Connections Generate Value

I was in a meeting this morning to discuss an international initiative that we're preparing to launch at Art Center, and later, one of the participants complimented me on something I'd said. I didn't say it this way at first, but we boiled it down to "Connections Generate Value". I think this is the business lesson from Web 2.0. At its best, the academic world has understood this for a long time (and often forgot it, to its detriment). This is a new way of working where you get more by giving something away, not because you want to be altruistic, but because you want to be better off in the end. LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs and podcasts are all elements of this. Viacom suing Google YouTube demonstrates a company that doesn't understand this concept.