What’s Outside The Bubble?

Another approach to evaluating the oft held opinion that Web 2.0 represents a bubble; let’s take a look at what’s outside.

Azeem Azhar looks at historical trends in business and industry, to trace what’s been happening. From the early days of the industrial revolution, business organization has been evolving; early partnerships giving way to joint stock companies, culminating in the vertically integrated industrial organizations like the automotive industry, or the horizontal conglomerates with fingers in all pies.

Part of this was driven by the lack of independent resources; as technology emerged, the slow rate at which it was disseminated out was driven partly by the “control and command” need; but also by the fact that there weren’t enough alternative options who could independently drive development. Even IT and the Web, which we like to think of as being far more disaggregated, started off under the aegis of IBM and the Defense Department’s Arpanet.

One of the outcomes of sustained development over the last century, has been the leveling of the resource field; to the point where the ubiquity of resources makes it possible for multiple alternate options. Costs of transacting with other organizations have diminished, not only because of ubiquitous communication but also the fact that inherent competition drives efficiency all through the value chain.

Azeem quotes the tendency to disaggregation in many areas of industry, not just the Web, to postulate that the perception of the Web 2.0 bubble ignores the reality that the same kind of shift holds true across a wide range of activities.

And that we’re witnessing a fundamental shift in organization dynamics; from the top-down, control driven structure of the past, to the fluid, self-organizing, need and coordination driven structure that so permeates Web 2.0.