Best reads for the weekend of 15th March 2009

Another week, another great set of articles and blogs posts to share. There is so much wisdom, insights, knowledge etc in the Web that we need to seriously rethink how to better harness them.

Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable
Clay Shirky on how we need to experiment relentlessly to create new forms of organisations that better serve the new economy. The current crop of news organizations are built for the industrial era and it is time we let go of them to truly invent the future of news.

Related: Old growth media and the future of news
Steven Johnson expanding on the Clay Shirky perspective and giving a detailed interpretation of how future of news would look like. Worth a read as well!

Uncorporating the Large Firm
A academic paper examining how different structures, beyond the standard corporate form, can better alleviate agency costs. A stimulating paper on how different organisation forms can look like.

In hard times, free lancers turn to the Web
Crisis forces everyone to think of alternates, to create more effective forms of conducting business. Beyond free lancers, the Web can enable musicians, lawyers, doctors etc to be more effective than what the current institutions dicate.

Dimensionalizing the Web
A old post by John borthwick on how we can think about the Web experience. Rereading it still makes a hell lot of sense. If you look between the lines, there are serious ideas there waiting for smart web startups to experiment with.

Posted in: idea generation