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Last week, Exciting Commerces Jochen Krisch was on site at the Supernova Conference in San Francisco (videos of the event). Tweets from the conference to be found on Twitter @jkrisch (#sn09). The event attracted as usual an impressive number of well-known researchers and experts. Topic of discussion revolved around Change Networks / Change in the Network Age:

Picture of Supernova 2009: Change Networks and The Big Shift [source:excitingcommerce.com]

“In today’s world, the overwhelming message we receive is that it’s time to “connect or bust”. Depending on your viewpoint, this either offers tremendous opportunity or elicits fear and confusion.”

One of the highlights of the first day was a presentation from Hollywood veteran Peter Guber (Mandalay Entertainment), who described from the point of view of a creative person what is changing and why technology cannot be a goal in itself.

Chris Anderson held for the first time a talk on the topic of Atoms are the New Bits, where he revealed how social networking is affecting real life: that people collaborate together also much better offline and as an example, can together create new products.

One of the most thought provoking moments of the first day came from social networking expert Danah Boyd. She took the position of Adam Greenfield (Nokia) which describes that via technological advance (social networking tools, surveillance cameras and other sensors), cities are losing their status as anonymous retreats and in contrast, a level of obscurity formerly only found in the big city can now be found in the rural areas.

Boyd highlighted an example from her book Out in the Country: Youth, Media and Queer Visibility in Rural America. Young gay and lesbians living in rural areas can nowadays live a more confident lifestyle, because they can take refuge in online networks.

One of the most exciting and radically visionary parts of the conference was surely the Opening Plenary Session on the second day, with notable speakers such as John Hagel (The Big Shift), and Umair Haque and Ellen Levy from LinkedIn. The session revolved around how institutions (companies, educational organizations, etc.) have to adapt to be able to survive in a connected world:

“Our institutions are built upon infrastructures that cannot absorb digital networks much less re-tool around them. Large organizations will exist but they will be fundamentally different in structure and priority from how they operate today.

Knowledge flow, not information flow. Relationships, not just transactions. The rationale of connecting people, not just the ability to do so. Context as well as content. Corporate infrastructures will not be the competitive differentiators they once might have been unless they invent new ways to create trust in relationships.”

The thesis from John Hagel is best seen separately (either the keynote from the eBay DevCon or the multi-part Supernova interview from the summer).

In the subsequent debate, the panel members didnt prophesize the doom of the corporation, but rather asked how a company would need to look like in the future. Must companies move towards flexible employee networks or will new and stable corporate structures crystallize which will meet the new requirements?

John Hagels Shift Index for a variety of industries is available online (PDF).

Originally posted as two articles in German (1, 2) by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

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