It needs no introduction.

The disruption of the property rights economy will come as a peer-produced reconstruction of the edge.

There you have it: the Prophecy of Web 2.0.

Now to many, that sentence might seem like a bunch of hogwash.

But those people probably haven't met the oracles.

THE ORACLES

Clayton Christensen. Part of the groundbreaking work that Clayton Christensen has done in the field of innovation includes popularizing the Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits, which holds that profits don't disappear, but rather move throughout the value chain (I blogged a bit about it here). From this perspective, entrepreneurs and business leaders need to always consider what in the value ecosystem they are participating in is being commoditized. Once that has been identified, we should ask: who profits from the commoditization? Who will be able to build a service upon what is being commoditized?

In web 2.0, what is being commoditized is the web itself.

John Hagel. John Hagel has written extensively about the attention economy -- the notion that in the digital world the only scarcity is attention. He has suggested that the attention economy will bring about the unbundling and rebundling of the firm, and that firms need to understand the importance of helping their customers and their employees (an increasingly blurry distinction) maximize the return on their attention.

In web 2.0, we must help people maximize the return on their attention. To do this, we must focus on understanding the world around us -- the world external to the firm.

Umair Haque. More than anyone else I've read, Umair Haque has explored the coming reconstruction economy; the value chains that will emerge as firms look to make all their offerings viral, which in turn creates an opportunity for new firms to take these viral offerings and reconstruct them in a way that helps individuals maximize the return on their attention. The whole BubbleGeneration blog is a must-read, but if you need convincing, try this .

In web 2.0, an opportunity exists for firms to participate in the attention economy by reconstruction the "edge" -- the universe of value external to the firm.

Kevin Kelly. In all fairness, for me to sit here and proclaim that I am here to announce the web 2.0 prophecy is the biggest act of thought crime ever. Because in reality, Kevin Kelly has already said all the important stuff about Web 2.0 -- and he did it way back, back when we were in Web 0.2. If I had to pick one book that I would say is a "must read" for web 2.0 entrepreneurs, it would undoubtedly be New Rules for the New Economy. The first rule in his list of ten rules is that firms need to "embrace decentralized points of control." In other words, the firms themselves need to decentralize, and will proceed towards not being firms at all, but rather networks of production. Think open source production communities.

In web 2.0, the corporation dies, and is reborn as a networked society.

That, my friends and fellow heroes of web 2.0, is our prophecy. In the next post, we'll look at the hero: those of us who will dare to make the prophecy come true.

Articles in This Series

The Prophecy
The Hero.
The Battle.