Featured Article
"Panasonic tells how a typical Japanese multinational learned to restructure itself according to this flexible "American" approach while preserving some essential Japanese attributes. Panasonic is the main brand name for Matsushita Electric Industrial Company; author Francis McInerney consulted for Matsushita's American subsidiary in the late 1990s—when the firm's troubles became most apparent."
7 Year Old Book Predicts Future of YouTube
The Frager Factor, February 21, 2007
Owen Frager
In FutureWealth: Investing In The Second Great Wave Of Technology two leading seers of the Internet predict the best investment opportunities for the next decade in FutureWealth. Francis McInerney and Sean White believe the plummeting cost of information is revolutionizing the world's economy and creating fantastic potential for wealth creation. "Throughout history, wealth has been generated by one fundamental force: the falling cost of information," write McInerney and White, advisers in the telecommunications industry for financial institutions and other investors. "Those who have known how to harness it have made fortunes. Those who have not have been destroyed.
In FutureWealth, we read this about portals (p. 279): "there will be millions of video Web sites to choose from. This is where portals come in: helping viewers navigate through unlimited choices, and consolidating audiences for advertisers."
FutureWealth calls (p. 278) set-top boxes valuable real estate. The more "plots" the better.
They note two key questions (pp. 276-8 of FutureWealth): (1) how will people find what they want and how will they pay for it? (portal for the first half, price competition will drive the second). (2) What will make companies a winner in an Internet-TV world? Answer again is portals. And with the majority of homes to have broadband access to the Internet for their TVs, PCs, and a variety of other devices, FutureWealth (p 280) sees "The next generation of Internet portals and Internet billionaires will be at their service."
Hence, p. 278: "The set-top box is valuable real estate." I would suggest that the purple box is as well. And this is where portals come in: helping viewers navigate through unlimited choices, and consolidating

