I’m a “newspaper guy,” yes, but if you look at Jeff’s excerpt from my blog post I’m not positing the “not as good” argument. I’m saying quite the opposite. Open-source knowledge is superior in many ways.

John

You can try to take your values, but, like your work habits, they may not work on the web.

> The Web is its own universe with its own rules.

That applies to values as well as work habits.

Wrong! Or, irrelevant… It’s not the “web” which is the issue here. What he’s talking about is simply a key attribute of “disruptive innovations” in ANY sphere. He should read carefully the work of Clayton Christiansen at Harvard (“Innovators Dilemna” and its many sequels…) Christiansen makes it clear that virtually all truly disruptive innovations are viewed as “not as good” when they are first introduced. In fact, it is this “not as good” attribute that ensures that such innovations are “disruptive” since established players will ignore the “not as good” innovations and thus provide the breathing space needed by the innovators in order to crush the established players. If an innovation ever looked “good enough” to address the markets of the established players or even “better than current solutions,” the established players would inevitably rise up from their slumber and pour resources into either implementing the innovation or competing with it. Thus, it is the “not as good” stuff that turns out to be disruptive — because it is ignored.

Every time a newspaper guy says online stuff, or whatever, is “not as good,” you should imagine a “sell” signal for their stock symbol.

bob wyman