In a world where data is key and content is king, establishing unfettered access to all types of these commodities is critical to both existing and, even more importantly, emerging products and revenue streams — revenue streams that will shape and, more than likely, form the foundation of the future of our industry leading organizations.

To identify some content as unsharable because it isn’t currently being shared is counterproductive to today’s forward thinking product stack; modular innovation, from open API’s and portability to relationships of all sorts. Access to content, new or existing, both now, as well as going forward, will continue to drive innovation and new (and substantial) revenue streams.

More than a vision, centralizing, unifying, opening content up to everyone and thing within the organization is an absolute necessity for continued success in the hyper-changing landscape of our businesses.

Individually, as brands we have many strengths. But, together, working together, we have the ability to not merely adapt to the market, but forever change the future of content, the mediums through which it is consumed, and models that will serve to drive accelerating growth.

Today, a great deal of content is not shared. This is absolutely true. To those who question why, one could identify a sub-par database, a lackluster data model, a challenged infrastructure, or even artificial business impediments. We have all been confronted with large and extremely challenging hurdles.  These have impeded our abilities to attempt to explore opportunities for even marginal revenue paths, not to mention those streams that possess the potential to, through sharing, be larger than the whole, contributing to the revenue of all brands, multiplying the revenue generating power of all the content.

To abandon our efforts, or to consider slowing them down or even putting them on hold, is to begin to weaken the very foundation upon which we are building our companies’ futures, a foundation that must be able to withstand the turbo-charged change and innovation that is required for success and continued leadership. To alter our current course into a direction of less sharing and openness will only result in eventual and guaranteed catastrophic fracturing and failing.

The present, and the future, is sharing, discovering new content, simplifying the exercise of current products, and enabling the path to future ones. Content is already being consumed in ways many would never have imagined even a couple of years ago. Now is the time to do it right. Now is the time to build something that will stand the test of time. Now is the time to establish a new level of content quality. Now is the time to change ourselves from distributed organizations of distributed content into an ecosystem of distributable content, an ecosystem that reaches all present and future modes and methods of consumption.

Enjoy! …and Share!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy