It is our contention that the emerging era (we call it the “connection economy”) is forcing companies to make a massive shift from “what” they sell to “how” they sell and “who” they are as the primary competitve advantages. This means that companies must take public perception of them very seriously. This is where blogging becomes the “next big thing” – another tech weapon in the transparency war.
Disturbingly, many of the issues that companies now have to contend with have a religious underpinning. Especially in America, evangelical Christians, with their schizophrenic love of personal armament, hatred of abortion, support of the death penalty and abhorrence of euthenasia, are becoming more and more active in their activism.
Check out this article in BusinessWeek, where Microsoft flip-flopped on supporting/not supporting the civil rights of gay marriages.
Culture Wars Hit Corporate America: Increasingly, business must weigh in on hot social issues — and suffer interest groups’ slings and arrows
My family is about to relocate to another city. We’re looking for schools, and it’s clear that they haven’t got their minds around this shift, ie. Who you are is most important’. They seem to still be trading on tradition, and in some cases a very (currently) strong business model.
My wife and I have been stunned at how some schools have gone way beyond what we needed them to be, and how some have failed miserably. We’ve chosen schools, in some instances, based on telephone calls. Our thinking… if you can’t get your phone people sorted out, how on earth are you getting my child’s education sorted?