Related to Umair Haque's idea of the post-network economy (which I discussed here) is the notion that you have to develop edge competencies -- in other words, you need to leverage assets that are external to your firm. Consider, for instance, how Google leverages its network of Internet advertisers to break into offline advertising, and how blogs, forums, and sites like Wikipedia and Squidoo leverage user-generated content to their advantage. All are examples of edge competencies in a post-network economy. To use the term that everyone loves to hate, these are web 2.0 ideas.

On that note, check out this post by Josh Porter (via Alex Barnett) which offers 23 points for leveraging a network. I disagree with a lot of it, although here are five key points that I really like:

• The information architecture that people use to find your content is, increasingly, not yours.
• Users want control.
• As choices grow, so does the importance of learnability.
• Personal value precedes network value.
• Most people are willing to trade their personal information for good service.

Seasoned web veterans will find much of that information to be anything but revelatory, although in my opinion they are worth considering and re-examining in the web 2.0/post-network economy/edge competencies/[insert next catch phrase] context that the web as a whole seems to be progressing towards.

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