The Long Tail: Reinterpreting Adam Smith through the Lens of the Economic Modalities Governing the Digital

Age

\ Nick Timmons CMRS, Oxford University Great Books Seminar Paper April 10th, 2007

The great Renaissance humanist Petrarch once said, I feel as if I am standing on the borderline between two ages, looking both forwards and backwards at the same time. Or consider Isaac Asimov, when he says:
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

The situation these statements depict represents how one must look at the economic reality we find stapled onto the cosmos. The entrepreneur has to feel the change coming, soaking the future into the pores of his being, and being able to intuit by way of imagination the ideas, services and products that need. As Einstein once said, Imagination is more important than knowledge. As we enter more fully and completely into the facticity of the information age, I imagine that humanity is on the cusp of a period of growth in productivity and knowledge, by way of the digitization of information in bits, such as the world has heretofore never before seen. I seek nothing less than to assimilate the new economics into the marrow of my thinking. It is an economics unconcerned with the marginal costs of distribution and production. It is an economics that leverages the power of niche markets, both in terms of increasing specialization on the part of producers in products and increasingly infinitesimal segregation of customers. I am inquiring into the foundations of how the modern digital economy works, still within the framework first explicated by Adam Smith, but somehow different, somehow evolved. I endeavor, with the help of the Long Tail, to explain explicitly what Smith deals with only implicitly. The resulting vision detailing the future, which forms the basis for any long-term business strategy, will create the understructure that gives ultimate direction to my own annus mirabilis, my period of intense study delving into the minutiae of the mechanisms explained herein. Adam Smith was a type of deist, if you will. For him, the cosmos is held together by a sort of moral gravity, and this moral gravity is measurable in the same way that Newton measured physical gravity. We cant properly call The Wealth of Nations a product of deism, but Smith began as a moral philosopher, so his work in economics is rolled into his first philosophical work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which had as its central foundation the fact that there is a symbiotic seeking out of human beings by other human beings. Deism is a kind belief in a default setting or preprogrammed blueprint according to which things, if they are left to themselves, will unfold in a symbiotic way. The cosmos, the greatest of macrocosms, unfolds thusly. The economies of nations, economic transactions and individual finances are increasingly smaller microcosms of this greatest of macrocosms, and as such, they unfold in this selfsame manner. Production and consumption have no causal link but by their being woven into the liniment of cosmos. The economic mechanisms of Adam Smith were built into the fabric of the nascent American nation which, when coupled with the American Revolution and Enlightenment Rationalism, grew America into the most powerful economic force the world has ever seen. So, we see that this conception works, and exceptionally well, at that, both in theory and in practice. This mooring of Smithian

economics into a deist moral theory is most evident when one looks at his Wealth of Nations and many of its major concepts, including: the Invisible Hand, the Division of Labor, Both Benefit Transactions, the Value Paradox and Stock. The deist mentality of Smith in an economic sense can be summated in his influential invisible hand concept. He describes it like this:
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage indeed, and not that of society, which he has in view, but the study of his advantage naturally or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society.1

We have here the macrocosm being embodied in the microcosm. Smith uses the example of tariffs and regulation being put on French wine by the English, which is a terrible idea stemming from a morose mercantilist mentality. He says:
It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buyWhat is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.2

Essentially, Smith is describing the mechanism by which markets work. Markets are normalized because the preprogrammed blueprint governing the cosmos controls markets as well, which in turn form the context under which individual decisions are made. The markets under which humans operate will be symbiotic and naturally flourish because of the twofold fact that humans do what is best for themselves, but also have a natural symbiosis towards one another. The order which this creates in the market is itself a kind of microcosmic symbiosis forming the basis for a greater macrocosm. Essentially, we have human nature, as created by God, interacting with the mechanisms of the cosmos God put into place in order to stimulate growth and universal opulence.

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Libery Fund, Indianapolis, 1981), 454. 2 Ibid, 456.

