Peer to Peer everything?

Let's start at the beginning and connect the dots from there. Since 1969 or so the Internet has been slowly, inexorably connecting machines together via various forms of wire. At some point around 1993 it reached a kind of critical mass. It became known outside of itself and entered popular culture to a greater degree. It then went exponential because that's what happens when a good, usuable thing becomes known generally. It has subsequently allowed people with the tiniest, strangest, even weirdest of interests to come together into a much larger global group and share stuff. Mostly for legal purposes but sometimes not. It has for instance allowed Al Qaeda to connect and manage disparate resources in a way never before possible - judge that group as you will, it is certainly a model of leadership and management worth studying. It has also allowed porn to prosper, broaden and deepen to a degree unimaginable in a print-only world. And it has enabled Skype and eBay to get up and running. It also lets me work from home more easily, saving me some dosh and reducing my carbon footprint a bit.

So what's next? Well convergence and change is obvious enough. The Post Office has lost some of its business to email and Web-based 'brochure' distribution and has to diversify. The Telcos are losing their traditional revenue streams as VoiP encroaches. The media are finding more people attracted away from regular television and print, many traditional clubs and societies are finding membership dwindling as alternative loosely bound groups grow quickly and cheaply around a website forum. There are adjustments being made everywhere.

I'd look to Skype, the original Napster, Amazon, eBay, Google and PayPal as examples of what can be done and then think laterally. Adapt one online concept into another space and see what happens. You could fairly easily open up to global online competition all sorts of trading exchanges and financial institutions. You'd want to see checks and balances, some way to provide a degree of surety, but all sorts of investments and insurances could be made peer to peer or in a new marketplace outside of the old bricks and mortar establishments. Check out 'Peer-to-peer money' by CNET's Rafe Needleman for a few examples of what I mean. Any big corporates doing their futures analysis had better be factoring this in as a threat. When you are doing your Michael Porter-style strategy analysis and discussing barriers to entry, don't lock yourself into last century thinking. Your barriers may be lower than you think.