Dion on "the edge"

In his latest ZDNet blog posting, Dion Hinchcliffe discusses "edge businesses."

I like the reCAPTCHA example and his discussion of how external interfaces are beginning to blur into a fractal mixture of business, customers, and suppliers.

However, the focus on business structure makes me a bit uneasy. It's true that changes in transportation, communication, and information technologies open up disruptive possibilities...the past 150 years provide many examples. However, there's also a risk that pursuing structural opportunities will begin to crowd out business fundamentals. The explosion in financial engineering over the past 40 years is perhaps the most prominent recent example.

Bottom line: As a long-time reader of Dion's blogs, I like the conversation and think it's worthwhile. But, discussions of business fundamentals that don't change (e.g., deep domain expertise) should not be negelected. For a good recent discussion see The Puritan Gift.