The way I see it, God basically imbues man as such with a nature that is fundamentally good and rational and then places him into a self-perpetuating system as detailed in Figure 1 above. But, this system is not only self-perpetuating, but also growing, and exponentially at that. I conceived of this system as a spiral, with the distance between each line getting larger and larger, and much to my surprise and enjoyment there is actually a curve like this, called the spira mirabilis by the 17th Century mathematician Bernoulli, and first discovered by Descartes in 1638. Today, it is known as the logarithmic curve, defined as: A logarithmic spiral has the polar equation r=exp(ka). It has the property that the curve makes a constant angle with the radius. Thus, a logarithmic spiral divided into equal radial sectors is a tesselation of geometrically similar tiles, differing only in size.3 This curve is reproduced in Fig. 2 below.

The mathematical equation describing this logarithmic curve does not apply perfectly to the current economic framework, because there are negative externalities of unpredictable randomness which affect the economic framework that do not affect a curve that conforms ideally to its equation. As Galileo must presuppose the absence of friction in creating mathematical physics, so for this equation to fit economic reality, one must posit away economic friction. I am not willing to do that, because human nature, like the macrocosms it embodies and the microcosms it creates, is imperfect. Showing the system to be less than perfect to my mind strengthens its analogical similarity to and foundation upon human nature. Any negatives inserted into this system or resultant from it, like the industrial revolutions horrid mistreatment of workers, are relative anomalies and are predicated upon the fallen nature of man and his propensity to be greedy and cruel. Regardless of imperfection, the most important thing this shows is that there is an order to the cosmos, set in place by the creator, and whats more, it can be discovered and dissected. This ordering of the cosmos must needs explanation in greater detail.

Steven Dutch, Logarithmic Spiral Tilings. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Available [Online]: <http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/symmetry/log-spir.htm> [11 April 2007].

Smith opens his masterpiece with the words, The greatest improvement in the productive powers of laborseem to have been the effects of the division of labor.4 This increase in productive capacity is due to three factors: The dexterity of the individual worker, the efficiency of time within the Division of Labor (DOL), or that less and less time is lost from activity to activity, and capital improvements, including the inventions of new machines. Smith explains this with his now infamous pin example. He speaks to the fact that the creation of a pin necessitates eighteen distinct processes. One man, doing them all by himself, would make hardly a pin a day. When these processes are divided amongst ten people, with each performing one or two distinct operations, upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day5 can be made. This division of labor allows for what Smith calls universal opulence, by which is meant an increase in the overall standard of living for each person in industrialized nations, or nations that employ the division of labor. But, if the foundation of productive increases are founded upon the DOL, upon what is the DOL founded? Smith says,
The real foundation of the DOL is that principle of persuasion [bartering] which so much prevails in human nature.6

We can see Smith the moralist distinctly here, which allowed him to conceive of transactions where both parties could benefit. Smith famously said that voluntary, informed transactions always benefit both parties. The prevailing suspicion had always been that any financial transaction had both a winner and a loser. Smith then proffers his opinion in the guise of time-value tradeoffs, truly a radical break from the contemporaneous opinion, which Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, describes as creating modern economics.7 Smith tells us that we make transactions out of our own self interests. This is not an egotistical, selfish conception, but rather, simply the way things are. Smith says:
and he will never part with it [property], but for a consideration, which he likes better, than he does the thing you want [from him].8

The concept of productive efficiency that comes by way of the DOL is helpful here. For example, a baker has a difference in talent with the tailor aris[ing] not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.9 I think that he places too strong an emphasis on nurture, but nonetheless there does exist an objective difference in relative talent, natural or otherwise, that allows the baker to be relatively more efficient in producing food than the tailor, and vice versa with clothes. Thus, to be most efficient in regards to time and production, the baker produces bread and barters with the tailor for clothes, and the two exchange goods. Every man thus lives by exchanging.10 But, the division of labor is not ready yet, as stocks of goods must be stored up. Smith says,
4 5

Smith, 13. Ibid, 15. 6 Ibid, 25. 7 Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (Random House Business Books, London, 2006), 144. 8 Smith, 26. 9 Smith, 29. 10 Ibid, 37.

