the world. The results may be funny: Hire one or two lawyers per software developer? The first one to evaluate all existing and new software patents and the other one sitting next to the software developer to do the legal code review in real-time?

Think of all the time we have to spend in every company today if you try do it right. And now think of a situation with 159 times more knowledge and two times more patents. Life in 2017 won't work like this, would it?

2. I don't like the idea of patenting ideas: It is not fair and it harms our society

Every idea has its context. It needs an environment so that it can be thought of in the first place. Since all human beings are social beings we can't speak, think or exist without the society we live in. The whole knowledge of our society is the gift that our society gave us as an individual being. But if this is true, it is kind of unfair to exclude society from results that were created out of its own context. Our existing patent systems overvalue the contribution of a single entity and undervalue the contribution of the whole society.

Patents are often said to be used to "defend" a business against competitors with other patents. Sounds like a stupid idea to create those "weapons against innovation" in the first place.

Our whole society would be better off if we shared all of our ideas to build a better future for us all. Therefore, limiting the use of good ideas to create a better world through the artificial concept of patenting is unfair and harms our society as a whole.

3. I am sure patents will vanish: We can't take the consequences

Is our society really willing to accept the consequences of the patent system as a whole? I don't think so. Think of all the poor people in Africa suffering from diseases that could be reduced by patented drugs from the first world. Is protecting the existing patent system more important than the lives of millions?

Think of global warming. Wouldn't it be good to openly share our knowledge to reduce the global output of CO2? If a major car manufacturer knows how to build a highly efficient engine for a very low price and using limited resources, shouldn't this knowledge be used everywhere in the world to build better cars with lower energy consumption? Is it acceptable for our society to limit the use of such knowledge to maximize the profits of one company? I think not.

I believe we should share all the knowledge we have for the benefits of our society. And I also believe that we have to find a new way to value the contribution of us all in such a system. Innovators, artists and other knowledge workers should be able to pay their bills at the end of the month.

How might a world without patents work?

A pharmaceutical company has to invest a lot of money into R&D to find new and better drugs. They may argue that they are not able to do this without our existing patent system since other companies may use all the research results without paying for them. Those new competitors without any R&D spending will be more competitive from a financial perspective. They will be able to offer the drugs for a lower price and therefore win the whole business sooner or later. Therefore, not investing into R&D looks like the best strategy.

Well, not if we as customers act differently. We don't have to buy the cheapest product. We can make a strong statement with every single buying decision.

We should buy the drugs from those companies that contribute the most to our society. Yes, we will pay more. But there’s nothing wrong with that – just think of our existing behavior regarding alternative energy. In such a society, pharmaceutical companies will continue to invest into R&D but without patenting the results at all. They will contribute all of their results to the public domain instead. As a result we will see an explosion of creativity on a global scale. Nobody will be excluded from the knowledge. And everyone will be able to benefit from the results.

Wouldn't this be fair?

Yes, and I believe it will be reality some day. The major issue is the fundamental paradigm shift that has to be mastered by all the existing stakeholders. My guess is that the public opinion and our own buying behavior will be the driving force for this healthy change.

We still have much work to do at CoreMedia, but it feels good to be on the right way.

And to all those who are thinking about working for CoreMedia: "Talk to us!"
You can find many of us in Facebook (simply type in 'CoreMedia' in the search field), ask questions and find out what's in it.

You're very welcome!

Here is interview with Don Tapscott and Eric Schmidt from Google about pretty much the same topics:

CoreMedia's way to emphazise more on changing the corporate culture than introducing new technology was well received by most if not all of the people I met. However, it seems to be still an exception. But why?

Wolf Lotter bringt die zentrale Herausforderung für unsere Gesellschaft, Unternehmen und uns alle auf Punkt: Seid kreativ und entwickelt Wertschätzung für die Kreativität anderer. Wir werden sie noch dringend brauchen.

Prolog

Die Schöpfung

Finsternis lag über der Abteilung
Forschung und Entwicklung.
Da sprach der Kreative: Es werde Licht.
Und es ward Licht.
Der Kreative sah, dass das Licht gut war.
Dann aber sprach der Controller:
Es ist nicht gut, denn das Licht verbraucht Strom.
Und das Produktportfolio blieb dunkel,
wüst und leer.

Sieben Tage später fand das nächste Meeting statt.

Die Gestörten

Klemens, mein sehr geschätzter Finanzvorstandskollege hat diese Störung übrigens gleich in einen kreativen Impuls umgewandelt: Der obige Prolog hängt nun an der Wand in seinem Büro.

Ich bin schon irgendwie stolz auf ihn.

Jörg, herzlichen Dank für den Hinweis.

The latest book I have read is from Sir Ken Robinson. I bought it rights after his amazing and humorous speech at the IBM PartnerWorld 2007 in St. Louis four weeks ago. Sir Ken Robinson amazed me with his deep analysis and clear message about the shortcomings of our school system and our very limited perception of intelligence. He argues, that conventional schools tend to kill creativity. While most children believe in their creativity, most adults think their creativity is gone. It is essential for our society to change this. To stay competitive in a world of accelerated change and rising complexity we need to be highly creative to create a desirable future for us all. With other words: Our creativity is the greatest gift we have.

