Randall Rothenberg, senior director of intellectual capital at Booz Allen Hamilton published a rather astounding piece in the LA Times today. It's astounding in that it so succinctly sums up much of what I have beleived for some time, while simultaneously asking some really hard questions, to which the answers are unknown. While these are ideas I've knocked around with some of my friends in recent years, I've rarely seen them begun to be asked in mainstream publications.

The crux of his opinion is expressed simply: "Whether by kings or capitalists, economic development since the dawn of homo economicus has depended on mobilizing resources on an increasingly mass scale, with all others (entrepreneurs and small businesses in particular) denied access. In scarcity and limits lay profits. The Web, the ultimate tool with unlimited access, has overturned such economics."

He completes the article by pointing out where this is logically going: "If economists were to turn this into an equation, it might be P2 + AT = C2. Translation: Power to the people + access to tools = the consumer is in control." Then asks the key question: "But can giant, resource-intensive businesses adapt to this radically decentralized economic principle? Not easily. As Lafley put it: 'We need to learn how to let go.' Or, in '60s terminology, let it all hang out, go with the flow, turn off your mind, relax and float downstream — just about the hardest thing for any CEO to do."

There is another truth buried in his discussion and arguments. That truth is the one that is less comfortable for many to face. The truth is that in a world where individual creativity -- not labor, capital or government -- is the driving factor behind wealth, what happens to the great majority of people who are not particularly creative? The late-capitalist "deal" was one of large blocks of resources -- labor, capital, government -- sharing large pools of resources. The difference between governmental systems was largely in how they split up the rewards and how well the system as a whole worked. The new state of affairs breaks up that deal and calls into question what a YouTube society looks like. Saying, as he does, that YouTube and its ilk are as likely to subvert business as to support its reinvention is just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion. It's not just the business of the future, but the world of the future that is in question.

I disagree with Rothenberg's statement that the YouTube World is a victory of the radical left. Certainly, it evokes a lot of the ideas expressed by those who in the past described themselves as leftist (but were more accurately anarchist) just as it evokes many ideas expressed by liberterians (who share little with what is commonly refered to as the "radical right").

What's interesting here is that the change is not about re-dividing the pie, which is mostly what you hear politicians and other pundits talking about, but rather it's about changing the recipie completely. That's something that's got to be uncomfortable to all the cooks in the kitchen, regardless of what school of cooking they came from.

I'll have a lot more to say about the implications of this in the days ahead.

-btc