Don Tapscott is the principle at New Paradigm. He’s delighted to be there … seriously … because the topic of this conference is right at the heart of Don’s research.

Four key drivers of change:
1. Web 2.0 … it’s changing the deep structure of the organization. Web 2.0 is a big change … the old web was based on HTML (for presentation), where the new one was based on XML (for computation).
– The Web is accessed through multiple devices … “the thing”.
– Web services
– True multimedia
– Geo-spatial
– Broadband mobility

2. The Net Generation … not afraid of technology … to them it’s like air. They are digital natives. Kids are authorities on important things.
– They are taking time away from TV to do things online
– Don moderated a panel last year with young people … high usage of Skype Video, IM and FaceBook

3. The Social Revolution … collaborative communities are killing traditional media plays, eg, MySpace vs. MTV. Content vs. content collaboration … the later is winning.
– Self-organization is able to happen very quickly. This is a powerful new force for setting us up for a new move in the enterprise.

4. The Economic Revolution … a British economist has studied great innovations throughout history. They always take the same path … they start with experimentation, get growth, get a bubble, the bubble bursts, and then you move into a long period of long-term deployment.

See Don’s interview with Eric from Google.

Collaboration is changing the architecture of the organization.

Why does the firm exist? Why isn’t everyone an independent contractor? The answer is … transaction costs. 70 years ago … this was the answer … and it was really a cost of collaboration and coordination. So we constructed big organizations. In the last 70 years, we’ve gone from industrial age corporations, to extended enterprise, to business webs, to now the final stage … mass collaboration (high self-organization, where knowledge is the critical resource). Peers are outside of the organization.

What can we create this way? Encyclopedias (Wikipedia) … etc.

Four critical principles / result of the mass collaboration:
– peering
– being open
– sharing … sharing IP within the business web, or putting things in the commons. Not about being socialist, about killing the competition.
– acting global …

Examples: New Business Models
GoldCorp … a mining company, 50 years old. Geologists couldn’t tell him where the gold was. The CEO was ready to shut down the company. Heard about Linux … and embraced the principles. Took his geological data, published it on the Internet, and held a contest on the Internet called the “GoldCorp Challenge”. Offered $500K for those who could find the gold. Found $3.4 billion of gold. Value jumped from $90 million to $10 billion.

… 7 New Business Models
1. Peer pioneers … eg, Spike Source, Marketocracy.com, Zopa.com (peer lending)
2. Ideagoras … open markets for uniquely qualified minds. Eg, TopCoder
3. Prosumers … how do you turn your top customers into producers. Eg, Second Life, the music industry does this very, very badly. Don says that the final chapter of the book is a wiki.
4. The Sharing of Science …
5. Open Platforms … The Amazon cloud has 200,000 developers that are creating applications for Amazon. Eg, Pikspot
6. The Global Plant Floor … Boeing, it’s a peer produced airplane. Co-design of airplane from scratch to delivery. The Chinese motorcycle industry collaborates across hundreds of firms.
7. The Wiki Workplace … the use of wikis, blogs, social networks, RSS … within corporations. Eg, SuiteTwo.

Conclusion
Paradigm shifts involve dislocation, conflict, confusion, and uncertainty.
– They are always received with coolness, even mockery and hostility
– Those with vested interests fight the change
– It takes leadership.