I deeply enjoyed reading Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. It opened up my perception of intelligence and creativity by reframing my notion of both. Intelligence comes in multiple flavors and creativity is a great source in all of us. I very much recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a better school system, to parents, and to everyone who wants to enable highly creative environments. Sir Ken Robinson may inspire you as he already did with me. The chances are good.

Having read this book, I decided to foster creativity in everything I do. It feels real good.

Professor Thomas Malone from the MIT thinks not. Actually, he believes that the opposite is true. He makes the compelling case that we create better organizations and a better society if we use highly decentralized structures instead. I strongly believe we will. The great thing is that he also explains why.

Pleasel enjoy his interview about leadership and his own life: The Power of Decentralization: Discovering the New Physics of Organizing. It is from May 2001. However, it has a lot to do with Enterprise 2.0.

Henrik, thanks for the hint. Awesome!

Furthermore, creativity is our only tool to create a desirable future for all of us and all of our children.

But why do most grown-ups lack the amazing creativity of our children?

At TED conference 2006 Sir Ken Robinson made a compelling case to change our education system fundamentally. He says, our existing system undermines creativity, instead of supporting it.

I am pretty confident that you will enjoy his brilliant speech at last years TED conference (Markus, thanks for the hint):

You won't be surprised to hear that Sir Ken Robinson was my personal highlight at IBM PartnerWorld 2007 two weeks ago in St. Louis. Thank you big blue.

Not surprisingly, nurturing creativity in my own company through diversity, open space workshops, Enterprise 2.0 software and our corporate culture is one of my top priorities at CoreMedia to stay competitive. And to be frank, there is always room for improvement but it is really amazing to work in a team where people are able to rediscover their creative power.

Prof. Muhammad Yunus made us think. In a special way he opened our eyes and showed us the shortcomings of our society, the limitations of our perception, and our misleading basic assumption about enterprises.

We tend to believe that enterprises are only made to maximize profits. But is this true? Is maximizing profits really the final goal of an enterprise? Is it a good idea to shape our perception of enterprises like this? Is there nothing else?

After you had the opportunity to listen to Prof. Yunus you might think differently about enterprises. You might even search for Social Business Entrepreneurs in your environment.

As the founder of Grameen Bank, Prof. Yunus uses microcredits to help millions of poor people in Bangladesh to start businesses. With his strong believes in a better society he already helped millions of people to escape poverty.

Dear Mr. Yunus, thank you very much for your wonderful thoughts.

This was my first Trend Day and I really do regret to have missed all the other ones. Congratulations!

Link: sevenload.com

Besonders dankbar bin ich Mark Pohlmann und Martina Pickhardt. Mark hat mich eingeladen, auf der gelungenen next07 zu sprechen, obwohl CoreMedia vorher kaum "im Web 2.0" sichtbar war . Und Tina hat mich als Moderatorin bestens gecoacht und mit viel Geduld ausreden lassen. Merci Euch Beiden! Das war 'ne runde Sache.

I could not agree more. Every time I heard the phrase "I have no time to write a blog" was a clear indicator to me that something was wrong. Over the past two years we invested time and effort at CoreMedia to change this behavioral pattern within the management team and the whole company. We introduced spare time for peer groups to be used on their own account, plus quarterly open space workshops with the whole team. We encouraged people to write blogs and we changed our own behavior.

Well, it takes time to accept this freedom and I am sure that we have still room for improvement at CoreMedia.

But a small group of people seems really unloved in Germany: Entrepreneurs.

Klaus is one of those German entrepreneurs. He is a friend and a former colleague of mine, who first founded his company in Cambridge, UK and recently relocated to Hamburg. (Attention: I had to update the link due to a fault. Klaus founded Sierra Sensors after leaving Akubio.)

I met Klaus on Tuesday and learned something about one of my blind spots: Klaus told me that being an entrepreneur in Germany feels a lot different than in the UK. It was amazingly easy to start his company in the UK. There was only a little bureaucracy, helpful support by the government (even at the weekend!), and – most important – the good feeling to be respected by society.

Klaus does not feel the same since moving his company to Hamburg. He seems to be somewhat frustrated talking about all the jealousy and envy he receives day to day. ‘Entrepreneurs are not welcome in Germany’ is his alarming conclusion.

Well, I love to be an entrepreneur. It is such a great experience to build an enterprise that makes a difference for all the people involved – even in Germany.

It seems that I am so used to Klaus’ experiences that I am hardly aware of them anymore.

However, we have to change this poisoned attitude. I think it is dangerous for our society. It harms our ability as an open society to innovate and create a better life for all.

I vote for ‘Intrapreneurship’ (Thanks Ed for the hint). It looks like a far better model for the future. It works well not just for entrepreneurs.

Everyone who is interested in a healthy corporate culture should have zero tolerance for assholes. Those who have the guts to stand up against certified assholes make the difference.

