Why Bloomberg (and every other business publisher) is perched on the abyss

The “business colony” may just envelope us all.

I know of two powerful, open-system business platforms that are equally as powerful business colonies literally enveloping their sectors: Apple’s iPhone and the app store, and Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

 

Read my post about the iPhone and Salesforce’s potential to out-think their competition because of the open-system nature of their platforms.

 

Apple has vast array of apps pertaining to needs such as earthquake prediction and labor contraction tracking. Likewise, Salesforce.com has hundreds of innovative partner companies delivering, data, leads, services, analytics, and sales training through its AppExchange. As a result, the sales and marketing automation market is a rocket ship of innovation, single-handedly driving enormous value and revenue growth in the sector.

Large publishers beware.

 

Bloomberg is one high-profile example of large publishers turning a blind eye to this concept. A Bloomberg terminal sits on the desktops of hundreds of thousands of the world's financial market executives and traders. If Bloomberg was an open platform, think of the innovation that would be delivered and the impact on our financial markets. 

 

But will it happen? I'm not seeing any sign the big publishers have got it yet. Are you?

I call these new businesses rooted into an open-system platform: business colonies.  Think of a coral reef, a biological ecosystem that is both inter-related and inter-dependant. Think of the vast diversity of life that is supported.  Business colonies are rooted in the same concepts as nature. They share resources, act co-dependently, and all have an impact within the ecosystem to grow and nurture those involved.

 

I see no reason why business colonies cannot grow around and above today's monolithic publishing structures. With the decline of the industry, publishers may want to keep an eye on the success of emerging business colonies, and adapt their thinking to the ideals of an ecosystem. This thinking is all about dynamic interaction between components.

Consider it food for thought. Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Gary Halliwell

CEO

NetProspex

Comments

[Jens]

Add Facebook and (emerging) Twitter to this list.