The Creative Age is Different, Way Different

General Motors isn't Facebook. Heck, it isn't even Cisco or Microsoft. But neither are any of those companies like Facebook. I don't mean "like Facebook" in financial, social or cultural terms. Facebook is unlike other companies in the way that it creates a product. Most companies create products using some combination of internal resources ("employees") and business partners ("suppliers").

Most companies can tell you who "works for the company" and who does not. What is different about Facebook, and Wikipedia, Google and YouTube is that the "product" is produced by all sorts of people, both inside a "company," inside its "partner suppliers," and from "outside the company." What makes Facebook's product different is that "users" must participate to create a better and more useful product.

That might be true for any sizable organization, to some extent. Consumers help shape products when they decide to buy some more than others, and some not at all. Consumers help products evolve when they start to use products in new and unexpected ways.

But Facebook and others with a "social" product cannot develop with passive or secondary input. They require active creation of content, links and networks by participants. Not every product can be produced in this way. But it is a so-far distinctive attribute of products produced in a "post-information age" era.

Some might call the upcoming era the "creative" era, to differentiate it from the information age. Collaboration is a key cultural attribute of firms that create social products. Facebook depends on users, developers to create its product, which is an experience.

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