I have posted a great deal about the bottom-up phenomenon. Socialtext embraces it both in how our product works, how we sell it and how we run the company.
David Kirkpatrick writes in Fortune about the Bottom-up Economy that I believe is the greatest driving force in business, media and politics today:
We're entering what might be called the Bottom-Up Economy. As the Internet's influence grows, we're seeing its intrinsic egalitarianism and tendency to empower the small start to change many aspects of modern life. Customers today have more options and less loyalty. They will migrate to businesses that see them as participants in a process rather than as just consumers....Smart companies are already embracing this...This new style of business, birthed by the Internet, is ignored at any company's peril.
In the bottom-up economy, presuming you know what the customer wants is the ultimate error. Prahalad and Ramaswamy instead call for "co-creation of value": The successful products and services from now on will be those developed jointly―company and customer working hand in hand...
Mike from Techdirt wonderfully describes how the bottom-up phenomenon relates to negotiation:
When I was an undergraduate, I spent a lot of time studying negotiations and bargaining situations - often in situations where there was little to no trust between the parties. The end results of such negotiations always turned out to be much better when they opened up and weren't done in a "us vs. them" or top down manner. However, it was very difficult to get over the hurdle of the "we're telling you how it is!" thought process to the "let's lay everything out on the table" process. Such a lesson doesn't apply only to direct bargaining situations, but almost any type of transaction between multiple parties. The more open the process is, the more likely everyone can come to a resolution that makes people happy...
Its not just that the Internet created the opportunity for the bottom-up phenomenon to emerge. We are compelled by the necessity of our times to work together, be open to change and to continually tinker with simple solutions that work. Because of the degree of connection we are beginning to acheive, these changes may be more persistent and the emergent impact may be greater than we realize.
