A point is reached, in the spread of an original idea, when its source realizes that others can make the case for the idea at least as well — if not better — than he or she can.
That point came for me with VRM a while ago, from a number of the sources I just added to the blogroll there on the right. But it was especially gratifying to read What Comes After CRM, from Jay Deragon, about whom I’m sorry I wasn’t clued into sooner than the last few weeks, when I started catching up on his writing, that of Carter Smith, and other colleagues of theirs. In fact, while making their improving acquaintance, I wrote the forward to their book, The Emergence of the Relationship Economy.
Lots of grist for our mills there.
I was really taken with the (too brief) discussion you and I had at GUADEC last summer. As Microsoft and Google battle it out for leadership in horizontal search (and advertising driven by the same), I suspect that they’ll find themselves effectively bickering over the billboard rights for the information highway.
There are going to be much better paradigms for getting information to potential consumers, and I suspect the 800 pound gorillas will miss them pretty entirely. As Charles Fort observed, “It steam-engines when it comes steam engine time.”
Lefty,
Agreed. I’m also amazed that the shotgun marriage proposal by Microsoft to Yahoo isn’t analyzed for its lame-gorilla characteristics. It may be a “strategic move” of some kind, but it’s also a terribly lame one by a company that’s driven by fear and envy of one competitor it cant think of any other way to beat.
Me to agreed..the merging of Microsoft and yahooo can be some kind fo strategic move which can effect or will effect the web world.