So if you want to work in a healthy corporate culture, fight for it!

Happy Birthday and all the best for your bright future!

We are celebrating your eleventh birthday today - and that means a lot these days. The Internet was still tiny when Andreas Gawecki, Prof. Dr. Florian Matthes, Prof. Dr. Joachim W. Schmidt, and I founded you. Mobile communication was a niche market in 1996. And imagine this: The world could live without Google those days. Really!

Thanks for being special. And thanks for eleven fantastic years that changed my life. It is great fun being part of you. I adore you for your great personality.

We ain’t seen nothing yet.

All the best

Sören

Well, I recognized a fundamental change at my own company CoreMedia with regard to positive surprises. Since we started to transform to an Enterprise 2.0 my own perception is full of these and it feels absolutely fantastic.

Fortunately, the latest set of surprises at CoreMedia becoming an Enterprise 2.0 were documented by Axel Wienberg, a highly respected colleague of mine. Please enjoy!

I tend to believe that within a well-functioning self-organized environment positive surprises are ubiquitous - especially for the CEO. And this is good, since he or she won't limit the potential of the company by his or her own personal creativity anymore.

This feels so amazing. You will definitely know that you work for the right company if this happens to you.

Kontrollverlust?

Zunächst einmal hat die die Computerwoche vollkommen recht: Für Unternehmen bedeutet der Erfolg der Blogosphäre einen spürbaren Kontrollverlust. Jeder Mensch mit einer eigenen Meinung – oder auch ohne – kann in Minuten einen Blog einrichten und sie für alle nachvollziehbar veröffentlichen. Andere können seine Aussagen in wenigen Minuten aufgreifen, unterstützen, hinterfragen, ablehnen, widerlegen, zerpflücken oder schlicht ignorieren. Die öffentliche Meinung bahnt sich ihren Weg – frei und unkontrolliert. Zukünftig wahrscheinlich noch schneller und intensiver als heute.

Für mich als Unternehmer hat diese Entwicklung einen sehr interessanten, weil weitreichenden Effekt. Man könnte sagen, sie ändert die „Regeln des Spiels“. Die Blogosphäre funktioniert wie eine riesige, extrem schnelle Feedbackschleife. Das Verhalten der Unternehmen wird laufend beobachtet, Abweichungen werden umgehend markiert und Fehlverhalten wird schonungslos aufgedeckt.

Ich bin mittlerweile überzeugt davon, dass Unternehmen durch die Blogosphäre in gewisser Hinsicht zu besseren Unternehmen werden. Unternehmen werden durch die Auswirkungen der Blogosphäre ehrlicher und kundenfreundlicher werden müssen, um zu bestehen – und das unabhängig davon, ob sie selbst bloggen oder nicht.

Unternehmen können natürlich versuchen, gegen diesen Kontrollverlust zu kämpfen. Doch das hat wahrscheinlich denselben Effekt wie schnelles Strampeln im Treibsand.

Hat man sich erstmal an den vermeintlichen Kontrollverlust gewöhnt, kommt man als Unternehmer recht schnell zu der Erkenntnis, dass man zwar keine Kontrolle über den öffentlichen Diskurs hat, aber dennoch Einfluss nehmen kann. Und zwar mit dem gleichen Werkzeug wie alle anderen: einem eigenen Blog. Dort kann man ebenfalls frei und unkontrolliert Themen setzen, Stellung beziehen, Aussagen hinterfragen, Dinge richtig stellen, den Dialog aufnehmen und sich bei Bedarf auch entschuldigen. Und einen Journalisten, der das dann dankenswerter Weise druckt, braucht man dafür nicht mehr.

Mit einem Corporate Blog gewinnt man eine Stimme in der Blogosphäre und kann sich eine eigene Reputation erarbeiten. Die Kontrolle erhält man natürlich nicht zurück. Doch das ist nicht weiter schlimm, denn in einer nicht mechanistischen Welt gilt sowieso: Reputation schlägt Kontrolle.

An dieser Stelle sei auch gesagt, dass ich keinesfalls alle Auswirkungen der Blogosphäre für wünschenswert und gut erachte, sondern einige Aspekte ablehne. Aus der Anonymität heraus andere zu beleidigen, ungerechtfertigt zu beschuldigen oder böswillige Gerüchte über sie in die Welt zu setzen ist eine Plage. Hoffen wir, dass es zukünftig zunehmend von Bloggern erwartet wird, dass sie ebenfalls zu ihren Aussagen stehen und sich als Individuum zu erkennen geben. Erst dann ist ein fairer Dialog möglich.

Engagement Einzelner?

Auch die Feststellung der Computerwoche, dass die Corporate Blogs in der Regel noch am Engagement Einzelner oder Weniger hängt, ist aus meiner eigenen Erfahrung nicht von der Hand zu weisen. Noch ist das vielfach so, auch bei CoreMedia.

