I work at Myself Inc. : Knowledge and Network

One of my business partners and longtime mentor has sent a couple of books, challenging me to come up with some ideas on the Internet and its consequences by stirring my mind. He, of course, has already succeeded after only a few pages of the first book, the Cluetrain Manifesto, written back in 2000. Although the book is already obsolete in some parts, it works around a set of ideas that where also presented in another book published at around the same time called Funky Business.

I just want to develop a few of these elements shared by this two publications. The concepts of knowledge and network and the way corporations need to deal with them. These two concepts, are characteristics of the individual worker and not of the company they work for. Markets and b2b/b2c relationships are based on human interaction. As we can read in the 95 theses of the Cluetrain manifesto.

"The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media."

"Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy."

"In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way."

"These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge."

"As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally"

In a similar way, Funky Business states that:

"Today people can and want to be independent (...) We should consider ourselves as brands (...) People want to be employable, they update their knowledge to result appealing to their bosses"

"Individual competition= what one knows X who one knows"

Individual knowledge and network as the basis for business, pillars also of the new Internet and the end of traditional corporations as we know them. A company would be similar to what we currently know as a project, and in this picture, an employee would be what a company is nowadays. As a result of that, and with the fast spreading of knowledge and network using the Internet as a optimal channel, business processes within a corporation would be as efficient as a perfect competition market. Bottom up efficiency that will be also apply to customer relations, products and services.

How far in the future is this model? How does it affect the job market? Stay tuned.