"The old business models served the markets with a mindset of "capture and contain" rather than "attract and give". In the old business models the predominant influence was from sales and marketing divisions because they had or created the relationships.
If the top sales and marketing people left one firm for another the relationships typically followed. The old system tried to contain relationships by putting "non-compete" agreements on people and heavy handed legal agreements with customers and suppliers, people. You can institutionalize processes but the choice about relations has always been and will continue to be free.
Are Old Businesses Models Worn Out?
The internet has created massive reach for people, for businesses, for markets and for conversations. This reach has fueled advertisers vying for our attention and business models that rely on advertising money as the primary fuel for "internet capitalist".
Internet capitalist is a term we use to describe those that use the internet as an economic and social system. A "system" in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned, are operated for profit and non-profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. A market economy facilitated by "connected relationship" aimed at a common goal.
Given this definition one must ask how will this market economy grow beyond a simplistic revenue model of advertising? While more and more "markets" are shifting to the social web the mindsets have yet to shift away from a reliance on advertising. Even with the user data showing less click throughs, more aggravation and a reduction in effectiveness, advertisers spend billions annually trying to get our attention and our money.
Ryan Janssen comments on a conversation with Doc Searls "As he points out, and what no one is really talking about is that the people-you and me-hate advertising. Not only is it an artificial and unwelcome intrusion into our personal conversations, it is hugely inefficient and ineffective. Vendors spamming every corner of the internet with their best guesses as to what they might be able to sell us isn't a fair or rational conversation at all-and we're learning to ignore it.
There is a deeper point to be made here though: how can we, the technorati, who are responsible for instantiating societal values through technology, continue to blithely gorge on the excesses that internet advertising bring us when we know full-well that the model isn't sustainable and more importantly, that we're building a machine reliant on wasting what we now know to be one of the most precious and most human resources-our attention?"
Do Those Who Forget the Past Condemned to Repeat It?
Much of the Dot Com Boom and Bust was the result of hyped up evaluations based on false assumptions of revenue that were supposed to follow "hits". Hits are indicators of traffic, not traction. Now hits are in the form of conversations, billions daily, afforded by the "free".
Traction is a term used to describe progressive movement forward or backwards depending on ones aim. If we, the people, buy into the hype of the day rather than the defined potential of the future progress will be left to the few and it appears that most BIG players of today are still repeating the past.
Advertising models represent the mindsets of the past. Shall we repeat it or leverage our collective creativity to support a new and better model for the future?
To see the end in mind we have to take our conversations, and our attention, out of the fray and to the fringes. The conversations will need to be united and supported by the relationships, one to one to millions. All of this starts with a new mindset that creates a new "system" and ends with new economic gains.
Traction will move forward when we break down the barriers of productivity (silos) and free the conversations so they can be coordinated, focused and pointed at new markets that create new economic gains for those willing and wanting. New markets are created by you and me, by they and them that see things as they should be not as they are and build the system aimed at "should be" and more. The more is attract and give rather than capture and contain.
More will require cooperation and coordination which can only happen once the relationships are formed. After all, we are talking about The Relationship Economy.
What say you?