Doch das wird nicht so bleiben. Gegenwärtig sammeln eine Reihe meiner Kollegen im Intranet erste Erfahrung beim Bloggen. Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis sie auch „nach draußen“ bloggen und der Corporate Blog vom Engagement der gesamten Mannschaft getragen wird. Ich freue mich schon sehr auf die ersten Postings von Kollegen auf superdistribution.net.

Agenturen als Ghostwriter?

Von der Betreuung von Corporate Blogs durch Agenturen halte ich überhaupt nichts. Das wird aus meiner Sicht kläglich scheitern. Wer Authentizität aufgibt, entwertet seine Stimme vollends. Dann sollte man lieber nicht bloggen.

Geringe Resonanz?

Das ist richtig, doch das wird sich ändern. Auf den ersten Websites der Unternehmen in der Mitte der 90er Jahre war ebenfalls kaum Traffic zu finden. Heute ist ein Unternehmen ohne eigene Website kaum vorstellbar. Es macht sogar einen recht zwielichtigen Eindruck. Ich überlege mir zweimal, ob ich dort zurück rufe.

Mein Fazit

Für mich und das Unternehmen, das ich vertrete, ist Corporate Blogging und der dadurch eingeleitete gesellschaftliche Wandel eine fantastische Chance. Je enger wir mit unseren Kunden, Partner, Aktionären und der Öffentlichkeit im Dialog sind, desto kundenorientierter werden wir arbeiten. Neben persönlichen Gesprächen sind Blogs dafür bestens geeignet. Ich bin überzeugt, dass wir auf diese Weise viel schneller lernen werden als bisher. Langfristig werden wir nur mit der Qualität unserer Arbeit und unserer individuellen Unternehmenskultur überzeugen können.

In wenigen Jahren werden aus meiner Sicht alle namhaften Unternehmen einen Corporate Blog nutzen, um mit Aktionären, Kunden, Partner und der Öffentlichkeit zu kommunizieren. So kämpft Jonathan Schwarz von Sun bereits dafür, auch seine Adhoc-Pflichtmitteilungen zukünftig fair und transparent über seinen Blog zu veröffentlichen. Es wird so normal sein, wie eine eigene Unternehmenswebsite. Vermutlich wird die Grenze zwischen Website und Corporate Blog dabei sehr fließend sein.

Die Unternehmenskulturen werden sich in der Tat ändern müssen, um mit den gesellschaftlichen Wandel mithalten zu können. Wir werden erleben, wie das organische Paradigma das mechanistische (kontrollorientierte) verdrängt. Das bleibt sicher nicht ohne Folgen. Ich bin schon sehr gespannt.

Und darauf wette ich, bzw. habe ich schon gewettet: Liebe Tina, unsere Wette gilt: In 9,5 Jahren zählen wir die Blogs der Top 100 Unternehmen in Deutschland und schauen, ob ein Großteil davon einen Corporate Blog betreibt. Ich freue mich schon auf den Preis: das „neueste Gerät von Apple“ im Oktober 2016 :-)

Last Wednesday was such a day to remember - Ben Verwaayen gave the Keynote Speech at the International CeBIT Summit: “Embracing Change – The Untapped Potential of Technology”. Here are some of the insights that resonate most with me:

Choices in a globalized business environment
If you are an entrepreneur, the choice is yours about going global. You can be global at once if you want to, since it is easier than ever to work with people all over the globe, and start a global business. Through the Internet we have more and more options to employ workforces or to buy components anywhere in the world.

The next big thing: “Your time” vs. “our time”
Customers will be in the driver’s seat in the future. They will decide on the right time to access a service. It’s their choice, not ours anymore.

“Open” vs. “locked in”
Services have to be open to enable others to build on top of them and add value. If you try to lock users in you will fail sooner or later. (In a way, Apple looks like an exception to this rule. Well, I tend to believe that Apple knows very well, when and how to open up parts of their closed systems to strengthen their competitive position.)

Demand for “Integrity of an organization”
While we see more and more loosely coupled social groups on the Internet – e.g. Wikipedia with all of their contributors – enterprises have still a very distinct role: they are able to keep the privacy of sensitive information, and they are able to agree and deliver against service level agreements.

Leadership
Every CEO and CIO listening to his speech (or reading blogs) will take a lot of different aspects with him or her. Leadership means to choose. It is the ability to say “No”. Ben made perfectly clear what he meant with this: “Be authentic in your choices and have the guts to follow your instincts.”

Change Management
With regard to successful change management Ben pointed out three aspects: people, tone and risk taking. First, you need the right people at the right places. They have to have personality and meet highest ethical standards. Secondly, the tone of communication matters a lot. Does your style of communication appreciate other opinions, or not? Thirdly, are you and your team willing to take risks?

“Please the boss” vs. “please the customer”
Ben shared with us a great story about a weakness of BT Group as an organization. I guess this weakness is present in every other company as well. People want to please their bosses. Therefore, every idea and proposal is shaped in such a way, that the next level in the hierarchy should accept it. With every other level in the hierarchy things get worse. Therefore, a lot of innovative ideas will be crippled when they meet the eyes of the CEO.

