December 4th, 2006
Emergence of the P2P Economy
At the end of the year, many people will try to predict the next big thing. We, at the ebTDesign Forum, are going to alert our readers to the quiet revolution called the P2P Economy. This economic restructuring will be based on three core principles: individuals doing business with their peers will be the driving force of economies (i.e., B2B and B2C relationships will morph into P2P relationships); companies that try to capture their customers and treat them like property will under perform; large multinationals will matter less and less to the health of national economies.
In this new worldview, micro-businesses composed of skilled workers will become the dominate form of corporate structure. These small p2p companies will create social networks to deliver the same scale of services as the multinationals do today. Each participant in these business federations will own their own tools and network bandwidth. Signs of the emerging P2P Economy can be seen in the rise of the blogosphere and the marketing-free zones that are starting to pop up on the Internet. Members of these online communities are starting to erect marketing firewalls to defend themselves against sales messages from companies that don’t fully participate as peers.
The IT Investment Architect®
Concepts: blogosphere, General, micro-businesses, P2P Economy