Steve Rubel rubbed elbows with technology and media elites in Silicon Valley last week. Here’s one of his take aways:
Silicon Valley must break bread with the media-industrial complex. The challenge is there is a vast chasm in the culture and ethos between the two sides. Tech and Internet companies develop their products in the open. This is very different in the media-industrial complex, where secrecy rules. He/she who dies with the most information is king/queen. However, technology is changing all of us. We are all becoming more and more Valley every day, whether we like or not.
Marketers are joining the club too. American Express just launched a beta program where you can test new concepts. Everyone is beginning to recognize that the principles of Wikinomics that were pioneered in the Valley – openness, peering, sharing and acting globally – are good business overall. It’s like the end of communism in the 1980s. The changes were gradual at first, then dramatic.