Pleasing your CEO might sound like a good idea, but it’s not. If everyone wants to please the CEO the whole organization is just as smart as one person. “The limitation of your own brain limits the thinking of the whole organization.” You won’t get any unfiltered feedback.

As a leader you have to change this by encouraging people to think freely and have their own opinion. You have to be able to endorse things you do not understand. It is “the art of letting go”.

Harvesting the collective intelligence
BT Group has set up an internal video platform like “YouTube” where everyone can broadcast his/her ideas and get feedback from all over the world. Those ideas that resonate well with other have a good chance to be implemented regardless whether Ben might be a user.

The best input for CEOs
The best input you can get as a CEO is customer feedback. Customers that come to you when things go wrong will give you the deepest insights and an unfiltered view. Therefore, Ben has opened up his e-mail account to every one of BT’s customers.

Be unreasonable
As a CEO you have to stay totally unreasonable. It is a bad sign when you think everything is fine. You always need to have a bit of distance from your own company.

“Stars” vs. “movie directors”
Bosses should not be stars. They should be movie directors that help the stars to shine bright. The real stars are the people in front of the customer.

How to setup a global enterprise?
Distributed intelligence will outperform the client-server approach by far.

Dear Ben,
It has been a great pleasure to listen to your talk. Thank you very much for sharing your insights so openly with us. I am deeply impressed by your leadership and the corporate culture at BT Group. Therefore, I made a choice right after your speech: I want to win you and the BT Group as a customer and partner for CoreMedia. I share your vision and I am absolutely sure that BT’s and CoreMedia’s corporate culture will be a perfect fit.

Best regards,

Sören

Well, if yes, you certainly know the biggest roadblock for great new ideas: denial.

In a fast changing world like ours, denial is still the rule and curiosity the exception.

The good news is: Peter Sondergaard from Gartner solved this problem for us. So you don't have to be frustrated anymore.

Recently, Peter gave a great speech at the International CeBIT Summit about the "Consumerization of IT". At the end Peter gave everyone in the room some good advice with regard to Web 2.0 and other trends:

1. Get out of denial.
2. Don’t try to stop this.
3. […]
4. Keep an open mind.
5. You ain’t seen nothing yet. (highlights by me)

Peter, thanks for this smart weapon against denial. I tried it yesterday in different situations and it really worked well. Most people opened up their minds and changed their perspective within minutes.

Peter pointed out that many consumer technologies were rejected by enterprises in the first place: “Who needs an Apple Macintosh or a PC? We have terminals. Who needs a mouse? We have a keyboard. The Internet is only for nerds. Mobile phones are only for top management. WiFi is unsafe.” As a result, enterprises failed to deliver innovative services and produced a lot of frustration for their users.

And this is happening again and again: “I don’t have time to read blogs. Blogging is for teens. Second Life is only for people without a desirable first life.”

Peter made the point that this behavior is dangerous for enterprises since “innovation happens at the edge”. Innovations will flourish somewhere on the Internet, in communities, through mashups and driven by more and more powerful consumer electronics.

In sharp contrast, most IT departments still spend most of their budgets for harmonization of their IT stack, and for complex long-term projects to update their ERP system or to create something unique.

Peter also coined the phrase “Digital Immigrants” for most of the people in the room. Digital Immigrants have a 5 years plan, need manuals to understand technology, have a more directive approach to leadership, and use classical communication patterns. They grew up before the Internet emerged as the universal medium.

“Digital Natives” are very different. They do not need manuals to understand technology. I wonder if Digital Natives perceive technology as “technology” at all. They do multi-tasking and parallel processing, use multiple multimedia sources, interact, process pictures, sounds, videos and then text, like random access, learn and act just-in-time, expect instant gratification and instant reward, and practice participative leadership.

Digital Natives like to learn and to do what is relevant, instantly useful, and fun. They will be the workforce of the future.

Digital Natives want services instead of products. Therefore, Peter concluded:“Software is dead.” Software as a service is the way to go.

And enterprises should allow Digital Natives to buy their own devices to do their work. Give them the money and let them decide. As a consequence “IT departments have to support internal as external.” Every access to company information and services might be hostile.

Peter, thanks for your straight talk. It made a difference.

Eleven years ago I was a little nervous to have my first meeting with dpa, Germany's leading press agency. For me, dpa was an icon and still is. It is the most trusted source for German news in the world. Fortunately, the meeting went perfectly well. And with hindsight, I must say it was one of the most important meetings in CoreMedia's history.

Why is that? Well, CoreMedia was founded only a few weeks later and dpa became our very first customer. Being a spin-off of the computer science department of Hamburg University, the CoreMedia team had plenty of skills in designing and implementing superior software systems. However, we were still looking for a great problem to solve. Dpa told us about such a hairy beast: the future of multi-channel publishing. However, until we started to work with dpa, we had no clue about the media business at all.

At that time dpa was already in the heart of Germany's media for nearly fifty years. They understood perfectly the art and science of real-time news production and multi-channel delivery. And they made us think of information as a very valuable asset. We learned how to structure information to unleash its potential, how to manage it to process it in real-time, how to create value with content through distributed value chains and how to deliver it fast and reliably to every single customer.

