The Next Economy Company

There have been so many changes in business because of technology. We’re just getting started.

There is no doubt that we have seen massive shifts in how consumers buy, connect and share in the past decade. It’s hard to imagine a world where connectivity, mobile devices and more are not ubiquitous, affordable and available to all. The connection points for that to happen are unfolding before our very eyes. Last week, I wrote about how thinkers like Tim O’Reilly are thinking about the present, to better lay the groundwork for our future (read it over here: Two Critical Points About The Future). Tim is the CEO of O’Reilly Media, coined the phrase Web 2.0, is helping to push the maker movement, and has spent decades being at the bleeding edge of technology by being an investor, thinker, author and spokesperson for the technology industry. Last month, Wired founder, author and futurist, Kevin Kelly (please read his incredible new book, The Inevitable – Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future), published a fascinating read on LinkedIn titled, The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning, that states:

“In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet! The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. It is only becoming. If we could climb into a time machine, journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2050 were not invented until after 2016. People in the future will look at their holodecks and wearable virtual reality contact lenses and downloadable avatars and AI interfaces and say, ‘Oh, you didn’t really have the internet’–or whatever they’ll call it– ‘back then.’ And they’d be right. Because from our perspective now, the greatest online things of the first half of this century are all before us. All these miraculous inventions are waiting for that crazy, no one-told?me?it?was-impossible visionary to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit–the equivalent of the dot-com names of 1984.”

It’s still the future that we are going to create together.

It will still require companies, work (of people – not just robots), jobs and, most importantly, imagination, inspiration, innovation, education, networking and execution. The smartest people all agree. Another place to better understand this pending corporate revolution is a new publication by John Battelle (founder of Wired, The Industry Standard, Federated Media and author of The Search), called, NewCo (which is described as, “covering the biggest shift in business and society since the Industrial Revolution.”). Within this new publishing platform, Battelle sat down with Tim O’Reilly to discuss this next economy, the deficit of idealism and what we need to build a healthy and robust economy moving forward…

Watch it here: NewCo Shift – A Deficit of Idealism: Tim O’Reilly on the Next Economy.