Participant formerly known as the consumer
First of all this post was entirely inspired by Jame's brilliant 'Canute' post, please read that first it's very important. I just want to riff a little on the changing consumer/enterprise meme.
There has been a symbiotic relationship between the consumer and the enterprise, similar to any eco systems food chain. The consumers were historically at the bottom of the enterprise's food chain, and an enterprise would effectively filter that food chain in order to work the volume of transactions required to maintain their scale (a bit like plankton and whales). Enterprises have become enormously efficient at working the food chain using their toolbox containing advertising, PR, brand and CRM.
However, change is at hand the consumer is transforming into participant. They are not happy merely consuming any more, they want to be part of the conversation, they want to directly influence production and are exercising their right to control the economic market place, in the same way Adam Smith indicated fair markets would. In the transformed world, consumers become participants, by taking back the car keys and determining their own destinations. The producer must wake up to the reality that it is the participants that are in control, and not themselves. Given that consuming was a one way street and participation is bidirectional, how does that change the enterprise toolkit, or indeed is there room for the enterprise moving forward, will they become the dinosaurs of our age.
When bidirectional takes over from unidirectional the tools of advertising, PR, brand and CRM become blunt and unwieldy instruments. If it takes a new kind of toolkit what's in that toolkit? can the enterprise species adapt to the new toolkit or is it doomed. I leave this as an exercise for the participants.
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