Big Media think they’re going down the tubes because of “market changes” or whatever. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe their own bad manners could have something to do with their own demise.
—Hugh McLeod, The Hughtrain

Replace "Big Media" with "Big Religion"

"Big Politics"

"Big Medicine"

"Big Education"

"Big Morality"

or "Big Anything-That’s-Stopped-Working."

Big Media, Religion, Politics, Medicine, Education, Morality and the rest are going down the tubes because they’ve lost our trust.

They lost our trust by being untrustworthy.

"Big" no longer ensures dominance. Those who rely on market dominance to carry them have the life expectancy of the great dinosaurs.

I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from life within huge corporate structures, "How do I build a small firm for myself?" The answer seems obvious: "Buy a very large one and just wait.
—Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

Being in charge or the largest is no longer a predictor of survival.

Authority is dead. Long live Authenticity.

In the age of disintermediation, "value added" is the only reason anyone puts up with a middle man—ever. The only ones complaining about this are those with much to lose and little to add.

Call if you will, but who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn? Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple. I myself have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed. His children are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender. The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from among thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth. For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.
—Eliphaz the Temanite, Job 5

Bad things happen to good businesses.

Next!

The other side of the coin…

We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
—Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

If you’re much younger than fifty you’ve never heard the words Made in Japan and thought that meant chintzy, low-grade, born-to-break. In just about a minute that will be true of Made in Korea, China and India, followed by Mexico, Honduras, Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa, Bulgaria and Kenya. We already know how this story ends.

What we don’t know for sure is the part we’ll play. Old and established no longer means anything except old (and probably expensive). We — you, us, everyone we know — has a clean shot at creating insanely great value that people will gladly pay for.

The World is Flat. —Thomas L. Friedman

We are all of us workers created in the image of The Worker. We have the technology. The world is as flat for you as for anyone, anywhere.

Someone clever said, "The need is now, the time is now; the later it gets, the later it gets." What are we waiting for?

Seriously.

What are we waiting for?