Business 2.0 on The 50 People who Matter Most -- On Rank 1: YOU

US magazine Business 2.0 has in its new edition a cover story on the 50 people who matter now (thanks to John Winsor for the link).

Their list strives to identify people whose ideas, products, and business insights are changing the world we live in today - those who are reshaping the future by inventing important new technologies, exploiting emerging opportunities, or throwing their weight around in ways that are sure to make everyone else take notice.

On the list are regulars like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google Co-founders, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, Rupert Murdoch, Steve Jobs, Genentech's Susan Desmond-Hellmann or Fujio Cho, Chairman of Toyota. But I am very pleased to read that the Number 1 position of this list is: YOU -- today's customer and consumer, user and inventor, co-creator and co-marketer .

Business 2.0 has written a great ode on the modern consumer and why we are really living in the age of co-creation (the theme of my blog and the underlying assumption of mass customization and open innovation):

"Why You Matter: They've long said the customer is always right. But they never really meant it. Now they have no choice. You -- or rather, the collaborative intelligence of tens of millions of people, the networked you -- continually create and filter new forms of content, anointing the useful, the relevant, and the amusing and rejecting the rest. You do it on websites like Amazon, Flickr, and YouTube, via podcasts and SMS polling, and on millions of self-published blogs.

In every case, you've become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience. But the You Revolution goes well beyond user-generated content. Companies as diverse as Delta Air Lines and T-Mobile are turning to you to create their ad slogans. Procter & Gamble and Lego are incorporating your ideas into new products. You constructed open-source and are its customer and its caretaker. None of this should be a surprise, since it was you -- your crazy passions and hobbies and obsessions -- that built out the Web in the first place. And somewhere out there, you're building Web 3.0. We don't yet know what that is, but one thing's for sure: It will matter."

And Wired's Chris Anderson has reported in his blog about a GREAT video illustrating this nomination. Made by Peter Hirshberg of Technorati, and Michel Markman, this video gives you all the ideas what you have to know about co-creating customers and "The Long Tail": See the Video here on Youtube! See it!

Comments

[Frank Pilelr]

Thanks for the comment -- I agree. The old "customer is king" claim has the undertsanding of a customer that is served by a company -- now the customer serves herself and in some instances does not need a company for this any longer (thus, the number #1 is not the "customer:" , but the creative user).

[Lev]

Ranked 1st - yes, but considering how long the "customer was king" and still didn’t rate highly with so many businesses, I can’t help but think that in 2006 companies had to be dragged to come to this conclusion. Cynics may say that, in fact, "Money is king" and all that has changed is that the customer, as the holder of money, has become more important by being more vocal, networked and influential - through social media and web 2.0 tools.