The produces of mans own labor can supply but a very small part of his wants. The far greater of them are supplied by the produce of other mens labourA stock of goods, therefore, must be stored up somewhere to maintain himthis accumulation must, in the nature of things, be previous to his applying his industry11

So, where there is no DOL, there is no stock, because each man fulfills his own needs as they arise. With the DOL wants are supplied by other mens labors and so men must stock up on produce from his own labor in order to barter for produce from the labor of others. Stock thus precedes the DOL, and more stock means more DOL. Thus stock accumulation leads to increases in productive power. Then we turn to negotiating relative exchange values, and Smith says:
we address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.12

The key is to again realize that we can have mutually symbiotic self-interests, a definite grab from the Theory of Moral Sentiments. And thus, just as the operations for a making a pin are divided, so are the operations for sustaining a human life. This system would work perfect, but there exists a fundamental problem, that of scarcity. Scarcity means that goods perish when consumed, that is, they exist in differing quantities of finitude, some larger and some smaller. Smith says,
As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labor, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that powerby the extent of the market.13

Smith explains this with the example of rural and urban markets. A small labor market out in the country will mean that those who work there will have to take on more tasks to sustain themselves. In the city, where labor is less scarce, labor can be divided more readily. So, scarcity is the fundamental determinant in regards to the division of labor that rests upon bartering which leads to productive increases through efficiency. Its no longer about the supply and demand of goods in sum total, but about them as they relate to their quantification. Now, if the baker has clothes enough, then the tailor is up a certain creek without a paddle, so to speak. This problem, of scarcity creating a clog in the pipes of the bartering system, is solved by introducing a medium of exchange. The necessity of a medium of exchange to combat scarcity gives rise to the creation of money, so that, [one] could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for.14 But there is a problem here too, one that has yet to be adequately solved, unlike the other aforementioned inanities. It is the problem, or paradox, of value. There are two kinds of value, that of exchange and use. Essentially, Value in exchange refers to the purchasing power of a good while value in use refers to the utility derived from the consumption of a
11 12

Ibid, 277. Ibid, 27. 13 Ibid, 31. 14 Ibid, 39.

good. Smith explains this using what is colloquially referred to as the diamond-water paradox. A diamond is high in exchange value and low in utility. With water, it is the exact opposite. Its relative abundance means that it will have low values of exchange, while still remaining the most valuable good in terms of pure utility. Ultimately, the value in use of a good when scarce trumps exchange value because combining supreme utility with scarcity will create exorbitant exchange values. The interesting conundrum is that people value things differently. Diamonds and other scarce markets are known as niche markets, not all of which can be normalized. Normalization is simply a fancy way of saying that a market is reaching equilibrium by the process of high margins attracting competitors to the market, with the competition depressing prices until they stabilize. Another way of saying this is that the marginal cost of production equates to the marginal utility derived from consumption of the good produced. The relationship of exchange and use value in niche markets is a fluid one, so prices can be artificially affected, and thus markets can be difficult to study. But, the Long Tail is changing this. Niche markets can be normalized insofar as the products are digitized. The importance of commodity markets, the markets that can be normalized by way of a single economic conception, is giving way to niche markets. As Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail says:
The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes. This book is about that market.15

This new focus on niche markets isnt just about segregating customers into ever smaller groups, explained below. Its also about producers of goods and services becoming more and more specialized in what they produce. The global pie continues to grow, in conformity to the mechanisms Smith delineated above, and this brings larger amounts of productive entities into the fray in a process today we call globalization. Consider this:
In manufacturing, as the global market expanded, and more and more players came onto the field, you saw greater and greater intraindustry trade. So, Mexico specialized in making tires and China specialized in making camshafts and America specialized in overall automobile design. As we move into the knowledge economy, you are now seeing more and more intraservice trade, with more and more slices of specialization emerging within different service sectors as they grow more complex.16

So, concomitant to the development of contemporary economics, described in detail later, is the continual bifurcation of new players in the global market into smaller and smaller productive core competencies. The influential economist David Ricardo, directly descendent from Smiths framework, produced his seminal idea of free-trade comparative advantage, which:
stipulates that if each nation specializes in the production of goods in which it has a comparative cost advantage and then trades with other nations for the goods in which they specialize, there will be an overall gain in trade and overall income levels should rise in each trading country.17

