Mike Harris's Blog

I've accepted an invitation to speak at this event , it's a two day bonanza for several hundred entrepreneurs : here's the link to the website http://www.triumphantevents.co.uk/events.php?access=mib-jamescaan-mike

James Caan is featuring on the first day, me on the second; the theme of the second day is making it big in the new economy.

That made me think.

I thought the new economy was dead and buried, a term invented in the dot com frenzy of 1999 .Anything that was labelled new economy saw its value soar. Anything old economy saw its value plummet.

All nonsense as it turned out, and ended by the dot com bust of 2001. For anything labelled new economy then it became a nuclear winter. Once burned twice shy as far as investors were concerned.

And yet the underlying changes that had perpetuated the calling of the dawn of the new economy were real enough as we can now see very well.

Let's go back a little. In 1993 it was obvious things were going to change . Telecommunication companies were dominated by delivering phone calls over fixed lines. TV companies delivered entertainment over the airwaves. Both industries were going digital. The prospect of intelligent , multimedia, interactive broadband fixed and wireless networks seemed likely to change things .

Perhaps things would reverse - it seemed to make more sense to deliver interactive entertainment by fixed lines and phone calls by wireless . Data could be delivered both ways.

At Mercury we developed a vision of the future of telecommunications : the delivery of People, Information and Entertainment into the palm of your hand .

It has been a rocky road but with the launch of the iphone that vision got realised almost in its entirety but not by the telecommunications industry and certainly not by Mercury. The final piece of the jigsaw fell into place for me this weekend with the internet streaming of alive England match (which was not shown on TV) for the first time . It was , somewhat bizarrely, my father (in his 80s!) that got it perfectly :I watched the England match on the web , I wanted to there at the making of history.

What it took to get here was a collaborative not for profit initiative – ie the world wide web -plus Google, Apple, Amazon, Wikipedia, Youtube, Wordpress Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter. Together, they and no doubt others I've forgotten, ushered in the real new economy : a truly connected world with the delivery of People, Information and Entertainment into the palm of your hand a complete reality. The digital generation has recreated society based on this reality in a way that's as dramatic as the 60s generation reinvention of society around ideas of freedom, and love. Just as the 60s generation caused a revolution in business by their new attitudes, wants and needs so will the digital generation – a revolution already apparent but barely started.

Add to this the fact we are in a post credit crunch, post Bush, Post 9/11 world too and I think we can say that from 2001 to 2009 the environment has been completely transformed- a true new economy .

So what's it going to take to make it big in that environment? Well come along on 10^th November and I'll tell you!