Overnight, the earth became flat, metaphorically and in reality, too, as an ultra-sophisticated, digitally formatted, flat geographical platform, where business and corporate agendas in shapes of large digital cyber-warfare torpedoes skate at bullet speed. Precise navigation, correct targeting and direct hits took over.

Now there are players and there are spectators. The players are either corporate elites or very smart solo entrepreneurs, the spectators are the regional end-users scattered all over the globe in their unique demographical structures.

The new players flex their economic might and powers and the commercial reach of their global cyber-visibility and the uniqueness of their selling propositions under the banners of clear brand name identities — all designed to tickle the global end-user at large.

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The winners and losers of this flat-earth warfare are also being sorted out into either delete or send files. It is fast and very black and white. Like watching a hockey game on an old television.

Entering the Game

The entry to skate on this slippery digital platform is not expensive at all. All it requires is a deeper understanding of all the cutting edge rules of the cyber marketing game, a very sharp set of cyber-branding skills, tactical training of the entire frontline and a small team with real courage, knowledge and a winning attitude. Since marketing models of the old-fashioned, firm handshake with a fake smile, the lala-land branding circuses, and the bottomless hip-hop advertising of recent years are just dead, you’re better off hiring a coach from a top Canadian hockey team, or something like this.

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Just realign to skate today’s global cyber games.

In my 1995 book, Sunrise, Day One, Year 2000, I discussed a short synopsis of phases in business communications of the last century and how they would bring all of us to new crossroads of digital and virtual societies by 2000. I have routinely talked about this flat earth and lectured extensively about the coming of a digitally formatted global platform. Wherever I went across the world, I have always pointed to this new reality.

In a nutshell, corporations have two choices: become experts at this business model to skate freely around the globe of the future, or explore exit strategies to get out of the game.

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Tom Friedman, a brilliant writer, a great thinker and a globally recognized foreign affair columnist with The New York Times, explains in great detail the new realities and applications of this metaphorically flattened earth. His new book, Flat World, is a real endorsement to such ideas and forecasts, and I’m very glad to see the global sharing and practical applications of such thinking. I consider this book required reading for emerging young executives.

Going for Gold

The future is very bright for the speedy-e-commerce-mentality-thinkers, and equally so for the deal-makers and for the risk-takers. It is also very dark for the old mentality thinkers from the old economy and their old business models. The new Business Activity Management, or BAM, breaks all the molds.

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The new rules of BAM are based on advance predictability, cause and effect, interactive processing speed with a built-in logical and rational model of sophisticated computing. Once all put together, it provides a brand new set of tools to play the new games for new championships. Sharpen the skates!

Building a Small Team

Very big corporations have traditionally made very big mistakes. Small corporations too often also have made very big mistakes, but the resulting damage is very small. To spot a mistake in the making is a fine art. Therefore, it starts by building an award-winning skating team. This is very easy, provided you have a game plan and a coach, but it’s a nightmare if there are no rules, no agenda, no goal posts or no puck.

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As a starter, it’s best to eliminate the big IT layer — literally speaking, let most of the IT become the cyber-marketing enabler. Physically move them from the dark rooms to beside the CEO at the top floor of the ivory tower.

Get the lawyers and fancy artsy-fartsy teams out from there and shake the tree. Let cyber-branding strike the big gong of marketing. Let the nay-sayers and traditionalists hide and let the games begin! This is how it’s being done.

Winning It All

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Under the right circumstances and combinations, the results can be magical and so fast that it will pleasantly surprise the depressed accounting section. The idea here is to build a team with products and services and to apply new models of thinking by delivering core benefits directly to the end-user at a bullet speed, while eliminating internal bureaucracies.

Simply outsource all or any unwarranted parts of your organization to other local or international players as much as possible. Just keep the marketing and sales with critically supportive components to make all that happen. That’s out of the box, out of the building and parking lot thinking. Try it; it’s very easy.

The global population has only seen the spherical earth only in photos and movies, and has a mental picture, which is imaginary, as we all have yet to see this personally, standing from another far away planet. So for now, to most of us, it’s just one flat Earth. Let’s just skate.

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