This concept is still used today in arguing against staunch protectionism and the erection of feckless regulatory borders; in order to prevent the offshoring of jobs, and the
15 16

Anderson, 5. Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2004), 269. 17 Ibid, 263.

outsourcing of projects and services, from developed to developing countries, that are better able to cope with the costs of production because of their relative lack of bloated labor costs, due to inflation from development as a nation over time. As we shall see, this process of globalization, of all the nations of the world being increasingly enveloped into an integrated, global economy goes hand in hand with the new economics described by the Long Tail. We are in an era marked by a distinct shift, from scarcity thinking, to abundance thinking. Economics is becoming less about rent and cost-predicated distribution bottlenecks, and more about waste and unlimited choice. Abundance is economically defined as the situation in which the marginal costs of production and distribution are zero. It should be noted here that it is a well understood mathematical axiom that curves and straight lines are incommensurable, that is, they cannot be equated. There is a real qualitative difference between the two. Thus, one cannot arrive at the exact area of a circle because understood thusly, infinite accuracy does not equal absolute accuracy. For example, a line can be divided into two smaller lines, or four even smaller lines, or ten even smaller lines. If the line is divided infinitely, the pieces of the line still remain a line, they do not become nothing. They become what we call infinitesimal. This fundamental reality of incommensurability behind the calculus also governs the economics of the Long Tail. The marginal costs of distribution and production are not absolutely zero, but effectively zero, that is, they are infinitesimally small. The information in bits still has some extension in physical reality, but in practce. This Long Tail concept is the future of business. It is Smiths deistic economics, his preprogrammed blueprint, evolved. Consider this from Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer-prize winning author of the The World is Flat, a book whose thesis is the title and whose express purpose is to offer a framework for how to think about the digital age economic revolution and globalization: We are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization, and
automation of more and more everythingThe gains in productivity will be staggering And we are entering a phase where more people than ever before in the history of the world are going to have access to these toolsI am convinced that the flattening of the worldwill be seen in time as one of those fundamental shifts or inflection points, like Gutenbergs invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, or the Industrial Revolution.18

Anderson provides a technically succinct of saying the same thing:

When you dramatically lower the costs of supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantitative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts towards the niches, the economics of providing them improves further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop with will transform entire industries and the culture for decades to come.19

18 19

Friedman, 47-48. Anderson, 26.

First, we must take a look the foundations of The Long Tail, which is summated by Anderson thusly:
The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, moving towards a huge number of niches in the tailbottom line: a Long Tail is just economics unfiltered by economic scarcity.20

Just as Smith could be roughly summated by a logarithmic curve, so can the Long Tail be roughly summated by analyzing the family of curves known as powerlaws, which are governed by a y=1/x shape. The amplitude of this curve never reaches zero; it asymptotically approaches the x-axis, just as Zenos hare asymptotically approaches the tortoise, always catching up by half but never actually catching the tortoise. This we see in a sample powerlaw curve below in Figure 3.

In 1897, Vilfredo Pareto noticed a pattern, that of a predictable imbalance of markets, culture and society.21 This pattern, known today as the 80/20 principle, profoundly describes the economic reality of today in addition to the preceding centuries of yonder lore, except that yesterdays powerlaws where cut off at a certain point because of scarcity. Simply put, that has changed, which can be easily seen by way of example. The limiting nature of scarcity and how the long tail liberates choice can be seen if one takes a look at the music selection of Wal-Mart. When one walks into Wal-Mart for the first time, as Gorbachev did in 1986, he or she is in awe at the massive choice that is present and how economies scale can allow this choice to occur in a fiscally feasible way. Its not all gravy though, as it would seem. Production and distribution are constrained in such a way that producers create and disseminate only what will be popular enough to sell. The little 4x4 inch square of shelf-space that a CD occupies must sell enough copies to pay its economic rent. Anderson says, The world of shelf-space is a zero-sum game: one product displaces another.22 Wal-Mart simply cannot carry the 800,000th most popular album in America. This is because a minute number of total sales per year results in negative profit for that album since the albums cost of storage, or
20 21

