In the analog world of physical publishing, setting up the systems to manufacture, store, ship, distribute and retail books requires lots of financial capital. Plants and offices have to be built to hold the equipment, people and inventory. Trucks have to be purchased to transport the books to the stores that have to be opened to sell them. As a result, entrepreneurs have had to start almost any venture by first raising a lot of financial capital, commonly known as venture capital.

Again, the Internet changes all this.

In the digital world, the business infrastructure is embedded inside computers and networks, and increasingly intelligent software replaces most of the manual and clerical functions critical to any business. Setting up a digital business requires intellectual capital but relatively little financial capital. Thus the power shifts from the people with the money to the people with the ideas and intellectual horsepower to recognize, harness, and leverage the new information technologies.

The Economic Tsunami

Already we've seen 30-year-olds start with little or nothing on the Internet and become multimillionaires (even some billionaires) while large companies run to the courts in an effort to hold back the economic tsunami brought on by these new technologies and quick-witted entrepreneurs.

We first saw the digital world impact the music industry; now it's affecting Hollywood's monopoly on film and video distribution, and soon we'll see it affecting the publishing and education fields. Much faster, lower cost digital systems are replacing traditional, slow physical manufacturing and distribution systems.

As the older physical systems crumble under the economics of the new technologies, countless jobs and careers are being lost in the process. We see long-term employment disappearing; pensions are on the way out; salaries are not what they used to be. And this comes at a time when the cost of living continues to rise. As a result, we all need to begin thinking more about becoming entrepreneurs - to understand and take advantage of these new digital technologies by creating new information products and services that will leverage our skills and expertise.

Traditionally, entrepreneurs have not only had to have the ability to envision something new, they had to raise the capital and build complex organizations to supply their new product or service, and then they required the skills to lead, coordinate and manage them.

Infopreneurs

What makes the Internet and information publishing businesses so exciting is that they don't require the traditional skills of money raising, organizational development and management to launch and build. This opens the new financial doors to a much larger group of potential entrepreneurs.