Since then, CoreMedia's focus has been the development of software for real-time multi-channel content infrastructures. And the core idea of our software solutions is still the concept of Content being a very valuable asset as we have learned it from dpa eleven years ago. In other words: dpa has contributed a lot to CoreMedia's core idea by shaping CoreMedia's basic assumptions.

Last week I had the great pleasure to meet the team at dpa. Some of them are friends for more than a decade now. Christoph, Meinolf, Hubertus, Justus, Renate, Gerd and Kalle at dpa-info.com, a subsidiary of dpa, celebrated the tenth anniversary of our mutual project at Saliba, a very nice restaurant in Hamburg. It was great fun to meet them all, to tell war stories about the past and to think about the future. A great evening to remember. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Renate.

I am grateful for dpa's effect on CoreMedia. Now, it is time to reshape our basic assumptions. Let's do it together!

This video about multi-touch comes with some explanations:

[via el ton]

There is something to discover here: The mouse was great to point and click in a two-dimensional world. However, in a three-dimensional environment its usability is pretty limited. Multi-touch seams to overcome these limitations. Just take another look at the demonstrations. It looks like it was especially made for interactions with three-dimensional environments. This might be the secret behind the intuitive nature of multi-touch.

Now, think of the amazing growth rate of 3D environments like SecondLife. Again, it seems to be the three-dimensional nature of this new medium that makes it such an intuitive environment for us.

Putting one and one together: The concepts behind Multi-touch and SecondLife look like core building blocks for the next generation Internet - definitely a three-dimensional Internet.

Heute hatte ich erstmals die Ehre, den Ausschuß für E-Business bei CoreMedia zu begrüßen. Trotz (oder wegen?) enger Bestuhlung wurde es eine anregende Sitzung. Das Thema hat vermutlich auch dazu beigetragen. "Web 2.0 - Revolution der Internetära oder nur ein neues Buzzword?" lautete der Titel meines 20-minütigen Vortrages (Download PDF).

Anschließend haben wir die Sitzung noch entspannt beim "Chill out" mit Astra und Chips nachbereitet. Herzlichen Dank an alle Beteiligten. Jederzeit gern wieder!

Please enjoy! You might rethink yourself.

Dieser Tisch begleitet mich übrigens schon seit der Gründung der CoreMedia, seit über zehn Jahren also. Nicht einen Kratzer hat er. Was beweist, dass die Möbel von USM Haller tatsächlich etwas für die halbe Ewigkeit sind.

Das Stöckchen geht an Mark, Lars, Martina (damit Du ein Thema für Deinen dritten Eintrag hast) und Christian.

CoreMedia believes in open standards and is proud to be an active member of OMA for several years now. It is a perfect fit since interoperability through open standards is exactly what the OMA is all about.

But can open standards win in an ever changing future? And if so, where and how will they do?

Even though open standards are highly important, they are hard to deploy. And this might be an even more challenging task in the future. It takes quite some time to define, implement and deploy a global standard. And in a highly innovative environment you may not always have the time to do so. Instead people start implementing proprietary solutions before the standardization body is even ready to start. These are, by nature, competing and typically tend to delay the growth of whole marketplaces. Given the increased dynamics of today’s world standardization will be more difficult than ever. .

On the other hand, interoperability is key in an interconnected and converging world. This is a simple truth, but a very important one. Not surprisingly, open standards play a crucial part in the digital age. Just think of the Internet Protocol, better known as “IP”. IPv4 was defined in 1981 - staggering 25 years ago - and it is by far the most commonly used protocol on the Internet. Another good example is the Signaling System #7 also known as “SS7”. SS7 has been defined as a standard in 1981 as well and is still used to set up the vast majority of the world's telephone calls.

Well, there is a big difference between IP and SS7. While IP tends to be the poster child of the converging world, the future of SS7 looks a lot less shiny. All-IP networks will dominate the future with attractive new services like Voice-over-IP, and IPTV. SS7 may then be replaced by new lightweight protocols like SIP. I guess some standards are more sustainable than others when it comes to a fight.

Another strong competitor for open standards comes from the Internet space: Fueled by attractive services with some kind of network effects, proprietary “walled garden” solutions like iTunes or Blackberry push e-mail have also developed quite some momentum in the first place. Still, with these success stories in mind, I tend to believe that open standards will prevail. The potential benefits of open standards are simply superior to those of walled gardens.

Nevertheless, the weak spots of open standards have been increasing complexity, limited usability, poor time-to-market, and – recently – unresolved patent issues fueled by weaknesses of the existing patent law. Thus, we need to address these weaknesses as early and effective as possible in order to truly unfold the full potential of open standards.