Ibid, 53-54. Ibid, 127. 22 Ibid, 40.

economic rent, exceeds the revenue it provides the distributor, thus justifying the exclusion of the album from the shelf. This is the tyranny of geography, of scarce space limiting consumer choice. There exists a Long Tail of CDs out there, but the Pareto Principle tells us that the vast majority of sales come from a relatively small number of products. Thus, distributors and producers cut off the goods they stock and the goods they create, respectively, at an artificial point as determined by economic judgments about the marginal cost and revenue of storage and production. We can see this with music at WalMart, for example, in figure 4 below reproduced from Andersons book.

Lets say that I love a specialized type of club music, called house, and when I go to WalMart I want to buy some house music, only to be disappointed that this store, the mecca of choice itself, doesnt carry what I want to buy. In essence, there is a HUGE market out there all segregated into small niches. That is to say, the biggest money is in the smallest sales.23 For example, Amazon does 25% of its sales, which translates to billions of dollars, in products that one cannot find at a Borders megastore. So, one realizes that there is great economic possiblity in niches, but there still exists a cutoff. Economics gets rid of this by way of three forces, the forces of the Long Tail. The first force is about supply, the second is about demand and the third is concerned with how to most efficiently connect the two. Moores Law, named after IBM founder Gordon Moore, who first stated that computing power doubles every 18 months, thus allowing more and more powerful equipment to become continually more affordable. This law provides the fuel on which the first two forces run. The Long Tail needs to be populated with more stuff and when the tools of production are democratized, this is exactly what happens. Put another way, the first force elongates the tail. For example, more people with affordable, high-quality sound recording equipment means that there will exist a larger overall quantity of DJ-created house/club music out there. Another particular example of this with a slightly different product is podcasting, which is essentially the audio version of blogging, which in turn in the buzzwords for the new creation that is web logs, or running diary entries written by anybody in particular that are posted periodically on the internet. Friedman describes it thusly:

23

Ibid, 22.

Podcasting is having a big impact on traditional music and video companies and radio stations, because so many people will now have the power to become video and music producers, NOT just passive listeners and viewers.24

The second force is about demand. It is about cutting the costs of consumption by democratizing distribution,25 thereby revealing extremely large amounts of latent demand, or demand that exists, but is as yet untapped because of scarcity and bottlenecks. If the house music I want was newly created on a PC in Pakistan because of the democratization of production detailed in force one, this does me no good. But the internet has allowed the Pakistani producer to costlessly distribute his work, so that now I can access it and enjoy it. Basically, by way of force two, the tail gets fatter, which is to say that the distance between the powerlaw curve and the x-axis is increased for every locus on that curve. So, the Long Tail that once looked like this:

Now, because of forces one and two, looks like this:

But this is not enough because we have a chasm between supply and demand, a kind of information problem, if you will. Supply and demand must be reconciled. If I love house music and can now access it, choice doesnt really exist to me if I cannot find it. Thus, the third force is about connecting supply and demand by way of filters. These filters, be it search engines, blog recommendations, customer testimonials and the like, serve to eliminate superfluous information that I dont need while bringing to the forefront the exact information about a product, service, or question that satisfies the current demand or query. Thus, demand is moved from the head to the newly populated, longer and fatter Long Tail, like so:

24 25

Friedman, 120. Anderson, 55.

Effective filtering to get me to exactly what I want from amongst the now privately bounded number of possibilities is necessary. Friedman gives us the moniker in-forming, which is:
The ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain - of information knowledge and entertainment. In-forming is about self-collaboration becoming your own self-directed and self-empowered researcher, editor and selector of entertainment In-forming is searching for knowledge. The easier and more accurate searching becomes, the more global [the] user base becomes, and the more powerful flattener it becomes.26

