We must stop thinking of ourselves as a good-idea factory whose every thought has greater merit than those of our customers. Procter & Gamble doesn’t even do that.

— paraphrased

innovation, wikinomics, customers vs. creators, locus of control

It’s an aside to Kathryn Greenhill’s larger point, that all this 2.0 stuff is about a shifting power to the user, but she places L2 somewhere on Ghandi’s continuum of change between ridicule and fight.

The photo above (original by Monster) is in support of Greenhill’s larger point: control is shifting. Trains were once seen as icons of freedom, but that view changed with the development of the automobile — and the way it shifted control of routes and schedules from the railroad to the driver.

We’ve been arguing transportation policy for a long time since, but here’s a simple fact: railroads didn’t realize they were competing against automobiles until it was too late.

Who are you competing against?

libraries, lib20, l2, library 2.0, competition, control, railroads vs. automobiles, change, locus of control