9 reasons why:

1. Richard Scase’s great talk about the future shape of our global society and the rise of China and India. He made me think.
2. Dr. Curtis R. Carlson’s insights regarding innovations – and how to manage them. I was inspired by his ideas and instinctively decided to introduce “Champions” and “Waterhole Meetings” at CoreMedia as well.
3. Jaron Lanier’s controversial talk about the potential evil of the digital society. He has changed our future already by making the whole blogosphere think about the threat of Digital Maoism.
4. Tim O’Reilly’s personal perspective on Web 2.0. It is always good to know the source.
5. The digital art of Zachary Lieberman. Really nice!
6. A lot of spare time to meet and greet with a lot of interesting people.
7. The beautiful city of Dresden. It was sunny and warm.
8. The charming conference organization. Thanks for the lovely reception at the airport.
9. And most fascinating, the unexpected opportunity to talk to Jaron Lanier for hours when we met the day before at the Sarasani Tracadero Show.
   Great thanks to Peter Klingenburg and Dr. Klaus Radermacher from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions for hosting such a great event.

I would like to add to that though, that in my opinion two aspects are crucial if it comes to interoperability:

1. Ensure IOP among implementations of open standards like OMA DRM
2. Find ways to make different DRM schemes to work among each other - including the trust model

When it comes to the first, the OMA selected Coremedia DRM as the reference implementation some months ago. About 30 companies already rely on CoreMedia for DRM interoperability including the top handset providers, leading operators and many componment manufacturers

The second aspect is more complicated to achieve. From a technical point of view, OMA DRM allows the import and export of content to and from other DRM schemes.How to combine different trust models is much longer discussion I will not go into now... that said, several baby step activities are happening behind closed doors...

So, how many baby steps sum up to a big bang?

Mit Wehmut erinnere ich mich an frühere Tage, an den Scharfsinn, Witz und Humor in jeder einzelnen Anzeige. Sixt-Werbung an den deutschen Flughäfen war für Vielflieger einst der überzeugendste Beweis, dass intelligenter Content eine Marke nach oben bringen kann. Sixt hatte stets die beste Werbung; sie war frecher, spritziger und witziger als die Werbung der Konkurrenz. Sie war einfach intelligent. Wir mochten sie. Und wir haben es Ihnen gedankt, indem wir in langen Schlangen vor Ihren Sixt-Terminals standen und die Konkurrenz links liegen ließen.

Die Sixt-Werbung war herrlich politisch und nah dran an den Themen unserer Zeit: Man erinnere sich an die Fönfrisur unserer Bundeskanzlerin, den flexiblen Fuhrpark für das „fluktuierende“ Schröder-Kabinett oder die Auswirkungen der Rechtschreibreform.

Doch der intelligente Witz früherer Tage ist schlicht und einfach verschwunden. In jüngster Vergangenheit ist er langweiligen Anspielungen auf erschreckend niedrigem Niveau gewichen. Es tut mir mittlerweile richtig weh, die Texte auf den neuesten Sixt-Anzeigen zu lesen. Ihnen nicht auch?

In den neuen dreidimensional gestalteten Anzeigen ist meist von einer Frau und einem Mann die Rede, die sich anschließend auf bedauernswerte Art und Weise in einer platten Anspielung wiederfinden. „Wo ist denn da der gute alte Sixt-Humor?“, wundert man sich und hofft irritiert auf eine intelligente Auflösung. Kognitive Dissonanzen sind die unangenehme Folge. Darf das sein? Könnte das vielleicht sogar Absicht sein? Teil einer großen Kampagne, deren überraschende Auflösung noch folgt?

Lieber Erich Sixt, bitte erlösen Sie uns. Bitte lösen Sie das Rätsel auf und unterhalten Sie uns wieder mit der gewohnt intelligenten Sixt-Werbung früherer Tage. Wir Vielflieger werden es Ihnen sicher nicht vergessen.

More and more content becomes available for mobile phone users. But how can all this be found? Are searches on Google or shopping lists on Amazon really engaging? Technology changes fast, social behaviour takes its time.
By looking back to social behaviour - how did people discover content a decade ago? In two engaging ways:

• either by spontaneous buy by discovering the offering in record stores (maybe triggered by radio or MTV before)
• or by recommendation: a friend tells you about his favourites - and you want them too.

So how can content technology support this social behaviour? I believe strongly in mobile TV and - yes - superdistribution will play a major role in discovery of mobile content. And in both cases DRM interoperability is mandatory to ensure that different content types can be consumed across a multitude of devices in a trusted environment.

Während auf den großflächigen Bannern des Veranstalters noch vollmundig von der „Revolution of 3G“ geschwärmt wird, sprechen die Branchenvertreter mittlerweile lieber etwas dezenter von einer „Evolution“. Das lehre die Lebenserfahrung.

Am meisten überzeugt hat mich diesbezüglich René Obermann. Der Vorstandsvorsitzende von T-Mobile International hat sich nicht nur zu vergangenen Versäumnissen der Mobilfunkanbieter bei der Vermarktung der eigenen Produkte bekannt, sondern ruft gleichzeitig zu einem radikalen Perspektivwechsel seitens der Anbieter auf. Der weit verbreitete Abwehrreflex, die eigenen Umsatzbringer durch „walled gardens“ zu schützen, sei irreführend. Neue Dienste wie Mobile E-Mail oder Instant Messaging seien im Kern gerade nicht als Gefahren für die eigenen SMS-Umsätze anzusehen, sondern als starke Treiber fürs gesamte eigene Mobilfunkgeschäft. Die enge Vernetzung der Dienste ergebe Sinn, denn Kommunikation schaffe Kommunikation. So führe jede sechste SMS zu einem Anruf; jede elfte Mail und jede 21ste Instant Message ebenso.