Thus the flattening of the world, in the language of economics, is essentially the same thing as driving demand down the Long Tail through the efficient connection of supply to demand: for information, for products, goods and services, for virtually anything at all. This is the magic of Google. This is the magic of unfiltered culture, of abundance, brought right to my doorstep. As we saw with the invisible hand, what is best for the microcosm is best for the macrocosm. The power of the Long Tail lies in a modified invisible hand, that is, that people can now express their individuality within the framework of an abundance of choice, not scarcity. This is driven by the forces of the Long Tail. Statistical distributions will be helpful in seeing this, as Anderson says:
Every aspect of human identity, from size, shape, and color to sexual proclivities and intellectual gifts, comes in a wide range. Most people cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everybody is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.27

Basically, every human is individual in some way and now they can express their individuality at all times, thus providing the steam for the whole Long Tail engine, because I now have the tools to have culture tailored efficiently for me. Vivek Paul, president of Indian outsourcing extraordinaire Wipro Inc. says, Globalization went from globalizing industries to globalizing individuals. 28 Put another way, I can be uniquely me at all times, in that I can demand, and more importantly satiate my demand, for
26 27

Friedman, 179. Ibid, 184. 28 Ibid, 276.

information, products and services that are most aptly applicable to me. The old economics of rent and hits is becoming largely extinct as a valuable tool for analysis. If I want house music, it does not matter if my particular taste is not popular enough to warrant placement on a Walmart shelf. The house music I like not only exists now in greater quantity, but I can also find it as well, and whats more it can be produced and distributed in digitized bits at an infinitesimal cost. But this modification of the invisible hand by way of abundance does not fundamentally alter the capitalist system. Anderson says:
If abundant resources are just one factor in a system otherwise constrained by scarcity, they may not challenge the economic orthodoxy. They are then likedrivers of production efficiency that serve to lower prices and increase productivity but do not invalidate the laws of economics. And, indeed the abundance of the Long Tail, for all its power, is surrounding by such constraints. Although there may be near infinite selection of media, there is still scarcity of human attention and hours in the day. Our disposable income is limited. On some level, its still a fixed pie game. (146)29

So we see that the game is still the same, but the rules have been altered to make the game more fun to play, so to speak. I will never forget looking at the financial information for Apple a few years back. What I saw stunned me. I saw thousands of percent over period growth in their iTunes and iPod businesses. This is a lucid example demonstrating the vast potential that is inherent in the economics of the Long Tail, a potential so great that I cannot get my mind around what to do about it. I think the answer has to do with the nature of being an entrepreneur, defined in a way as one who marshals resources and shoulders risk. Adam Smith said this, Every man of common understanding will endeavor to employ whatever stock he can command in procuring present enjoyment or future profit.30 An entrepreneur is able to employ this stock better than others and is able to find more stock than others. In this endeavor I have a lot of stock to gather, human and monetary, with the most important being knowledge itself. Adam Smith is still as relevant today as ever, but there is no way he could have seen the information age hitting the world the way it has. So, we modify his concepts, most notably his invisible hand, and come out with a new construct which allows us to understand anew how his deistic economics governs the modern world in which we live so that we may thrive as ideational entrepreneurs in such a place. The concepts contained in this paper form a foundation on which an edifice of study must be built, an edifice that in the future will enumerate more fully such things as: API, the Solidscape T66 3D printer, statistical distributions, z-distributions, powerlaws, IPv6, network theory, the history of the development of the internet, evolutions in economics since Smith, logarithmic curves in three dimensions, investment opportunities in force 3 companies, Web 3.0, freebase and the semantic web, among others. Knowledge: that is how an entrepreneur leverages all of this into creating economic advantages. I must focus on my hedgehog concept, as detailed by the eminent management theorist Jim Collins, of Good to Great fame. My core competency is my brain, the way I think, the way I synthesize information and intuit answers. A new age is dawning, and much like Petrarch, I want to face it head on, without
29 30

Ibid, 146. Smith, 285.

straddling the fence. Armed with this foundation I seek to leverage my vision of the future into a successful business career.

Works Cited Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail. Random House Business Books: London, 2006. Dutch, Stephen. Logarithmic Spiral Tilings. University of WisconsinMilwaukee. Available [Online]: <http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/symmetry/log-spir.htm> [11 April 2007]. Friendman, Thomas L. The World is Flat. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2004. Smith, Adam. Edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Libery Fund: Indianapolis, 1981.