Ergo: Evolution zu verhindern, ist ein aussichtsloses Unterfangen. Unternehmen wir lieber etwas und nutzen die Chancen im Sinne unserer Kunden. Sonst machen es andere Mitspieler, möchte man noch hinzufügen. „Respekt!“, denke ich bei mir für diesen Mut zum revolutionären Umdenken. Und ich bin in der Tat gespannt auf die konkreten Auswirkungen dieser Entscheidung.

Eine Auswirkung konnte ich derweil schon beobachten: Die Marke T-Mobile wirkte schon unmittelbar nach dem Panel ein Stück sympathischer und innovativer auf mich.

Ins gleiche Horn wie Herr Obermann stieß übrigens auch der Vertreter von Skype. Ihm fiel dieser Schritt allerdings deutlich leichter, steht zu vermuten. So rief er auch gleich alle MNO-Vertreter auf, mit Skype zu kooperieren statt ihre Kunden vor Skype abzuschirmen. Seine Andeutungen ließen übrigens die Deutung zu, dass T-Mobile, E-Plus und Hutchison 3 ihn sogar bereits erhört haben.

Insgesamt hat das Mobile Summit 2006 mich enttäuscht. Von Gipfeltreffen konnte dieses Jahr kaum die Rede sein. Ganz im Gegenteil übrigens zum letzten Jahr und den gerade vergangenen Medientagen München. Dort konnte man nämlich mehr und mehr Vertreter der Mobilfunk- und Festnetzanbieter treffen.

Und was lernen wir daraus? Konvergenz kennt tatsächlich nicht nur Gewinner.

Und oft hört man in Bezug auf Web 2.0 offen auf den Panels oder im Vorbeigehen an den Tischen: "Alles schon mal da gewesen. Alles nichts Neues."

Witzig, denke ich mir. Als die Münchner Medientage das letzte Mal tagten, war YouTube allenfalls eine Idee, jedenfalls kein Unternehmen und schon gar kein Geschäft. 12 Monate später wurde YouTube mit einer schnöden Website - rein technisch meine ich natürlich - und über 50 Millionen Nutzern für über US-$1,6 Milliarden an Google verkauft. Klingt teuer für Google, könnte man denken. Dr. Martin Fabel von AT Kearney weiß es besser. In Wirklichkeit habe Google auf Schlag US-$ 2,5 Milliarden "plus" gemacht, da Google nur die Aktien bezahlt habe und Googles Börsenbewertung im selben Moment um ca. US-$ 4 Milliarden gestiegen sei. Ein schönes Geschäft denkt der Aktionär und freut sich auf mehr.

Sollte uns das zu denken geben? Ja, sagen viele: Google und der Aktienmarkt spinnen. Ja, sagt der Rest: Wir erleben gerade eine "Revolution". Einige sprechen auch von dem schönen Begriff "Paradigmenwechsel". Ich übrigens auch - und das gleich mehrfach.

Die Medien sind in Bewegung. Ich bin schon gespannt auf die Medientage 2007. Welche Megadeals, Verrücktheiten und Vorahnungen werden uns dann beschäftigen? Neue Runde neues Glück.

Dann hoffentlich auch mit größeren Räumen und mit freiem WLAN.

Indeed, this year I will be given the signal honor of being allowed to introduce the panel discussion “Web 2.0 – how is the Internet changing?” following the keynote of Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO of AOL. And I’ll do this by challenging some basic assumptions, since I don’t think that this is the question that we should be asking. For the foundations of the Internet, its concepts, possibilities, and standards, are not really being changed by Web 2.0: all of these had already been invented by 1990.

If Web 2.0 means change, then it’s not a technical change, but first and foremost a social one.

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan taught us that “the medium is the message”. If I’ve understood him correctly, this means that the true significance of a medium (its message) lies in its effect on society – an effect that is hard to overestimate. The printing press, argues McLuhan, did not simply enable mass distribution of a great diversity of texts and bring about the birth of the paper industry: at the same time it fundamentally shaped the way we think today. Accordingly, the ability to think through chains of effects and evidence results from the serial structure evidenced by books. Shaped in this way, we were effectively unable to imagine anything else – until the mass distribution of hypertexts became reality.

The Internet is thus another one of McLuhan’s powerful mediums: it is changing the way we think. And this is one of the senses in which Web 2.0 can be understood: a change from a paradigm of planned hierarchies to one of dynamic self-organization. Put bluntly: Wikipedia beats Brockhaus.

I’m convinced that this paradigm shift will have serious consequences. It will fundamentally change us all: our private lives, our jobs, how we do business – and s